• Closed • Tristan learns to cook!

[Tristan Venora]

“I have no idea”, Tristan admitted. “I always thought that grandmother would scream at me if she found out that I freed you, but now I’m not so sure anymore. I always thought that Alistair supported slavery as well, and then he wrote me that letter.” She probably knew exactly which letter he was speaking of – the letter in which Alistair had told him that Faith needed to be freed. He hadn’t talked to his cousin since it had happened.

As Faith called his idea tactical and devious, he beamed at her. “You should pack a few brushes and brooms in case one of them gets damaged”, he told her. “I don’t want you to run out of them when the enemies attack.“ The tone of his voice was somewhat cheerful, but there was a tight knot in the pit of his stomach. He knew that she was more than capable of handling herself in a combat situation – she was probably a better fighter than he would ever be – so why couldn’t he stop worrying about her? Because he cared about her? That seemed strange to him. Caring about somebody shouldn’t render you incapable of logic.

“I think I’d look good as a hardened warrior though”, he insisted and looked down at himself as if he were really thinking about what he’d look like as a warrior rather than an artist, actor and (almost) chef. “All strong and muscular and scary. I could get some plate armor as well because hardened warriors usually wear armor. If you prefer me this way though, I’ll stay skinny a little longer – just for you!” He smiled brightly at her. “And I promise to stay away from the pointy end of the sword!” he added although her being forced to take care of Mistral would almost be worth it.

He really doubted that you just fell into the role the moment your child was put into your hands, but he didn’t want to talk about such matters longer than it was absolutely necessary, so he just nodded and turned to the turkey. As she informed him that she had done the hardest bit he breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately he found out that it wasn’t true at all.

Washing the turkey had been slightly disgusting (it had reminded him of washing a dead person, and he really didn’t like dead people), but putting butter under its skin was a challenge of its own. Somehow he managed though and proceeded to chop and peel vegetables with her. He imagined that they were monsters to make the whole thing a little more interesting. And then it was already time to cook the turkey that still looked as ugly as ever.

“Normally I would just suggest to cook it until the meat has changed color and cut a piece off to see if it’s really well done”, he replied. “But since you are so pointedly looking at the book, I suppose I should look there”, he continued, grinned and did just that because he wanted to be a good student, and he wanted her to be happy with him even though they were no longer lovers and would probably never be lovers again.

[Faith Augustin]

She glanced at Tristan and raised an eyebrow. He was still irritated at Alistair, she knew, but she didn't really know why. She didn't question it, though, it wasn't her place to. "I suppose people surprise you, even when you've known them all your life. I've never known anyone that long, so I couldn't say," and people surprised her all the time. Including, and especially, Tristan Venora. Alistair had suggested freeing her, it was true, but it was him who had done it. He could have ignored the letter, it was his right to do so; to be angry at Alistair for mentioning it to him seemed somewhat strange to her.

She grinned when he spoke about packing a few brooms and handles, then lowered her head back to what she was doing. "Just look after yourself properly whilst I'm gone, please? I worry about you." She knew that Padraig thought she shouldn't, that her time as a slave had skewed her way of thinking, but if he was correct, Faith couldn't see it and the simple truth was that she did worry about him. "Don't forget to eat, make sure that you don't stay up all night, won't you? And when I say eat, I mean proper food," she sighed and then shot him a rueful smile. "I'm sorry. I have no right to fuss, I know. I've done all the laundry, but you'll need to start doing that again. I've made you notes and left them in your bedside drawer." Slipped in when she was tidying around the trial before.

When he said that he'd stay skinny for her, she shook her head. "I'm sure you'll look as handsome as a burly warrior. But you must do as you choose, look how you like to look. I prefer that you are happy, that's my only criteria. Would you like to be muscular?" She couldn't imagine it herself, he was as thin as a rake and had been since she first met him. "I think you'll have your work cut out for you. No matter how much I fed you, you never gained any weight. There are women up and down Idalos who envy you that you know," that and the skin and the hair and the enormously wealthy family she thought.

