1 Vhalar 718
Three Neroninburgers, five Mal aux Poivre, a bloody Kas, six sides of the Finn Fingers Basket-case.
The note with the orders was roughly skewered on the pin above the kitchen counter, then the owner of Dishes and Dangers hurried off towards the bar to fetch the requested drinks. He grabbed three different colorful bottles, searched the icebox for some cold cubes, and poured all four drinks at once, switching them all up every few trills. Once all were placed on a platter, he was off again, racing through the cluttered interior, dodging chairs and tables, and somehow avoiding spillage.
“So, four Modbombs, there you go,” he smiled, wiping the sweat from his brow as he quickly planted the longdrinks on the table. The owner was just about to run off again when one of the patrons caught his attention with an incessant ‘excuse me’.
“How long until we finally get our food? Even Finn posts faster than this!” Foster’s local mailboy was renowned for his infamous slowness at delivering the mail and, if they weren’t careful, so too would Dishes and Dangers be if these kind of comments continued to stacked up.
“Shouldn’t be too long, no worries.”
“Didn’t you say that three hours ago as well? We ordered yestertrial! If not for our free meal coupon, we’d have long since left!”
“And our hearts are warmed by your dedicated patronage!”
“Free meal coupons? We ordered a tentrial ago, and we only got these dumb buttons that say ‘Famos Gay’. Where’s the ‘u’?!”
“I’m afraid our printmaker is illiterate, but he’s cheap so we can’t complain.”
“Yeah, I’m complainin’ about this damn fuckin’ wait.”
“Please get in line. Last arc’s customers still haven’t gotten to it yet either.”
“Y-yes? Pardon? Hello, I-I ordered three arcs earlier? D-do you- hello?”
But he was off again.
Not two trills later did he burst through the swinging doors to the kitchen, face brimming with excitement. As soon as he smelled the stench of burning hair, a little bit of bile, and what was definitely nail clippings from either a foot or something with a foot-like aroma, his nose almost retracted into his face out of pure and utter horror.
“Mads! Mads! Where are you? Mads! How are the orders coming along? The customers are complaining about the wait. I say you kill the fire and stop cooking right now. Make them wait another six months to show we’re not pushovers.”
He always said that when the customers got a little pushy, and they always were.
“You-?”
As if expecting the response, the owner rolled his eyes even before Mads had finished opening his mouth. “How many more times do I have to repeat myself? Yes! Customers think they’re all that. Think the world revolves around them. Think they’re king! Well, I’m an Immortal, and Immortals stand above kings. If I tell them to wait, they’ll fucking damn well wait.”
Mads’ face didn’t move, his expression was kept blank most of the time, as he was forced to do the job of seven men alone. He didn’t have time to consider what he should be feeling or how he was supposed to express it. As his employer spoke, three of the dangerously bubbling, blackened pots burst into flames for the fifteenth time that evening. “So they shall.”
Without bothering to look toward the stove, Mads hoisted a large, wide rimmed bowl filled with a yellowish, opaque liquid up off of a nearby counter and with, a quiet grunt, let the contents sail through the air in a gentle arc, splashing all over the stove and extinguishing the flames with a sizzling hiss. “That was the chicken stock for the fourteen hundred orders of Chicken Vudaloooodle Soup.” Blinking twice, he added, “Now you can tell them we are out of it.”
“Good lad,” the owner smiled, slapping the chef on the back --or at least trying to. His hand didn’t deliver any satisfying meaty sting at all, instead hitting a near invisible area around Mads’ form. He didn’t provide the chef - or, really, cook - any sort of heat protection at all, so the replicated armor was necessary for handling the hot pans and platters. There were also no spoons, because Oberan “didn’t trust them”, which meant he needed to hand stir everything. The downside - for the owner - was he was robbed of a modicum of camaraderie, something that the man seemed to find annoying, in spite of all the benefits it won him.
Normally, hygiene was high on the list of priorities in any restaurant, tavern, or soup kitchen, but since the owner wasn’t a fan of the alleged soapy taste in any meals that required stirring, the list of priorities had been reworked, and hygiene was no longer on it - along with most of the list itself. Not that it was necessary. One of the many boons of the magic was that the layers of air weren’t inherently filthy like skin tended to be. Probably. Unfortunately, whenever egg whites needed to be fluffed up for desserts, the sickening smell trapped in the kitchen air happened to get caught inside, adding a most peculiar taste to the dish which most people considered ‘disturbingly disgusting’, though there were the very rare few who specially ordered what they called the “Meat-Whip”.
“Anyway, Mads,” Oberan continued, scratching his head, “ I need you in the dining room. I threw most of last arc’s guests into Emea, but they keep breaking out, so I need you to take orders while I go fix that little issue.”
Glancing down at his state of dress - or lack thereof, clad as he was in only an apron at the very uncomfortable, oppressive insistence of his employer - Mads purposefully raised a brow, expression politely but clearly questioning. “Like… this?”
Oberan let his eyes wander up and down for a moment, fingers tapping his chin in thought. For once, Mads thought he’d gotten his boss to see reason.
