With painful reluctance, Ai Fa and I left Granny Jiba despite the strange feeling we had gotten from her, and headed back out into the plaza. Since we had only eaten the stuff that I had helped prepare so far, both of us still had plenty of room left in our stomachs. We started making our way over to a nearby stove, only to stop when we heard someone laughing heartily from where they were sitting on a cloth that was laid out on the ground. Even in a place filled with so much laughter, there was no mistaking that voice.
“So this is where you were, Dan Rutim. Thank you for your help the other day,” I said.
“Hmm? I can’t say I remember doing anything helpful! Still, I’m glad to see the two of you looking well!” he replied.
The members of the main Rutim house were gathered there, but I didn’t see Ama Min Rutim, who was pregnant, or the elder Raa Rutim. Morun Rutim was there, though, smiling with her family, having returned home for the first time in a while. She had come back to the Rutim settlement last night, and had helped prepare the banquet today.
Deek Dom, the head of the main Dom house, was also seated there. Though he was maintaining an appropriate distance from Morun Rutim, this was the first time I’d seen the two of them together since she had revealed her feelings for the man.
“It’s been a while, Deek Dom. I think this is the first time we’ve attended a banquet together, isn’t it?” I called out.
“Yeah,” Deek Dom bluntly replied with a nod. As always, the man had such an intense presence to him that it was hard to believe he was the same age as me and Ai Fa. He was even bigger than Donda Ruu, and as was traditional among the Dom, he was wearing a giba skull over his head.
“Lem Dom doesn’t seem to be here, though. I haven’t seen her since the start of the banquet,” I noted.
“Sufira Zaza showed up a little while ago and took Lem away with her... The two of them have forged bonds with many people here, I’m sure.”
The two of them had previously stayed at the Ruu settlement for a while in order to receive cooking lessons. Then Sufira Zaza had extended her stay until the whole matter of Lem Dom running away from home had been settled, so she had spent quite a bit of time here.
“It’s been some time since I’ve seen you too, Morun Rutim. I’m glad to see you looking well,” I said.
“Indeed. I’ve been making the most of each day,” Morun Rutim replied with a bashful smile. She must have been feeling a little embarrassed, as she was seated next to Deek Dom, the man she had feelings for.
But of course, I wasn’t mean enough to poke fun at her for that, so I just smiled back and said, “Glad to hear it.”
Seeing Deek Dom, Dan Rutim, and Gazraan Rutim all eating together was a rather novel sight. Oh, and Tsuvai and Oura Rutim were also sitting with them, since they were members of the main house. It was difficult to tell how Deek Dom felt about that—the two of them had once been part of his former parent clan.
“Asuta, those dishes before were really interesting! But there was too little of them to be satisfying!” Dan Rutim chimed back in loudly. “Gazraan kept going on and on about how he wanted Ama Min to try it too! Once their child’s born, you have to teach her how to make it, okay?!”
“Yes, I would like to ask that of you as well, Asuta,” Gazraan Rutim added.
“Of course,” I replied with a hearty nod. Ama Min Rutim had noticed her pregnancy two months after Li Sudra, so she would probably be giving birth soon.
“So, are you two still going around to all of the stoves? You’ll come back and talk to us again after that, won’t you?” Dan Rutim asked.
“Ah, yes. We were getting ready to do just that.”
“Then you should start with the food from that stove! It’s incredibly tasty too!”
“All right, we’ll hurry over there.”
We walked over to the stove that had been pointed out to us, where we found that Reina Ruu was the one in charge. As we approached, she shot us a bright smile. “Asuta, Ai Fa. I tried both of those shaska dishes, and I thought they were really striking.”
“Ah, thanks. This one looks tasty too.”
“It is. I’ve made a lot of tweaks over the past few days, so I’d very much like to hear your impressions, Asuta.”
The dish she was serving was a brilliant orange soup. It was a new sort of stew that they had developed based on the nenon sauce they put on giba burgers. Though nenon were a vegetable similar to a carrot, they didn’t have quite as distinctive of a taste to them and were very sweet. Reina and Sheera Ruu had come up with a sauce that combined them with aria, myamuu, and fruit wine, and had since transformed that sauce into a new stand-alone dish.
It was a dish I had sampled many times at Ruu clan study sessions where she had prepared it with herbs from Sym rather than myamuu and had employed kimyuus bones like Mikel had taught her, which had made for an excellent final product. I was really curious about what she had changed for the banquet as I accepted a bowl.
The ingredients included giba rib and shoulder meat, as well as aria, chatchi, nanaar, ma pula, and onda. If you thought of those vegetables as onion, potato, spinach, paprika, and bean sprouts, that would probably seem like a pretty normal combination. In fact, aside from the ma pula and onda, they were the same as the ingredients used in cream stew.
Taking care not to burn myself, I scooped up a spoonful and took a bite, and sure enough, the flavor had changed since the last time I had tried it. It was sweeter and deeper too. She had also used less of the more intense herbs, so it was rather mild.
“Yup, this is good. Did you add karon milk, perhaps?”
“Yep. And I used both red and white fruit wine.”
That was quite a bold experiment. I didn’t know much about using red and white fruit wine together like that, but despite my preconceived notion that they didn’t go with one another, doing so had led to this interesting new flavor. It was the sort of idea that I never could have come up with on my own.
“You used a bit less of the herbs too, didn’t you? I remember it having a more intense flavoring before.”
“That’s right. I felt that for this dish it would be better to bring the sweetness to the forefront instead. That’s why I added the karon milk, though I did wonder if it would end up too much like cream stew.”
“This isn’t like cream stew at all, I’d say. It’s a really distinctive dish.”
“Really?” Reina Ruu asked with a joyful smile.
Right after that, two figures approached us: Roy and Shilly Rou.
“Ah, we finally found you. That second shaska dish was absolutely amazing too. I’m sure Varkas is going to be really jealous when we give him our report about today,” Roy called out.
“Thank you. It’s honestly a serious relief to hear you say that, Roy.”
“I mean, it had a taste that could only have come from shaska prepared in that way. That last one left me at a loss for words, so I can’t do anything but accept how good it is. I’m sure there are gonna be a ton of chefs in the castle town copying your cooking techniques again.”
Shilly Rou was standing next to Roy with her lips firmly pursed. It looked like Varkas would not be disappointed with me after hearing their report.
“Bozl said something similar too. If that’s the kind of stuff you’ll be making, I’m sure we’re going to be getting deliveries of shaska from Sym regularly. The long and thin kind of shaska’s going to earn itself a nice reputation too, so I could see it becoming very trendy in the castle town.”
“Ha ha. If shaska gets too popular, fuwano sales will probably become a concern.”
“We’ll be sending fuwano to Sym in exchange for the shaska, so it shouldn’t be an issue. After all, over there, fuwano will be a novelty too.”