A Taste of Home by heget

Seasoned with Salt

Read Seasoned with Salt

At first Elwing thinks the grilled fish is the bluefish she is used to, the heavy fishy flavor wafting off the golden crust, but when her hosts cut into the fish and start to pull apart pieces of the cooked flesh, nimbly avoiding the bones, she sees it is not so. There is a loaf of bread, yet in shape and texture it looks nothing like any bread she knows or has kneaded. Another grilled fish, crusted in a thick layer of charred salt and smelling faintly of some sweet cooking liquor, is dropped into the center of the banquet table, the head and tail hanging over the edges of the massive yet delicate serving platter. The platter is a soft white, with the imprint of feathers along the rim, of a delicate ceramic that she vaguely remembers. She has not seen an object so fine and delicate for a long time. The meals she has eaten for the last twenty years, when she had been fortunate enough to have dishes on which to eat them, have been on wooden platters or the thick reddish brown ceramic of mortal make. In recent memory it has been her fingers greedily pulling apart hastily boiled small fish that either her husband or she had caught. Infrequent meals those had been, often spoiled by stomachs wracked by worry.

The rich scent of garlic and lemon pulls Elwing out of memories, and she looks up to see the next dish being uncovered. A lid is being removed from yet another fish dish, this time a giant and also unrecognizable specimen that has been obviously seasoned and steamed in its own juices. The surrounding broth smells fragrant, and her host uses a ladle to scoop some of it into a small bowl and set it before her. A piece of soft bread is placed next to the bowl. Light highlights the delicate translucence of the bowl's edges as she stares at it. “Eat this first,” the queen says, the small crown of silver shells and mother-of-pearl above her sad face glimmering with the same wet luster as her eyes. “It shall not overtax your stomach.”

As the queen speaks, her husband is uncovering yet another dish of what looks to be fried squid and brightly-colored vegetables with delight. Yet still more dishes are being brought, and the guest feels overwhelmed. This was not to be any large feast, just an intimate meal for newly reunited family, and yet she is besieged by the bounty of food. She thinks back to the excitement of a pot of eel stew. The last dish she notices before the tears overwhelm is a platter of round crab cakes. They look exactly like the ones she used to make for her family, even the small cup of cream dipping sauce, though she served hers in a cleaned clam shell and this one is in a porcelain cup made to mimic the shell shape. She remembers breaking a cake apart with her fingers and feeding a piece to her son as she held him on her lap, his brother greedily reaching for a second serving and dipping his fingers into the sauce to lick it clean.

The memory destroys what remained of her appetite. Elwing sobs.

There are warm arms around her, two sets, holding her tight, a hand stroking her hair, a man’s soft low voice whispering smoothing words to her, promising her she is safe, that he will protect her, a woman telling her that she has permission to cry, she can show weakness, that she is loved. In her most distant memories the woman recalls parents who had once done this for her. Elwing weeps and through her tears thanks them for the meal.

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Chapter End Notes

For the various seafood dishes I used a vague miss-mash of places to reflect the difference in locations, not just the cultural divergence and economic/survival levels, but also the variance in oceanography. Turkish seafood cuisine was a main inspiration, the crab cakes were for my own nostalgia because I lived in Maryland and nowadays am very partial to Louisiana crab cakes with rémoulade sauce, and lastly the very traditionally English eel stew, because this universe was created by Tolkien and thus needed something quintessentially English.