Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

Cylus 15, Arc 721

On the 15th of Cylus, Devin Thorn, medical genius in progress, master bard and priest of Delroth decided to visit the open-air market in the town square. He did so on a regular basis because he very much preferred to buy food that was home-made and/or came directly from a farm. In Cylus, when it was dark and cold and there was snow everywhere, certain things, such as fresh fruit and vegetables were hard to come by, for obvious reasons. He wasn’t looking for carrots, parsnips, apples and similar things this time anyway though. He wanted to buy meat, for the most part, at least. Fortunately, meat was available throughout the arc!

Since the weather was quite unpleasant, the young Mortalborn (who didn’t know that he was a Mortalborn yet) was wearing a warm, but very stylish deep blue coat with silver embroidery that was lined with fur. The hood was pulled slightly into his face. Normally, he quite liked showing his face, because it was just such a nice face, but he wasn’t particularly fond of his cheeks or his nose or various other parts of his face freezing.

Swinging the wicker basket that was decorated with pretty blue bows to match his coat and that he planned on filling with his purchases in his left hand slightly, he sauntered over to a stall where meat and sausages and such were being sold. At this time of the arc there were fewer stalls than there were during the warmer seasons, but there was everything that he needed – including a butcher’s stall with a little roof that ensured that the meat didn’t get snowed on. Behind the stall, bundled up in a warm fur-coat and a scarf stood …

… a pretty girl with platinum blonde hair, rosy cheeks and emerald-green eyes?

Devin abruptly did a double take because that didn’t fit with the preconceived notion that he had of butchers (middle-aged and slightly overweight – and not particularly attractive - men or women that usually wore aprons so that the blood didn’t get on their clothes).

A few moments later, he approached the stall, smiling quite brilliantly, produced the small cookbook that he had tucked into a pocket of his coat, leafed through it until he had reached the recipe that he wanted to give a try (It hadn’t occurred to him that he could have written the list of ingredients down on a piece of paper instead!) and proclaimed, “I’d like to buy four Moss Bunny legs – no, make that six. It would be good to have a few spare legs in case something goes wrong with that Moss Bunny Stew”, he decided and added, because he occasionally had good manners and wanted to be polite, “Please!”

“Moss Bunny meat is quite expensive”, the girl told him with a voice that was as sweet as honey and added, before he could point out that he was a celebrity and could definitely afford the meat, thank you very much, “But you look as if you have enough money. So, six Moss Bunny legs, right? They are quite fresh. I don’t really care about Cylus particularly, but there is one thing to be said about temperatures below the freezing point. Food doesn’t spoil as quickly as it does during the warmer seasons”, she began to ramble slightly, in a way that would have reminded the Mortalborn of himself and that would have caused him to be even more amazed if he hadn’t been …

… distracted.

Next to the stall, on the ground, stood a large basket that was filled with a lot of green moss … pelt ….things. Devin didn’t know what exactly the things in the basket were, but he really wanted them. The green color would go incredibly well with some of his favourite outfits. After a while, he looked up at the pretty girl who looked at him in confusion and asked, “How much for those amazing green things? I’ll take at least a dozen in addition to the meat. They look as if they would make a wonderful cloak!”

The meat vendor looked at him as if he’d lost his mind before she pointed out in a very sweet and nice, but nevertheless slightly firm tone of voice, “The Moss Bunny pelts are not for sale. They are trash. I just didn’t have time to throw them away yet. You can’t do anything useful with them. Unlike rabbit pelts, Moss Bunny pelts aren’t really good for anything.”

Devin had never cared about what someone else said, so, instead of paying heed to the girl’s words he just produced his wallet, handed her a couple of shiny golden nels and told her, grinning all over his face because he already had so many great ideas, “I’ll relieve you of your trash. Give me a dozen Moss Bunny pelts, please – and the Moss Bunny legs, of course.”

“Are you really sure …?” the girl wanted to know before she sighed because he obviously wasn't willing to listen, nodded her head, put the Moss Bunny pelts into a large paper bag, wrapped the Moss Bunny legs in white paper and handed both to the Mortalborn. Devin grinned at her, bowed like a gentleman would bow to a lady and continued his shopping trip, with a spring in his step because he was quite excited.

