Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

Vhalar, 70th, 716th Arc

Well, here he was. Having forgotten all about it for a few trials, Sin had decided on a whim to take Faith up on her offer. It had been rather off hand, now that he thought about it, but it was too late now as he stepped up to the big table loaded with cooking utensils. Oh, there was one that he recognized. He knew knives. Sin looked around the room to the other participants. Not many, which was normal considering it was only the second session. He hoped that it would become a popular activity for the city folk around here. Faith had been kind enough to help out a complete stranger and done a fine job of it. He'd never eaten anything he'd cooked as tasty as that chicken stock vegetable... something she'd taught him about.

Unlike normal, Sin found himself standing out in this tiny crowd. The women were both too well dressed for the occasion and the other man here looked like he had crawled his way up here from lowtown. It wasn't that he was too well or under dressed for this occasion, it was that he looked rather plain in here. Out there, he looked like everybody else. Dressed in a basic outfit consisting of brown pants and a grey shirt underneath a thick tunic in colored in some sort of poor man's burgundy. His cloak was hanging over a chair in the corner of the room and his newly acquired gloves were resting on the seat.

When Faith started the class with a smile in everyone's direction, Sin smiled back at her and mouthed a silenced hey in her direction. He wasn't sure if she'd seen it as she went right into her class. Faith went straight into an exercise, probably to gauge her class' knowledge. Good start, although Sin thought starting of with introductions might have been the smarter move here. But he was here to learn, not to tell others how to improve themselves. It wasn't like he knew anything about the subject anyway. As Sin leaned over to inspect the tools spread out in front of him, the woman next to him leaned over and spoke.

Before she had finished her second sentence, Sin had managed to put aside the idea of just slapping this woman with one of these spatula things to shut her up. It wouldn't do Faith any good and would only land him in trouble. So he scrapped that. When she finished talking about her club, Sin discarded the idea of ignoring the woman. From her clothing and speech he figured she'd be less insulted if he hit her than if he ignored her. It wouldn't make things easier for Faith. When she asked him about his opinion, Sin picked his third option. He turned his face towards the woman in shock. Not that she could tell the difference between shock that came from him realizing how dumb this woman was or shock from her words. He was going for the second kind of shock. "Your grace!" Sin exclaimed, picking a title ten degrees above her pedigree. "Shhhh." He shushed her unceremoniously. In an attempt to look like a conspirator to some Immortal awful crime, Sin's eyes moved from Faith to the other two people in the class. "You wouldn't want someone overhearing you insult the duke of Gawyne with those words, would you? That's his favorite chef. They say she won some sort of competition as the only slave there." Sin tried to hush the last part, attempting to make it look it was some sort of big secret.

Making an effort to distance himself from the 'conspiracy', Sin turned back to the tools, leaving the woman to her own devices. He let his eyes rest on Faith for a moment. With the cow of a noblewoman on his left, Sin winked at her with his right eye before looking back down. Picking up the pencil, Sin started writing down the things he knew on the table. Knife, fork, spoon. The basics. He was glad for Faith's marketplace lesson as he wrote down spatula. The meat fireplace poker thing was there as well, which he added to his list. Pan, bowl and that spike thing you used to hold meat over a fire and turn it around where there as well. Apart from those items, Sin had to admit that he didn't know any... Oh, a pot to boil water in, of course. Apart from those, Sin didn't couldn't find a use for any of the other tools in front of him.

At least she still seemed to know who he was. Sintih was happy to see Faith responded in such a pleasant manner to his greeting to her. Could it be that she was all professional and just responded in kind? Of course. Did he think that? Of course not. He had to keep himself from rolling his eyes when the woman next to him suddenly became friendlier towards Faith and, for some reason, him as well. He just gave her a nod and let her do her assignment while he moved his attention from his very short list of kitchen utensils to Faith as she worked with the other two people in her class. She seemed to be doing quite well, unperturbed by the words of the woman next to him. Professional.

