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“It’s not the most spacious, but make yourself at home,” Chilchuck said, gesturing vaguely down the short staircase and towards the central area of his home. Senshi had arrived bright and early that morning, jangling the bellchime before Chilchuck had even had the chance to change out of his sleepclothes.
It had been about three months since the Dungeon collapsed. Three months since he had helped save the world as he knew it, three months since his entire life and the lives of everyone he knew were turned entirely upside down. Three months since he had promised Marcille that she could meet his family. And about ten hours until he would make good on that promise.
After the collapse of the Dungeon, his brother’s family, who had been renting his home just outside of Khaka Brud, decided to make a mad dash to Melini to set up farmland under King Touden’s agricultural reforms, and thus Chilchuck had returned home. The house was in a good place, nearby to where he had been renting, and about a twenty minute walk from the plot of land he had secured for his shop. The house was paid off, so it beat paying rent every month, seeing as, with the shop still being set up, he was, for all intents and purposes, currently out of a job. The home was a bit lonely, the planks creaked with every step, and memories haunted the hallways, but Chilchuck knew how to deal with ghosts. Maybe Senshi could turn these ones to sherbert, too.
The dwarf had tucked all of his belongings neatly in the corner behind the dining table in the den. An air of intention followed Senshi in everything he did, and the way he settled in was neat, organized, and efficient. He seemed excited to be there.
Chilchuck had asked him a while back in writing if he would be willing to help him with the cooking for the dinner party he wanted to have. It had taken Senshi a while to get back to him (he was happy he got back to him at all – he wasn’t sure if the dwarf even stayed at the address he sent it to. The castle was a lucky guess), but when he finally received a letter back, it was one that conveyed a great deal of enthusiasm. If there were two things Senshi loved, it was cooking, and caregiving. Chilchuck supposed this venture combined the two.
“I wasn’t expecting you to get here so early,” he said, “or else I would be wearing real clothes,” he grumbled, by way of apology. “You must’ve left Melini pretty early,”
“I’m sorry fer waking ye,” he apologized, to which Chilchuck shook his head. “I’m on my way back from a trip South of here. It was on my way,”
Chilchuck furrowed his brow. “Where’d you stay last night?”
“Just outside the village. I set up by the river,” he said, taking off his metal wrist-guards, revealing soft brown canvas wraps underneath. The metal clinked as he set the guards on the wooden floor.
The look on Chilchuck’s face was wholly aghast. “The Cats’ Tail? That’s like a thirty minute walk from here. You should’ve told me, you could’ve stayed here,”
“I would’ve hated te trouble ye,” Senshi said, shaking his hair out after taking off his helmet.
Even for having slept by the river – Senshi had cleaned up nice since the last time they’d seen one another. His beard had lost a lot of length since the last time he had seen him, ending in a neat point towards the top of his sternum. He was dressed the nicest Chilchuck had ever seen him dressed before, in a cream-colored linen tunic tucked into a rather traditional-looking dwarven kilt, the sleeves held in place by the soft wrist wraps. A nice, breezy outfit for the summer heat. He looked handsome — moreso than usual. No easy feat. Hell, when he passed him on the way in, he even smelled like soap. It was a surprising but welcome development, one that made Chilchuck idly wonder if he had bathed in the river. He hoped not, thinking of the houses that lined the edges of the bank.
“It’s not trouble. It’ll be more trouble if someone finds you camping outside their backyard,”he said, to which Senshi’s already wide eyes widened a bit further, perhaps trying to recollect the distance from any homes he had been nearby.
“You’ll sleep in my bed tonight,” he decided. Though he’d have to pick up all the dirty laundry at some point before then.
Senshi sputtered a bit, looking up from where he was kneeling to pack away his helmet amongst his other belongings. “Yer. . . your bed?” he asked, and Chilchuck couldn’t help but notice the hesitation in his voice. His own face went a tad warm as he realized how he had come off – as much as he wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with Senshi, the last thing he wanted was to come onto him before he was supposed to be helping him prepare a family dinner.
“Well, you wouldn’t fit in any of the girls’ old beds,” he clarified, quickly, throwing in a shrug for good measure. I’ll take one of those.”
“Oh,“ he said, and he suddenly looked a little bashful. “Well,” he began, unsure, and Chilchuck held a hand up.
“Non-negotiable. You’re helping me out. And you’re my friend. Besides, it’s nice to have the company,” he admitted.
