The fifth day of the butchering process had arrived, and now that they’d had their long-awaited leviathan meal, my familiars were finally acting a little more chill about the whole deal...though of course, they were still insisting that we’d have another leviathan meat feast for dinner that evening as well.
I was glad that they weren’t being as uncomfortably on edge about it anymore, but we clearly still had a lot of work to do when it came to their obstinacy. I was the one who’d have to make that feast, after all, and I’d already spent the night before cooking who even knew how many servings of meunière... I’d ended up so tired that I’d barely had the chance to eat my own helping of leviathan meat in peace. Knowing that I’d probably be going through that whole experience all over again had me feeling deeply dejected—not that moping would help me avoid my unfortunate fate.
The butchering team would be spending most of the day deboning the remaining chunks of the leviathan’s body, it seemed. That was what Elrand said, anyway, and he was technically in charge of the project, so it was probably safe to take his word for it. As a sidenote, if Elrand was tired out by his work at all, he sure wasn’t letting it show. He’d arrived at the work site with a huge smile on his face, day after day, and seemed no less lively than he’d been on day one.
Anyway, I knew that if they were deboning more of the meat chunks today, that meant that I’d be given a much larger stock of leviathan meat at the end of it than had been handed over to me the day before. The gluttonous quartet had put two and two together as well, and were already preemptively celebrating our upcoming meaty windfall.
Ugggh. It’s gonna be another rough evening, all right...
If Willem had been around, I could’ve griped to him, which might’ve made me feel a bit better, but he was so busy he hadn’t even made it back to the house the night before. I’d run into him when I arrived at the butchering site that morning and had managed to grab him for a very quick chat, during which he’d explained that he’d spent the night at the capital’s Adventurer’s guild hall.
According to Willem, “I’m so busy right now that sleeping at the guild just makes sense. It’s more efficient that way, and it means that even if you do get into trouble again, I won’t be around to get sucked into your mess.” I was a little confused by that—like, what sort of trouble would I even be getting into?—but Willem quickly clarified by asking, “You would’ve fed me part of the leviathan if I’d gone back to the house last night, right?”
“Well, yeah,” I replied. My familiars would never have let me get away with not cooking something with it, and I wouldn’t have denied Willem his dinner.
“Well, imagine if word got out that I ate part of the leviathan that’s been the talk of the nation lately—hell, the talk of all the nations in this part of the continent! Have you considered how that could turn out for me?”
“Okay, but you ate dragon meat the other night, didn’t you?” I countered.
“Ugh... Let’s just say that I’ve learned from experience,” Willem said.
Wait, what’s that supposed to mean? And besides, even if he ate part of the leviathan, he’d be doing it with my permission! Why would anyone have any right to complain about him eating something that I’d made for my own party and willingly shared with him? And who would even complain about something that petty in...the...
Oh. Right. Him.
I did know one person—specifically, one elf—who would probably react to the news that Willem had sampled the leviathan’s meat by throwing a bawling, screaming fit about how he wanted to try it too. It was incredibly easy to visualize, not to mention distressing, and with that factor in mind, I couldn’t argue with Willem’s logic.
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Unfortunately for him, it’s pretty much set in stone that we’ll be eating leviathan again tonight. And speaking of which...
I spent quite some time after that point staring at the massive chunks of skinned leviathan meat, muttering to myself as I racked my brain for a good recipe that I could use it in that evening.