"I appear to be an open book myself. Yes. Look in there, it has cooking times in the front of it, for all sorts of things. And you're going to kill yourself or someone else if you don't cook meat correctly," showing him the page, she watched as he put it in, then talked through the timing for the vegetables, fundamentally giving him a plan of what to do and when. Everything was prepared, cleaned away and ready chopped and peeled. "So, now we have time, to smell the food cooking and build up an appetite for it. When you owned me, I'd use this time to prepare the table for you, to make sure that your wine was kept up and that everything was ready so that you could just sit and eat, without having to wait for anything," she never hid what she had been, not with anyone and certainly not with him. "You need to keep in mind that no one will do that, so you might want to use this time to get your things ready. But other than that, you can sit back and have a glass of wine, or read a book or whatever you want, really. Just don't leave it unattended. There's a rule that says you can watch something cooking carefully for a break and it's fine. Turn your back on it for more than five trill and it burns. So, keep an eye."

Sitting opposite him she looked at Tristan and sighed slightly. "Are you going to be alright? Really, I mean."

[Tristan Venora]

“Please don’t worry about me”, Tristan said even though he secretly liked that she still thought of him every now and then. Padraig had probably told her that she should stop worrying about him and that he was a grown man who should be able to take care of himself. He still didn’t know what she saw in the man, but he had decided that he would stop thinking about dropping one of his sculptures on his head because she loved him.

“You mean wine and cookies are not proper food?” he asked in mock shock. And then she suddenly mentioned that, and he looked practically horrified. Doing the laundry was almost as bad as having children. He especially hated washing his dirty underwear even though, he realized, he shouldn’t be disgusted by his own dirty underwear. “I think I’ll just take my stuff to a laundry shop, thank you very much”, he replied.

Her only criterion was his happiness, she said. For a moment there was a somewhat bitter comment on the tip of his tongue, but he caught himself just in time and decided to think about burly warriors instead because he really didn’t want to ruin the mood. “No, I don’t think so”, he decided as she asked him if he would like to be muscular. “You do realize that I was just joking, right? Of course I would like to be a little stronger and taller sometimes, but otherwise what you can see here is perfection!”

He grinned at her. He had never been particularly good at being humble, and he had no interest in being humble either, truth to be told. He considered himself to be one of the best looking men in Rynmere.

“I wonder why I never gain any weight though”, he murmured and furrowed his brow. “Do you think I have some sort of secret magical ability?” he asked and looked at her hopefully. He’d always wanted to be somebody special, a mage or, perhaps, a Mortalborn or an Yludih even though it was probably impossible to become an Yludih.

“Really? You can die if you don’t cook your meat correctly?” he asked somewhat doubtfully and furrowed his brow. “But there are people who eat raw fish and such and are quite healthy. How do you explain that? Are they immune?”

As she talked about cooking times and such again he listened, deciding that it would be better to pay attention in case her warning was true, and raw meat was indeed poisonous. And then she mentioned how she had used to prepare the table for him and gotten everything ready, and he sighed because he realized that she would never do that for him again either.

“Really? That’s a rule?” he asked and looked at her closely to find out if she had just made a joke, but she seemed serious. Still, taking a look at his food every five trills seemed a little excessive to him. He decided to look at it once every five bits and hope that he wouldn’t be forced to eat charcoal afterwards.

Cooking, he realized, was really complicated, and his respect for Faith increased about tenfold as a consequence. How had she managed?

As she asked him if he was going to be alright, he didn’t reply immediately, but stared at the turkey for a moment. He considered claiming that he would be completely desperate without her, but that would be mean, besides it wasn’t really true, and thus he said,

“Yes, I think so. I’m not used to being on my own, but I think I’ll manage. I have to, don’t I? Maybe I should eventually hire a servant, even though having a stranger in the house would feel really weird after everything that has happened. And you”, he continued and turned to face her again. “Do you think you’ll manage?”

“You must be even more overwhelmed than I am!”