Senshi looked at him for a moment, and then relented. “I appreciate it, Chil,”
“It’s no problem.”
“Alright, then” Senshi decided, clapping his hands gently on the top of his thighs as he stood.. “Let’s get started.”
—-
The two sat adjacent to one another, steaming mugs of coffee resting beside them on the circular dining table. Senshi’s was loaded with cream and sugar, and Chilchuck almost laughed as he watched the dwarf lick his lips with a smile after taking a sip. He had pulled out his leatherbound journal, and was marking down a header at the top of a fresh page: “Dinner Party Menu”. His handwriting reminded him of Fler’s; neat, tidy, and, for a lack of a better word, cute.
“Did ye have any idea what ye want to serve?”
“I was hoping to make a stew,”
Senshi nodded, and jotted it down. “Stew is good. Means I can make bread,”
“That’d be great, yeah. You might have to make a lot, though. There’s gonna be. . .” Chilchuck’s eyes drifted upwards as he listed the guests off in his head. “Nine of us.”
“Nine?”
“Well, it’s you, me, Laios, Falin, Marcille, Izutsumi, May, Fler, and Patti,”
Senshi hummed. “I cook for the palace sometimes. It’s no trouble to cook fer nine. I can make it a nice even ten, with Laios’ appetite.” He jotted down the guests, and then furrowed his brow. “Could yer wife not make it?”
Chilchuck’s face went a little bit warm. “Ex-wife, now. Officially.” He took a long sip of his bitter coffee, trying to figure out what to say next. He was a touch embarrassed. After his whole speech back in the dungeon about reconciling. . .
“I invited her,” he shrugged. “but she told me she’d be off in Melini for the weekend, with her partner.” She called him her boyfriend, but, at their age? Anyways. “It’s probably better that way. We have our own lives. She’s barely got anything to do with mine, anymore, anyways,”
Senshi glanced at him, seemingly weighing his next words before coming out with them. “Are ye taking it alright?”
“Of course I am,” he answered, perhaps a bit too quickly. “It’s been four years.” He said, as if that sufficiently explained everything.
Senshi considered this. “Did ye talk it out with her like ye wanted to?”
Chilchuck nodded. “Yeah. We sat down and talked about it.” He didn’t offer anymore information. What had been said was irrelevant, and Senshi certainly didn’t need to know about it. “I said we would reconcile, and we did.”
“So yer friendly with her?”
“I am,” Chilchuck said, and he felt that he meant it. “She. . . we just moved on, that’s all.”
He supposed that it was true. He was a different person than the kid that she had married, a different person than the kid that had gotten her pregnant. He had been what she needed, at the time – a careless man with little more to worry about than whatever his Ma’ had told him to worry about.
I’m a different person than the kid she married. I’m not what she needs anymore. Hell, I don’t know if I ever was. I don’t know if she was what I needed, either. It’s for the best. Our lives are too short to dwell.” He suddenly felt he was rambling, and fell silent, face hot and likely red.
“I see.”
“Yeah. So. . . yeah. Nine of us for dinner,” he murmured, gesturing back to the journal in front of him.
Senshi went smoothly with the topic change. “I’ll make two loaves, then. What kind of stew did ye want te make?” He asked, dutifully jotting down Bread! under the menu plan.
Chilchuck felt as though he was still lagging a bit behind, and he had to search far back in his brain to anchor his thoughts. He wished he had a place to write things down, too. “Um. We used to feed the girls this stew that my Ma made. It’s nothing special but it tastes good. And I know everyone will like it – even Izutsumi. There aren't a lot of vegetables in it. It’s meat, and potatoes, and onions, and a bit of ale,”
Senshi was writing steadily, lips jutting out just a tad. “Is it a traditional half-foot dish?”
“I wouldn’t call any dish a traditional half-foot dish. We’re clustered pretty far from eachother. I’m sure we’ve developed pretty asynchronously. I know a lot of things are different in the communities here than they are where I grew up,” he said. “So it’s not so much a half-foot dish as an Hibernian one. Or a Hibernian half-foot dish, I guess,” he said, and Senshi was giving him a puzzled look.
“Hibernia,” he explained. “It’s where I’m from. One of those places half-foots are bunched up in. It’s Southwest of here, but pretty far out. Closer to the coast.”
Senshi hummed.“How’d ye end up here?”