Sin listened with one ear as Faith explained the rest of the tools spread out in front of them. The rest of his attention was on trying to keep up his notes with her explanation. He had to forgo readable penmanship for scribbles but managed to keep up with the names and uses of most of the tools. When she finished the table of utensils, Sin let out a relieved breath, figuring he'd add some drawings to the list later. Maybe he'd ask Faith if he could get some extra time after class to finish his work. He had never really liked this part of studying but with a mother like his it was impossible not to pick up the required skills along the way.

He put his paper down on the table when Faith mentioned actually cooking something. They were going to jump right in, it seemed. Sintih followed the other students to the baskets Faith had pointed out and read together with the quiet woman what the rice and vegetable recipe would entail. He also looked at the other options while the annoying woman immediately picked her choice after reading one card. Ugh. Red wine? No thanks. Sin skipped over the other man's recipe when he read it involved wine. Picking up the card for the annoying woman's recipe, Sin saw the others had all decided already. He quickly glanced over it and put it down before looking at the last one. Hmm. Isn't this the... what was it again? Pasta thing? Sin read over the pasta with ham and egg and then looked around for Faith, trying to get her attention. "Is this pasta thing the same pasta thing that you mentioned in the market when we met? I seem to remember you talking about something like this, right?"

Picking up a basket of the pasta dish, Sin moved back to his table, which he still shared with that woman. Putting the basket down, Sin focused back on Faith. Start by reading the instructions, that sounded easy enough. Sin glanced over to the other people in the class as they all started reading before he did the same. The instructions seemed short, which told him it was easy, but when he got to actually reading it Sin began starting to regret his choices. The ingredients weren't too difficult. First was obviously the pasta itself, which Sin assumed was the hard yellow like thin sticks, the diced ham was easy to spot as well. Eggs? Check. No idea what yolk is, though. Grated cheese? Check. The list ended with a salt, pepper and parsley, which he assumed was the only ingredient left in his basket, some sort of bushy green plant that looked a lot like the weeds that used to grow all over the farm back home.

With all the ingredients present, according to Faith's recipe, Sin started reading the rest of it. The instructions started off easy. Put pasta in boiling water for ten to twelve minutes. Sure, he could do that. Fry ham in a pan. He could do that too. What came after, though, was much more involved. He had to whisk, whatever that was, the egg yolk, whichever part of the egg that was, and mix it with something called the ham 'drippings'. After that he had to add the strained, whatever that was, pasta and the cheese and mix everything before adding the salt, pepper, the chopped parsley and the ham. Apart from the fact that he had no clue what most of the things mentioned in the recipe were, Sin thought the actions behind the instructions were easy enough: prepare things separately and then add them together in sequence.

He disliked having to ask but there was no library available from which he could pull the information. And Faith had been a great help before so Sin resigned himself to asking her for help once again. "Err... Faith? What are..." Sin scanned the page with his finger, looking for the words he didn't understand. "Whisk, yolk, drippings and parsley? I think parsley is this but I'm not sure." As he said that, Sin picked up the small bowl with the green weed looking plants in it.

Sintih was impressed by Faith's ability to ignore things she didn't like and smile at things she did like. It took most of his social grace and what little etiquette he'd learned just to keep him from calling a certain someone a series of certain words. He wondered if he could get away with cursing at her in Yludih. He put that thought aside as soon as it came up, he wasn't suicidal. Focusing back on his food, Sin made sure to underline all the things he'd just asked her in his own recipe and took the other three recipes from Faith as she handed them to him. Everyone was doing the same thing, underlining what they didn't understand or asking Faith about it directly. Except for the woman next to him.

He wondered why she was even here. What did she expect from a midtown organised class? Slaves were used for nothing but tasks like cooking and cleaning so Sin was pretty sure there was nobody more experienced in these tasks than they were. He wanted to ask her if she realized that, most likely, her entire life was kept at the standard she liked so much by nothing but slaves. Sin listened quietly as Faith took them one by one and explained the recipe and the underlined words they didn't understand. He wrote down everything he didn't know on his own copies of the recipes Faith had given him.