[Faith Augustin]

She thought that she would always worry about him, but she did not say so. It was strange, he told her to stop worrying and she tried to. Like the time that he had told her to pity him and she'd given it her very best shot; unfortunately, Faith realised, both of those directives were doomed to fail. She should have known that she would eventually become free when she couldn't even whip up some pity for him on demand, she considered and she looked at him fondly. Which turned to an incredulous expression as he said that he was going to take his laundry to a shop?! "Is that what you used to do before you bought me?" Faith raised one eyebrow at him and she could not help the smile which lit her face. "You are an incorrigable, incredible man. You truly are."

She looked at him, though, and her eyes softened as he spoke about not wanting to be muscular, and having been joking. "I think," she said, her voice soft as she looked at him with a very earnest expression on her face, "that your very being is filled with energy and you are always active. Mind, body and soul, always active. Like a butterfly. Or a puppy." Faith was teasing him with the puppy comment, there was no doubt about it.

"Some fish, not all. Beef, too, you can eat more or less raw. But chicken, turkey and other meats like it are very tricky. Honestly, please be careful. It does say in the book, look, there," she pointed to where it did, indeed, say, "which can be eaten raw and with what preparation. There is a dish we do at the restaurant where I very finely chop raw beef, usually with onions and spices and serve it. It's very expensive, a delicacy." Faith shrugged slightly, not quite sure why there was such a difference between the meats and how one could eat them, but very clear that there was.

She didn't miss his sigh, her heart went out to him as he expelled it in fact, but he questioned her about the rule. Faith shrugged slightly, "So I was told and I have to say that whilst five trill seems a touch of an exaggeration, the times that things have gone wrong have been because I wasn't paying attention. Maybe every few bits will be enough, really. I suppose I do have something of a tendency to fuss." No doubting that, was there?

He said he would alright, though and Faith watched his face, his expression and his body language. He would be, she thought, and she prayed to Famula and Vri that he might find love. It was so very much what he deserved. "I'm sorry I hurt you," she whispered, not dropping her gaze. "I'm sorry I couldn't feel what you want me to. I think it would be nice for you to have some company, but it's up to you. But me?" Faith looked around at the room they were sitting in and she smiled, but it was an expression tinged with sadness. "Even here has changed. I feel," Faith looked back at Tristan and she tried to put it in to words. "Like I felt on the dragon. The winds are battering me and I don't really understand what's happened. I certainly don't know what's to come and I'm just trying not to fall off because it's a very long way down." She smiled, though, after a moment, clear that she had just made a realisation.

"I'm completely overwhelmed by everything. I keep having all these new experiences that I've never had before and I wonder if I'll ever just work out which was is up and which way is down. The future is terrifying and exciting all at once and I have no idea what will happen in it. I thought it was because I'm newly freed, but I'm starting to think that it's just what freedom is and everyone freeborn feels it all the time. It's quite astonishing how you manage to get anything done, really." Silver eyes were serious though, as she continued. "I will always be grateful to you. You did the single kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. In your own unique way, of course. Besides, how many people out there can say that they were once owned by the greatest sculptor in all of Idalos? Come on, you, lets get that turkey out."

[Tristan Venora]

“Most of the time, yes”, Tristan replied. “When I was in Sabaissant, I just gave my dirty laundry to one of the servants though. Grandmother has servants just for washing and mending everybody’s clothes.” That most people couldn’t regularly afford the services of a laundry shop or a servant just for taking care of their clothes only occurred to him belatedly, and he wondered if it was okay to take advantage of one’s privileged status – or if he should feel ashamed of the fact that he didn’t wash his clothes. That only lasted a moment though before he decided that he simply loved being rich and that there was nothing wrong with flaunting what you had.

“I aim to please”, he remarked as she called him an incorrigible, incredible man and smiled brightly as if she had just made the greatest compliment ever. He wasn’t so sure about being compared to a butterfly or a puppy though, and thus he informed Faith in a very matter-of-fact tone, “I’m a cat person, thank you very much!” Having said that, he looked for his cat, but Mistral was still hiding somewhere. Perhaps he didn’t like turkey.