Chilchuck shrugged. “Same way most people did. Money. It’s nearly impossible to get any sort of work back home, much less land. My sister moved over here a while back and she said it would be easy to find somewhere to live. That, and with all the Tallmen moving in, we started getting pushed out. Farming was hard enough already without them buying out all the crops. . .”
“Does yer sister still live in town?”
Chilchuck shook his head. “Nah. Moved somewhere else a while back. I don’t know where. I hardly talk to any of my siblings. I know Cademack and his family are in Melini. They were staying here, back when I worked in the dungeons.”
“That’s yer brother?”
“Yup. Three brothers and a sister,” he said, raising four fingers, to which Senshi’s eyes widened a bit.
“That’s a big family,”
“We’re a familial people. Big families are the norm. Much as I hate it, there’s a reason we get compared to rabbits” he said. “Anyways. That’s where the stew comes from. It’s cheap, easy, and plentiful. Tastes good, too.”
“Maybe we could add some vegetables to it,”
Chilchuck made a face, unwilling to alter the recipe for to the sake of tradition, but conceded for the sake of nutrition before Sensh had the chance to argue. “I have some dried lentils,”
“Aye. Maybe we can get some cabbage.” He put a hand to his chin thoughtfully. “Or carrots. What kind of meat is it? Beef?”
“Mutton,” Chilchuck said.
Half-Foot Mutton Stew, Chilchuck saw him jot down. *Not made with half foot, he clarified, and Chilchuck couldn’t help but to burst into a laugh, to which Senshi shifted his journal out of his view, a blush visible above his mustache. “It’s in case this ends up in someone else's hands,” he said.
“Why not call it Airurish stew instead?” he suggested, snorting.
Senshi huffed good naturedly, drawing a line through the center of the Half-Foot in Half-Foot Mutton Stew and scrawling something else above to take its place. “Do ye have everything ye’d need to make it?”
“Er. I think so. Probably not enough to make the amount we’d need. I’ll go look,” he said, pulling out his chair to stand. He admittedly wasn’t entirely sure about what he did or didn’t have, in terms of food in the house. He wasn’t much of a chef, and he’d be lying if he said he had something heartier than ale for dinner half of the time.
“I can start on the bread,” Senshi decided happily, standing, jotting something in his journal, and then closing it decisively. He went to tuck it away in his bag, and then knelt to rifle through his bag. The pantry, up the short stairs and less than a couple paces away from the icebox, had seen brighter days. It looked to be more of a liquor cabinet than a place to store food. Even then, a sparse liquor cabinet. Chilchuck winced, and worked to neatly gather what he did have – a half-empty basket of potatoes, two onions in a bit of a sorry shape, a bulb of garlic, and the small burlap bag of lentils. The kitchen had the basics in the cabinets surrounding the stovetop – oil, salt, sugar and spices, and the icebox had milk, ale and eggs, but other than that. . .
Senshi was already working in the kitchen. He had pulled his hair back into an easy bun, a style that suited him rather well. Chilchuck set the basket on the kitchen countertop, and put his hands on his hips. “Will any of this work?” He asked, peering around Senshi’s shoulder. He was working with something that he couldn’t identify, beige and bubbling, shaped and sticky but not quite solid. A sudden anxiety hit him. “Is that another monster?”
Senshi chuckled. “It’s no monster,” he assured him, and he felt himself relax. Though he had grown used to monster cuisine himself, he had some qualms about serving it to his daughters. “It’s a sourdough starter.”
“Oh,” Chilchuck said, dumbly. “It looks different than the one we had in the dungeon,”
“I started this one myself,” he said, and his voice held a twinge of pride. He hadn’t said it, but the implication was there; this one is better. He turned his head over his shoulder to look at the counter behind him, hands still poised over his glass jar of starter, and made a thoughtful noise. “What’s in the sack?”
“The lentils,”
“Mmmm.” He tilted his head, eyes pointed upwards, indicative of his thought process. “Yes, that will work. But we’ll need more. Go ahead and get the rest of what ye have.” He said, returning to his bread-making. “That way we can make something to go with the stew. We’ll use it all up then get ye some fresh food for later,”
“This is it,” Chilchuck said. “Unless you want me to pull out all the wine, too,”
Senshi put down the jar and turned around. “This is it?”
“Yeah,”
Senshi looked at the basket, and then looked at Chilchuck.
“Are ye running low on groceries? What have ye been eating?” he asked.
Chilchuck shrugged. “The other half of the basket of potatoes. Ale.”
“...”