When it was his turn to repeat his questions, Sin went over his recipe and the words he had underlined. Faith explained them all slowly and clearly so that everyone could hear what she had to say. The other two eager students wrote down their notes as well but miss better-than-everybody-else seemed to be too good for that, just watching with her arms crossed. When Sin finished with his question, he gave Faith a grin. "All this talk of food, I'm starting to get hungry." With that, Sin moved back to his table that he shared with the woman and put his recipes down next to him.

When she asked him to work together on hers, Sin quickly translated that to 'you do all the work, I take all the credit'. Strange people these nobles, it was always 'eww slaves' but then they turn around and treat everyone else like their servants as well. If only he could slap some sense in the entire nobility of Rynmere, that would feel so good. But that wouldn't help Faith now so instead Sin went over a few moves in his head, trying the pros and cons. Ignoring her still wouldn't help anyone, telling her she was a useless cow wouldn't do him any good either. Again, Sin came to the conclusion that telling the woman a lie would get the most use out of her.

"I'm so glad I'm finally learning to cook. I had these friends... well, they're not friends anymore now. They had some guy come and cook their food for them for this big party they threw. It was Ho-Rri-Ble." Sin turned his eyes skyward, exaggerating the last word as best he could. "Everyone avoided them afterwards... You know, I even heard they lost a rank in nobility. I'm sure it's probably just a rumor. Just goes to show that doing things yourself is always better." As he said that, Sin grabbed the steak from the woman's basket and put it in a pot. "We boil this in some water, right?" He asked his partner as he looked at her recipe paper across the table and then around the area for said ingredient.

Sin wondered how many of these dumb stories he could come up with before the end of class. If she'd just done everything as asked from the beginning they would probably already be four steps into their recipe, which for Sin meant he would've been done and eating already. His stomach agreed with that with a soft rumble. All this food everywhere and he couldn't eat any of it yet. Most likely, he wouldn't eat any of it anyway since they were all new and learning still.

Sintih's time spent with the noble lady was one of great trial for him. Apart from the fact that she did absolutely nothing in regard to the work, she also kept looking at him like he was her servant. Whenever his eyes made contact with hers, Sin couldn't help but wonder what rank her title was, if she even had one. Depending on it, Sin might have gotten away with slapping her. Luckily, Faith showed up the one time he almost went through with it. His thoughts about the woman and nobility in general were suppressed by her bright smile as she checked in on their progress.

Considering Sin had no help doing the cooking, he was lagging behind a bit with the work but Faith gave him some good pointers as he worked, recommending some salt on his meat before cooking it. He followed her advice and managed to set his partner from his mind. If she wasn't going to help, Sin might as well ignore her all together and go for it on his own. He could feel her eyes pricking on the back of his neck as he worked but he kept working through it, focusing on the food as it cooked instead. By the time he finished, he'd managed an ok version of the recipe the woman had chosen.

Tasting his creation, Sin quickly realized that salt had a strong taste and that he'd used too much of it. He also learned that cooking things made them tougher after a while as he chewed on the steak he'd prepared. All in all, the food was edible but he was sure that he needed many more hours of practice before he could make anything that would actually agree with his taste buds as well as sustain him. Before he could finish his first taste, his partner had already vanished, leaving Sin alone at his table. The other two greeted Faith before leaving but Sin remained.

While he knew very little in regards to food, he was poor enough to know the value of food and he refused to leave behind this salty piece of chewy meat he'd prepared. He stuck with it and finished it soon after, the ingredients having been measured for a taster and not a full meal. When he prepared to leave, Faith approached him and said her goodbye. He smiled at her. "Against someone like her, I would have stuck up for anyone. Thank you for taking the time to teach me some cooking skills. I don't think I'll be making restaurant worthy food starting tomorrow but I'm sure I'll enjoy a bit more flavor in my meals. I'm sure we will see each other around, I still get my vegetables from the same place." Bringing his right hand to his left shoulder, Sin bowed towards the slave-chef-teacher before him and turned to leave.

He hoped he would see her again, she was friendly company. But he made no illusions, as a slave Faith had no control over her own life so if he never saw her again, it wouldn't surprise him. As he walked down the street he wondered if he should have offered to stay and help clean up.