“Why can you eat beef raw, but not chicken?” he asked and peered at the page in question. “Does it have something to do with the fact that chicken’s this pale kind of pink, but beef is red?” That made as much sense as anything else to him. As far as he was concerned, meat was meat, and he didn’t understand why some kinds of meat were more dangerous than others.

Raw beef with onions and spices, he decided, sounded like a really weird dish. It reminded him of Mistral’s food, and it also seemed strange to him that it was supposedly expensive when it was really just raw beef with some stuff in it. Even he could probably prepare it.

As Faith proceeded to claim that it was considered a delicacy, he looked at her incredulously. Then he remembered that he liked weird things though and informed her, “Maybe I’ll eat at your restaurant sometimes then. Always eating at the Blacksmith Arms is getting boring.” To be honest, the food was only part of the reason why he regularly visited the Blacksmith Arms anyway. He mostly came there to meet with friends and acquaintances. Maybe he’d invite them all into the restaurant where Faith worked sometimes so that they could eat raw beef together.

“That you do”, he agreed as she said that she had a tendency to fuss. He said it with a smile on his face though as he really didn’t mind. He liked it when somebody fussed over him.

As she apologized for hurting him, the smile disappeared though, and he nearly snapped her and asked her why she had hurt him in the first place if she was so sorry. But then he realized that it didn’t work that way and that you couldn’t force yourself to have feelings for somebody, at least not unless some sort of dark magic was involved, and he’d rather not bring necromancy or whatever else you needed for that into play.

“I would like to eventually find somebody”, he admitted. It was the truth, but by Ilaren, he hated how mature he sounded! Just a few months before he had happily spent his nights at the House of Roses, the Blacksmith Arms and similar places. “I can’t imagine being alone for the rest of my life. But I don’t think I want to be with anybody right now. I still need some time to come to terms with what happened, just like you. I sometimes feel as if I’m trying hard not to fall as well – which is strange since I’m standing on the ground, and I was not afraid of falling when we were in the crow’s nest together. Do you remember?”

He’d hated almost all of the mission. To that trial he still wasn’t sure why he had agreed to participate. Sure, Jesine had been pretty, but she hadn’t been that pretty! Ilaren was much better looking. He had been seasick, he had nearly been eaten alive by shadow beasts, and he had been knocked unconscious, but those moments in the crow’s nest had been fun. He would always remember how they had had a pick nick up there, high above the waves.

“That doesn’t sound good”, he remarked as she admitted to having problems working out which way was up and which way was down and smirked. “If you ever need any help in that regard, let me know. I sometimes confuse left and right – when I was little, I said ‘reft’ and ‘light’ - but I definitely know which way is up!” To demonstrate just how well he knew that he pointed at the ceiling. Faith could see a cobweb there. Tristan had gotten marginally better at cleaning, but he always forgot that part of his house.

“I think”, he slowly said and looked at her. Talking about such serious matters felt strange to him. Faith, he realized, had done something to him. She had made him grow up, a little at least, and made him think about things he had never thought about before.

“You feel this way because you were born a slave. All your life you’ve had others tell you what to do. I on the other hand am used to deciding for myself. Free people hardly ever think about being free and everything it entails because it’s normal for them and they’ve never known anything else. You don’t really think about what’s normal. Do you know what I mean?”

“Eventually being free will begin to feel normal to you as well, and then you’ll start to complain about this and that, just like the rest of us. I agree though, we should get the turkey out before it’s turned into a piece of charcoal. How do I get it out without burning my hands though?”

He looked around the room and finally put a pair of fine leather gloves on and grabbed a handkerchief. The combination of those two things would hopefully be enough. “If you get two plates, we can try our culinary masterpiece”, he told her. “I’ll even share my Venora Rose with you. Everything is much easier with good food and a glass of wine. At least I hope that the food is good”, he added and eyed the turkey critically. “We are done now, right?”

[Faith Augustin]

He was a cat person, there was no doubting it. Faith personally thought that the major doubt was whether Mistral was a cat at all, but she was prepared to forgive it most anything on account of the simple fact that Tristan loved it. "Yes, we call chicken a white meat, even though it's pink. Beef is red meat, and red meat can be eaten raw, or cooked to order in terms of how well done it is. But white meat has to be cooked all the way through or it's poisonous." She couldn't explain more than that, she didn't know. It was probably something to do with germs or chemistry and she didn't think that Tristan would want to ask Padraig about it, somehow.