“I leave the house, to eat, a lot of the time,” he offered, raising his hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “There’s lots of taverns around here. . .they serve all kinds of different foods. . .” he puttered on, waiting to be interrupted. No such luck.
“I figured we’d have to go to the market, anyways. I wasn’t expecting to feed everyone with just this. . . Look, I’m not a chef, alright? That's why I asked you for help, afterall. . .”
Chilchuck sighed. “Are you just gonna stare at me?” He asked. He was growing increasingly agitated, and he hadn’t even been up long enough to change out of his pajamas, yet.
“What do ye usually keep in yer pantry?”
His face felt hot. For the first time in a long time, he felt as though he had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. Not that he had been – so what, if he had been eating sauteed potatoes and ale for dinner? He was an adult. And potatoes were a staple food in his hometown, anyways. Easy to grow, and easy to prepare. He had no reason to lie. “Like I said. Potatoes. Beer.”
He saw the look on Senshi’s face, and knew the poor guy was straining to keep himself from launching into a lecture. He couldn’t help but appreciate the restraint.
Senshi turned back to look at the mixture of starter, flour, and salt that he had already begun to knead. He couldn’t quite tell from the angle, especially underneath his mustache, but it looked almost as though he had pursed his lips. Underneath his more urgent thoughts, Chilchuck wondered where Senshi had gotten the flour for the bread.
“While this rests, we’ll go to the market,” Senshi decided, and he turned to finish his work. Chilchuck sighed, and went to change into nicer clothes. “And tomorrow morning I’m going to give ye a crash course in proper nutrition,” he decided. “Cooking, too.”
—-
With two large, mismatched bowls of bread dough set to rest under damp towels atop the woodstove, the two began the walk downhill toward the village market, towing an old wooden wagon that had belonged to Chil’s girls behind them.
It was early on a Saturday morning, so the streets were busy, with plenty of neighbors roaming about ahead and downhill, closer to the village center. Though considered apart of the larger city, his neighborhood, or, as most considered it, village, and others like it, had developed names of their own, rendering Khaka Brud to be more of a province consisting of a central city and its surrounding villages, a couple of which were populated largely by half-foots. Chilchuck’s house was settled in one of the smaller villages by the name of Baruchima. He had moved to the area back when May and Fler were just wee lasses, having been not-so-gently nudged out of his family home by his father. Like he had explained to Senshi, his older sister had lived in the village at some point, and had told him that the rent was cheap, and that there would be options, even for two new, irresponsible adults.
Whit used to work doing laundry for the tallmen in the neighboring villages, and before learning of the jobs available to him in the dungeon, he had managed to get his foot in the door doing work as a mechanic. The work had been relatively sparse, and the pay was nothing to write home about, but it had been enough to get by. The two of them were able to use money from the wedding for rent on a house on the northeastern edge of the village, in sore need of numerous renovations, but big enough for his family, and safe enough to keep his mind at ease.
It had long since been renovated, and he had long since bought the house to keep. Empty as it was, it was still home. It was nicer than the Guild basement, at the very least. And May came around, sometimes, too.
As they made the trek through the wide path in front of neighboring houses, Chilchuck exchanged greetings with nearly everyone whom they passed. Senshi wasn’t the only one who towered over the halffoots that made up the bulk of the village, as Chilchuck, too, was a good head taller than just about everyone they encountered. The pair stuck out like a sore thumb.
The market was lively, with plenty of people running about trying to decide what to buy for weekend family dinners. His own being on the smaller side, and family also tended to be more than just who you were related to. Chilchuck offered a wave to Panlee at his ale stand, who returned it enthusiastically.
“Y’back for more already?” He asked, reaching under the counter to retrieve an amber jug of ale before Chilchuck was able to shake his head, causing him a great deal of embarrassment after the situation in the kitchen. Senshi almost automatically allowed himself to drift elsewhere, trying to determine where he could procure some meat for the dinner. “No, Panlee, I’m – Senshi wait! I need to give you money for –” but he was already gone. Oh well. He would pay him back later.
He turned back to Panlee. “Like I was saying, I’m alright. We’re looking for foodstuffs,”
“Well, there’s plenty around here,” he said. “Y’having the girls over for dinner?”
“I am, actually,”
“I figured. You don’t come around here often looking for food,” he chuckled. “Say hello to Puck for me, will you?”
Chilchuck narrowed his eyes. “Puck? Why would I do that?”
“Oh, don’t be like that. We’re friends, is all.”