When he finally arrived at home, Devin was a little bit cold, to be honest, in spite of the fact that he had been wearing his warm and cozy (and very fashionable!) winter coat. So, the first thing that he did after he had taken his coat and his boots off and deposited the things that he had bought in the kitchen was to throw a few pieces of wood into the fireplace. Having done that, he made tea for himself to warm his body from the inside – and carried a cup upstairs to his roommate Aidan who was studying for an exam as well.

(His other roommate, Talieson, the bard, was currently at work and hopefully got a warm drink there.)

Once he had stopped feeling like a human-shaped icicle, he went to work because he wanted to make sure that dinner would be ready in time. Normally, he didn’t care about doing something for other people particularly, but he just loved to cook for his roommates (and himself, of course). If he weren’t already a doctor and a couple of other important things, he would probably have opened a restaurant and done this all trial long!

He opened the cookbook and set it down on the kitchen table and then he gathered all the ingredients that he would need. According to the recipe, the first step was to season the Moss Bunny legs with salt and pepper and coat them in flower, so that was exactly what he did, and he even remembered to shake off the excess flour and set it aside for later use rather than tossing it into the trashcan like he usually did. Before long, six flour-covered Moss Bunny Legs were lying on a plate, and Devin was singing, totally off-key, because he was in such a good mood!

He did a little twirl because he was already having so much fun, and then he grabbed a stick of butter and unceremoniously dumped it into the pan on the stove. The recipe called for twenty-five grams of butter, but since he had forgotten where the scale was, he just decided to add a random amount, and then he added a teaspoon of olive oil – and finally the Moss Bunny Legs. The recipe said that the legs should sear, but not steam. He wasn’t really sure what the difference between those two terms - and frying - was, so he just left the Moss Bunny legs in the pan and fried them until they were kind of brown on the outside and looked nice and crispy.

Frying and searing were probably interchangeable terms anyway, right?

As he removed them from the pan, put them onto a plate and cut a piece off of one of them, he realized that they were little bit too crispy and chewy. That was not a problem though. There would be a sauce. If he left the legs in the sauce long enough, the meat would probably become softer again. Things usually became softer if you put them into a liquid!

With that thought in mind, he chopped onions, celery and mushrooms (he ended up with a few large chunks because he hadn’t mastered the art of chopping vegetables and similar things into fine pieces yet), put them into the pan and almost immediately began to stir with a wooden spoon so that they wouldn’t get charred. He ended up with a few almost black pieces of celery regardless. And what more, the mushrooms shrank and darkened considerably so that the pan that had been almost full before looked kind of empty now. He wasn’t sure what exactly it was that made mushrooms shrink when you fried them, but he didn’t like it!

In his opinion, someone ought to invent unshrinking mushrooms!

Before long, he moved on to the final step, transferred everything into a pot, added the leftover flour, some water, some herbs, more salt and half a liter of white wine (and put the Moss Bunny legs, of course). According to the recipe, he was supposed to let everything simmer for approximately a break, but he decided on seventy-five bits in order to hopefully soften the too crispy and chewy Moss Bunny legs.

Since he had absolutely no interest in sitting in the kitchen and watching his stew simmer for more than a break, Devin decided to start to work on his absolutely amazing Moss Bunny cloak in the meantime. Fortunately, he had a lot of needles and a lot thread since he was a surgeon, among other things. The thread that he used to give his patients stitches was of extremely high quality, so it would probably work even better than normal thread, right?

He decided to sit down cross-legged on the living room floor, on the shaggy rug in front of the fireplace where it was nice and warm and arranged everything that he would need around him: surgical needles in several sizes and lengths, several pairs of scissors, the aforementioned surgical thread, a couple of colorful ribbons, beads and feathers – because he planned on decorating his Moss Bunny cloak a bit. In his opinion, a plain cloak was boring!

Finally, he removed the Moss Bunny pelts from the bag. It was just then that something occurred to him. He had never given sewing a try before. Well, not really, at least. He had been a tailor’s apprentice once, back in Rynmere, when he had been a boy. His master had been mean, though, and it had been a slightly traumatizing experience which was why he had quit. He did not regret that he hadn’t learned much from his master though.

He was still glad that he had left!