"I'd like to see you there. If you come, tell them to tell me and I'll give you extra portions." Faith smiled. He wasn't at all sure about the prospect of raw beef, she thought, but he would give it a go. As for the Blacksmith's Arms? "You like going there, it's social as much as anything. It's good to have friends." As long as they were friends, not just taking advantage of him.

He would like to find someone, he admitted and Faith nodded, not speaking but just letting him speak whilst also letting him know that she was listening. But the Crows Nest? She remembered, yes and her eyes showed the deep emotion as they recalled the time together. "I remember. I was so afraid and you told me you wouldn't let me fall, then you kissed me." Up there, they had shared a moment and it was a turning point for her. She had almost believed that they could be a couple up there and yet, she had realised that they never could be. That he would always be the man who owned her, or so she believed at the time. It had been the moment that she had realised that she wished she could be in love with him, but also the moment where she knew she wasn't. Was that the moment when he realised he was in love with her, she wondered. If so, it would be a cruel irony and she did not ask. Some wounds healed faster when not exposed.

He pointed up though and she smiled at him, amused at his 'light' and 'reft' story. "I'm sure you were the most adorable child Venora has ever seen. There's a cobweb up there, you know. I'm going to have to get it before I go, or I won't sleep." Faith nodded when he said that she'd start to see free as the new normal, eventually. "I look forward to complaining, then. Yes, lets. You can..." Faith watched him incredulously as he got the turkey out of the oven with an expression of deep amusement on her face. As he did so, she moved to get the plates and crockery and she felt a moment of real sadness as she wondered if she would ever do so again. But she pushed it to one side, got the plates and then chuckled as she turned and Mistral was sitting on the table, looking expectantly at them as though to remind them that he needed feeding too. Once the places were set, she sat and got about the very pleasant process of eating a meal with a friend.

[Whisper]

Faith

Peer Review

Story: 5/5
Collaboration: 5/5
Structure: 5/5
These points can/cannot be spent in magic

Awarded Knowledge

Linguistics: Words Affect Opinion
Tristan: Cat Person
Tristan: Learning to be His Friend
Tristan: Make Believe
Tristan: Never be Lovers Again
Tristan: Seeking Companionship
Tristan: Seeking Tutorship from the Iron Hand
Tristan: Will be Fine
Tristan: Would Make an Excellent Father

Extras

Loot & Losses	[/color]xxxxxx	Injuries
Deducted in thread, please remove from ledger.	[/color]xxxxxx	None
Fame	[/color]xxxxxx	Devotion
None	[/color]xxxxxx	Prayer: +1 Famula
		Prayer: +1 Vri

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Tristan Venora

Peer Review

Story: 5/5
Collaboration: 5/5
Structure: 5/5
These points can/cannot be spent in magic

Awarded Knowledge

Cooking: Carelessness Can Kill
Cooking: Meat Will Change Colour
Cooking: Make it Up or Follow a Recipe
Cooking: Mix Spice with Sweet
Faith: I Can’t Take Liberties
Faith: Thinks I’d be an Excellent Father
Faith: Wants me to be Happy
Linguistics: Words Affect Opinion
Spice: Allspice
Spice: Use to Flavour Food

Extras

Loot & Losses	[/color]xxxxxx	Injuries
Deducted in thread, please remove from ledger.	[/color]xxxxxx	None
Fame	[/color]xxxxxx	Devotion
None	[/color]xxxxxx	None

Comments

[quote=“Tristan Venora”]As he said that he couldn’t help but wonder if there was a bastard of his somewhere. Had he always been careful enough?[/quote]
LOL. lolololololol. This just keeps on getting better.
I am so evil.

As you can see, I have provided feedback and reasoning behind my review. If you have any questions, comments or criticism about your review, feel free to send me a PM and we can discuss it.
Thank ye.

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