“Then write her yourself,” Chilchuck said. He sighed, looking at the jug of ale, and thinking of his pantry, trying to pull a mental stock of what he had. Maybe he ought to get some – Laios and Falin might want something to drink. Fler certainly would. Besides, it’s not like it would go to waste, either way – eventually. “How much did you want for that?”
“I thought you were alright,”
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind,”
“1,500 pen,” he said, and Chilchuck reached down into his trouser pocket for his coin pouch.
“How about 1,300?”
—-
Finding Senshi among the hustle and bustle was easy, thanks to his size, but managing to catch up with him proved to be a little bit harder, as the man seemed to move inexplicably quickly through the stalls. He seemed to gain a sort of fervor when it came to prospecting ingredients – though perhaps he was just trying to make it back quickly in order to tend to the bread. Hugging the jug of ale to his chest to avoid bumping it against passerby, Chilchuck plunged into the clusters of crowd, murmuring ‘excuse me’s as he went.
He sidled up beside the dwarf on the side of Tanaway’s fruit stand, elbowing him on his side admonishingly. “You can’t just run away like that. I didn’t even give you any money,”
“Do yer girls like apples? These ones look nice.”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Aye. I’ve got money of my own,” he said, patting the drawstring pouch attached to his hip.
“I’m not going to have you pay for the food for a dinner party you aren’t hosting,” Chilchuck muttered, aghast, and he walked to his other side to lay the jug of ale in the old wooden wagon. He fished into his trouser-pocket and the still-open pouch and pulled out a handful of pen, counting it quickly and taking Senshi’s closest hand to press it into it with insistence. “There,” he said. “For if you wander off again. Just give me whatever ends up being leftover.”
“Well, if it makes ye feel better,” he accepted, and he tucked it away into the breast pocket with indifference. With that settled, Chilchuck answered his question.
“They do like apples. I do too,” he said, thinking of the small, tart, fruits from the crabapple trees that had grown nearby his childhood home. “My Ma used to cook ‘em and mash ‘em up. They made a red sauce, sometimes we’d put it on bread,” he remembered.
“Red?”
“She didn’t take the skin off, they were too small,”
“Crabapples,” Senshi decided.
“Yup. These wouldn’t be quite as tart,” he said, picking one up and rolling it in his hand, trying to figure out what sort it was. The top was slightly yellowed, and it fit in his hand nicely. He gave it a gentle squeeze, but the flesh held firm. “They look like honeycrisp,”
“What else did she make? We don’t have a dessert planned,” he said, taking apple from Chilchuck, holding it close to his eyes to inspect it.
“Er. Mostly that, really. Jelly. Oh – she’d make crisps, and pies, here or there. . .” he said, trying to recall. It had been a while since he’d had anything his mother had made. “Whit – my ex-wife –, “my clarified, “made those, too. I’ll bet there’s still a recipe somewhere around the house. We should make a crisp. Pies are too high maintenance. I don’t wanna have to make a crust.”
“I thought ye said ye aren’t a cook,”
“I’ve made my fair share of pies,” he said, thinking of weeks off of jobs spent in the kitchen helping the girls with their newest baking ventures while Whit would take some much needed time for herself. “We’ll need oats, though.” he said. “Maybe s’more sugar,”
“I brought some with me, in my bags. I try not to roam around without the essentials.”
Chilchuck let out a soft chuckle as he crooked up the side of the mouth. “You would consider sugar an essential, wouldn’t you? And flour, too, right? I was wondering where that had come from, when you were making the bread”
“Can never be too careful. I was worried ye’d only have salt and oil,” he said, teasing lightly. Chilchuck smiled. The tense air from earlier in the kitchen had seemed to disappear, and he was handing him apples one by one, with Senshi’s larger amount of armspace coming in handy.
“Speaking of roaming around, how’s life in Melini treating you?” Chilchuck asked. “I was surprised to hear you decided to stay,”
“Ah, I’m not really there, much.”
“No? Marcille told me in her RVSP that you were living in the castle.”
“Technically speaking, yes. I thought I’d have found somewhere else, but after living in the dungeon for so long, the castle feels a bit like home. The floor I had my tent in is still there, y’know. Even if it’s much different now.”
“You don’t want to finally make your way back to Izganda?”
“There isn’t anything left for me there,” he said, averting his eyes slightly, looking instead at the small tower of apples that were beginning to amass in his arms.