Besides, how hard could sewing a cloak be? He’d just have to sew the pelts together, and if the resulting cloak wasn’t long enough, he’d either pretend that it was a cape or just add a piece of cloth. He had lots of silk and velvet and such that would work just fine in that regard!

With that thought in mind, he threaded the needle which was something that he found relatively easy since he had already threaded a lot of needles during his career as a surgeon (It only took him two tries to get the thread through the hole!). A moment later, he grabbed the first pelt, pushed the needle and the thread through it and attempted to join it to the second pelt, and then he did the same thing in reverse.

At least he planned on doing that.

The first time, he ended up with a large tear in both of the Moss Bunny Pelts. When he grabbed a new pelt and gave it another try, huge clumps of moss just fell off and landed on the floor. When he tried to join two pelts together for the third time, he didn’t manage to push the needle through the pelt at all, even though he mustered up all of his strength.

So, he attempted to join a pelt and a piece of wool fabric together next as he thought that that might work better. The result were totally uneven and ugly stitches on the wool fabric – and nothing on the other side, because the Moss Bunny stuff just fell off entirely this time!

A little later, he attempted to join two pieces of fabric together, to figure out whether there was something wrong with his stitches or the Moss Bunny pelts. The result were two pieces of fabric with a lot of gaps and loose thread (and some big loops!) between them. The two pieces of fabric were more or less hanging by a thread because his stiches hadn’t nearly been tight enough!

Sewing and giving people stitches were not the same thing, and being an experienced surgeon didn’t automatically make you a good tailor. Skin was an entirely different material!

Of course, Devin didn’t see it that way. In his opinion, both the fabric and the pelts were broken!

So, he decided to give up on sewing – and got some glue, figuring that gluing the pelts together might be more successful because he still wanted to have his amazing green Moss Bunny cloak. Gluing the pelts together didn’t have the intended result either though. He just ended up with glue on his hands that he quickly removed with lots of soap and water.

Finally, he was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace again, a murderous look on his face and eyed the Moss Bunny pelt chaos around him. And then, without further ado, he just grabbed all of the pelts and tossed them into the fireplace where the fire had almost gone out because he had forgotten to add some wood to it (he had been too frustrated to think of it).

A moment later, there was a bright flame all of a sudden, and the fire burned just as strongly as it had when he had started to give sewing a try. He looked at the miracle in front of him, his violet eyes wide. Apparently, you couldn’t make cloaks out of Moss Bunny Pelts, but they were still good for something. They made for an excellent kind of tinder. In fact, they were better than what he normally used to start a fire in the fireplace!

And what more, the smoke kind of smelled like … he sniffed and sniffed again in order to be sure that he had identified the smell correctly and finally came to the conclusion that it was indeed the smell of …

“Carrots!” Aidan who had left his room because he was getting hungry proclaimed and entered the living room. “It smells like carrots in here! It smells delicious! Are we going to eat carrots for dinner?” he asked hopefully because he absolutely loved carrots.

“Nope”, Devin replied in an overly dry tone of voice, before he turned around and grinned because he was quite fascinated by this new development. “That’s Moss Bunny smoke! We are going to eat … Moss Bunny stew!” he abruptly exclaimed and raced into the kitchen, past a very confused looking Aidan. The stew was still simmering. It had been simmering for a break and a half at this point. Hopefully, it hadn’t been ruined!

He still had three spare Moss Bunny legs (that had already been cleaned when he had bought them!) though, he remembered … except that he had forgotten to save them and just fried all six legs. Fortunately, he realized as he removed the lid from the pot and took a peek inside, his stew was still salvageable. There was even a decent amount of sauce left, even though it was thicker than it should have been because he had left the pot on the stove too long.

Feeling optimistic, he filled two plates with stew (Talieson who was still at work would eat dinner later on), cut some bread and informed Aidan that dinner was ready. The sauce that contained a lot of wine was actually quite tasty, he decided, once he was finally sitting at the table. The Moss Bunny legs on the other hand were still a bit too chewy and crunchy, and the vegetables were …

… well, he supposed adequate was the right word.

Aidan seemed to be content though, he decided after he had cast a glance at his roommate, and besides, maybe he could just toss the leftovers into the fireplace as well?

Maybe fried Moss Bunny legs would burn even better than Moss Bunny pelts!