“I understand,” Chilchuck said, letting it lie. “So then what does technically mean?”
Senshi’s arms were quite full with all the apples Chilchuck was stacking in them, arranged in a neat, uniform pyramid. They were slowly but surely burying his beard, and it made Chilchuck smile to himself, stacking them higher and higher slowly but surely.
“I keep my extra things there. It’s nice to have a soft place to rest my head, here and again,” to which Chilchuck nodded, thinking of how his back had stopped giving him so much grief once he had stopped sleeping on hard dungeon floors every night.
“But I spend a lot of time on the road. The critters that made their way out of the Dungeon when it collapsed have been behaving strangely. Not a one comes anywhere near the city. Or anywhere nearby” he said, eyebrows furrowing a bit. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“There’s been an uncharacteristic lack of them here, too,” Chilchuck admitted, though, unlike he suspected Senshi may be, he wasn’t too broken up about it. Wherever they had gone, they weren’t anywhere near him, and he wasn’t too keen on having that change.
“Aye. I’ve been traveling to bordering cities, trying to figure out what’s happening. It’s why I was coming in from the South. I think that’s enough apples,” he said, abruptly, and Chil paused in midair, apple in hand, realizing he had gotten a tad overzealous in building his pyramid. It nearly reached Senshi’s chin.
He put the apple back on top of the pile in the merchant’s baskets, and chuckled. “Oops,”
“Unless we’re making more than two?” Senshi questioned.
“Nah. Two is plenty.”
“Ye might even have some leftover,”
“Oh, no, if we’re making a dessert, Patti and Fler will make sure we don’t have any leftovers. But that’s fine. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth anyways,” Chilchuck said, smiling slightly at the thought of his daughters shoveling down heaping spoonfuls of apple crisp. He beckoned for Senshi to dump his armful of apples into a sack he had retrieved from the wagon. He did so dutifully, and Chilchuck went to pay.
When he came back, he was still smiling. “So you’re in Khaka Brud a lot, then?”
“Aye,” Senshi said. “I’m around.”
—-
“It’s good I came over early,” Senshi remarked, as he hauled his ginormous pan onto the top of the woodstove. It barely fit, with the edges spilling off the sides and impeding onto the counter space. “This way I have time to make a good stock,” he said, cheerfully.
They had amassed a collection of various foodstuffs from the market. In addition to the apples, they had hauled into the house a sack of oats, a hunk of mutton and some meat discards from the butcher, butter, carrots, a head of cabbage, and a lemon. Though the more general aspects of the menu had been decided by him, Chilchuck was content with allowing Senshi to take his own liberties however he decided – he was a far better chef than he would ever be, and, frankly, he trusted him as much as he trusted himself. He had already made a suggestion with the addition of the lemon, explaining that the lemon juice would keep the apples from browning. He was, however, feeling a little bit uneasy about the size of his pan.
“I wonder if it would make more sense to do it over a fire,” Chilchuck said, cringing at the idea of a stray elbow hitting the pot and flooding the kitchen floor with hot stock, or, worse, with hot stew and all its pieces to get lost in the nooks and crannies of the stones.
“Would ye prefer if I did?”
“It would give us more room to work on everything else,” he suggested, and Senshi nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe the fireplace would even work,” he said, and he glanced down and forwards at the fireplace in the den, surrounded on either side with overcrowded shelves.
Senshi picked the pot back up and went to check.
The dough had had ample time to rest while they had visited the market, and Senshi had tasked him with shaping the masses into balls to rise. It was soft, and easy to work with. He also wasn’t half bad at making bread, with all the experience he had doing it in the dungeon. He still couldn’t believe that the brunt of his practical kitchen knowledge had been gained via work. Just one of the many ways that the edges of separation in his life had begun to burn. It was, however, much nicer to be working in a setting that was more to his scale.
The house wasn’t exactly made for half-foots, but the furniture within it mostly was, making it seem much more spacious than it would’ve otherwise. The ceilings were tall enough to fit just about any of the races that would be in Khaka Brud, and the walkways were wide enough, too. Some of the cabinets were tall enough for him to require a stretch to reach (or a stool, in the case of Whit and the girls, and, frankly, most others) but what would have been a cramped house for some races proved to be rather spacious for his family. May and Fler had shared a room that would’ve probably worked for one tallman, and Puck slept in the room that served as his office space before she was born. Despite the girls’ having been long since moved out, all of his tools and projects sat strewn about atop a desk crammed hastily into the center room, behind the dining table and against the wall that separated it from the hallway.
A long sofa and two armchairs circled the rather large fireplace, where Senshi was knelt, trying to figure out a way to settle his pot into it.
“If it doesn’t fit, that’s fine,” Chilchuck assured him, raising his voice a little to ensure he would hear, squinting to try to get a better look. His hands were sticky from the dough, sleeves rolled neatly just above his elbows, the bulk of his front concealed by his apron. He looked like a proper chef, save for the
“It’ll fit,” Senshi said. He sat back on his heels. “I’ll need something to prop it with, though,” he said, and Chilchuck was glad for his enhanced hearing, because Senshi was rather soft-spoken with his back turned.
“I can make something work,” he said, wiping his hands on the apron before removing it, and turning on the tap to rinse off his still-sticky fingers. “Give me a minute.”
It only took a good ten minutes before the two of them managed to build a stand for the wok over the center of the fireplace, propped up by bricks that Chilchuck had taken from the old, DIY-ed planterframe in the backyard garden. The makeshift structure – four bricks standing on their side in a square formation – was high enough to keep the wok off the ground and provide a space to stoke the fire with the tools next to the fireplace, and stable enough to keep anything from tipping over. He got on his knees to inspect it, nudging at the bricks and the wok to make sure they wouldn’t give. Judging it to be stable, he stood, dusting his knees.
“There. Just try to keep the ash off the rug,” he told Senshi, kicking a piece of coal back into the fireplace, then sliding unceremoniously backwards as another piece caught under the heel of his boot, dragging his foot forward and sending him backwards and down with the motion.
“Fu–” he began, bracing himself for the impact of the wooden floor, but being more startled by the fact that it never came. A large hand was wrapped firmly around his waist, keeping him propped up at his tilted angle, his arms frozen in midair, having been searching for something to grab onto. He snapped back into himself and looked down to assess the situation. “. . . ck.”
Senshi looked up at him, kneeling just behind him, eyes as wide and as sweet as ever. “Y’okay?”
Lord, he had forgotten how big his hands were. And how warm. And how strong. He only had one of them on his waist, and it covered his entire hipbone neatly.
Wow.
Feeling his chest lurch, he quickly straightened himself out, and Senshi let go of his waist as he went, but the warmth of his hand lingered.
“The coal got lodged in the heel of my boot,” he murmured, and he could feel the warmth on his face as he lifted his foot to pull the chunk out and then toss it vindictively back into the fireplace, where it clunked unceremoniously against the side of the pot. He realized he had done exactly what he had tried to avoid by putting the pan in the fireplace in the first place – but oh well. At least the only thing that had taken a spill was him.
—
With the stock simmering over a low fire, Senshi had returned to the kitchen to sear the mutton. The whole house was slowly but surely filling with the scent of garlic, thyme, and rosemary. Combined with the smell of the butter that Senshi had melted for the sear, Chilchuck’s mouth was watering. His stomach gave a gurgle, asking for something more than the bitter coffee he had had when planning the menu about almost two hours ago.
“D’you think I could have some of that?”
Senshi looked over and nodded. “Hmm. I’d like to say yes, but mutton’s better for braising and stewing. I’m not sure how good it would be,” he mused. “Are ye hungry?”
“A bit,” he admitted. He had been put to work peeling potatoes, and a small mountain of potato skins were piled up on the wooden chopping block behind him, the smooth balls of pale flesh underneath having been heaped in a bowl to the side.
“Why don’t I make ye something else?”
“I can make something,”
“Potatoes?” Senshi asked, poking fun.
“Well,” Chilchuck grumbled indignantly. “We’ve got so many of them,”
Senshi hummed. “How about I make ye something with the oats and the eggs?”
“I can make it,” he insisted again. “I’m not doing anything but peeling potatoes,”
“Well, once the meat is seared, there’s not much to do but wait for the stock to simmer, and the bread to finish rising. And the crisp won’t take much time to fix up,” he mused. “I’ll make something real quick, and we can take a break. Don’t throw away those peels,” he added, cogs turning visibly in his head.
A break did sound nice. They had been working in the kitchen ever since they had gone to the market, and with the fireplace and the woodstove both going in the heat of the summer, it was a bit of an uncomfortable nonstop working environment. He should probably open some of the windows. . .
He sighed. “Alright. But give me all of the dishes,” he insisted, to which Senshi’s mustache rustled with a smile.