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Post by Celera on Jul 19, 2007 0:05:02 GMT -5
(I'm so glad you are adding to this again, Sorch. It's really fun to read, like reading a diary. And I love how you are working the "it could be worse" theme into the end of each post -- it ties things together, and it's so true. No matter where we are in life -- it could be worse.)
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on Jul 19, 2007 12:56:15 GMT -5
((Thanks. The inexplicable flowering of storytelling in the guild I'm in on Hyjal -- a PvE server with no pretensions to being the least bit RP -- has really gotten me going again. I'm also writing Rheyna's story, although I have to call it Rhaina's story because they made me change how her name was spelled.
When I mentioned that I was working on that, Vlad requested that I change the name of the Vlad character before I post it on the website of the guild he belongs to, which seemed like a fair request. Having done that, I now feel a little stalled on writing Sorcha's diary here, since her story is all about Vlad this and Vlad that. Still, I figure I will sort it out one of these days.
It's always better when I am writing.))
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Post by Deyla on Jul 21, 2007 14:37:05 GMT -5
It turns out that the farmer with the sharp sword, Harald, is a friend of Uncle John's and therefore, fairly well-known to both Granma and Jamie. She told me that Jamie and a guest were coming for dinner, so I prepared a nice winter meal of thick slices of fresh sausage I'd made that morning, fried up with potatoes and apples and onions. I also made a creamy spinach dish to go with it, and some thick dark bread. Finally, we had a pound cake with stewed cherries soaked with rum, from one of the jars I canned in the summer. Dinner was all ready to serve up when Jamie knocked on the door.
I opened it, and was a litle surprised to see Harald on the stoop with him. I let them into the house, and when Jamie went to introduce us, Harald blushed and told him we'd been introduced in the common room of the inn not too long ago. The blush was kind of nice, because it means he remembered me a little more than just in passing.
Over dinner, Granma told Harald about our recent trip to Warlock Valley. She was pretty cagey about the reasons we'd decided to make such a trip on the very edge of winter like that, but he seemed to know right away that we wouldn't have done it if there had not been need. And either his own animosity towards the Defias, or his common sense, or some combination of those, seemed to lead him right to a fairly complete and accurate understanding of the situation.
I saw a muscle in his neck tighten when he realized we had been attacked by the outlaws. He muttered under his breath, "It just is never enough. We clean out their nests, and drive the younger less corrupt of them out of the outlaw life, but it is as if a hundred rise up to replace every ten we get rid of."
I knew he was talkng about his raids with Maldora, then, but everyone else acted like he hadn't made the comment, so I did, too.
After supper, we retird to the parlor, where we played some old fashioned games that I never even heard of until I came here to live and work. It turns out that growing up in the orphanage is a disadvantage in more ways than I realized while I was doing the growing up. There are all kinds of things that people who grow up in families know that I never learned.
About Hope Chests and trousseaus. About games to play in the parlor on dark winter nights. About how to cook for small groups of people, and how doing so might be a pleasure, not just a chore. Much more often than I would have expected, I find that people talk about or do things I never imagined. It's like there is this whole culture that associated with having lived in a family, and I never even knew it existed. Probably just as well, because when I was a child, I had no way to have it, and I suppose it's better not to know what you are missing if there is no way to rectify the situation.
I know that families differ, that different families play different games in their parlors, but I never even knew they did that. At the orphanage, we were sent to bed at sundown (or earlier, in the summer) and they locked the doors on the dormitory room, and we were left alone. Sometimes we played games, sometimes, we slept. More often than not, we slept, but even when we talked or played games, it was all children. I never knew that grown ups played games with children, or with just other grown ups, like we did tonight.
After awhile, Jamie, had to leave, but Granma and Harald were having a good time talking about some people they both knew. As they talked, I learned more about him, but not really any details, exactly. I know now that he seems like a farmer because he is a farmer, that he used to have a farm in Westfall, but it was destroyed during the war when he was off fighting on the front lines. He came home to find it burned and derelict, with no idea where he wife and two young sons might have gotten to. I gather from what he said, that he now knows what happened to them, but he never really talked about it, so I can only surmise that it was a bad end of some kind.
Now he seems to live a sort of wandering life in Elwynn, doing I am not sure what, except when he hooks up with his warlock buddy and they go "clean up" Defias.
Eventually, the conversation died down, and the three of us sat by the fire in a very comfortable silence, which surprised me, too. I did not know I could be comfortable like that with someone I don't know well.
Anyway, after a bit of that, Granma started to nod off, and in a very polite way that did not draw attention to her lapse of good manners, Harald excused himself, thanking both of us for the pleasant evening. Granma said, "Now that you mention it, I should probably be heading for my bed. Deyla will show you out. It is always wonderful to see you, Harald. Don't be such a stranger!"
So I walked with him to the hall, and handed him his coat and hat, and made some polite conversation with him while he bundled up for the cold dark walk back to wherever he is staying. Without really realizing what I was doing, I tilted my hip in his direction; I didn't mean to catch his attention, it was more like I was occupied trying to decide what I think of him, and my body just fell into its old habits.
I only realized what I had done when I saw the look in his eye get more intense all of a sudden, and then I found myself blushing. I never blush!
Anyway, we both pretended there was no added something between us all of a sudden and he took his leave.
I went back to the parlor, but Granma had already retired, so I came upstairs. Now I am almost ready for sleep myself, but I am kept awake by wondering why I acted towards Harald like I do when I am out looking for a pleasant evening of flirting and dancing and laughing, as that was not on my mind at all.
Still, it's a least a bit more interesting than wondering whether anything our of the ordinary will ever happen. Something did: I flirted with a man without deciding in advance to do so. Very odd.
I'm glad to have a warm bed to snuggle down into tonight. It's going to freeze hard before morning. I usually leave the little window in my attic open just a tiny bit because I love the feel of fresh air, but not tonight. It's just too cold, and instead I will treasure the warmth and coziness of this little room, that at least for now, is all mine.
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Post by Deyla on Aug 21, 2007 6:43:43 GMT -5
It's the middle of the winter. We have snow on the ground most days, and the occasional heavy fall. The animals have all grown shaggy coats to help keep them warm, and I never go outside without a heavy cloak to keep me warm.
I spend most of my timeindoors, with Granma, knitting or sewing, caring for her house, listening to her stories, telling her some (sanitized) stories about my life in the orphanage and (less sanitized) tales about the people I met with the heroes. She loves stories about Pipniff, and likes to speculate about what he was plotting involving me.
I also cook. I love winter food, the hearty kind that is just too heavy to eat in the heat of the summer, and that is a waste to make in the spring with its new fresh produce or the autumn with its harvest bounty. In midwinter, I make stews that use the preserved goods I put up all summer and fall.
In summer, given a chicken to roast, I would chop up fresh herbs and mix them with some rendered chicken fat and perhaps some dried citrus peel if I have any. I pull up the skin on the breast and smear the mixture all over the meat, then pull the skin back into place. Stuff the chicken with a chopped onion and the stems from the herbs, and roast. Simple, fragrant and heavenly.
In winter, that same chicken gets stuffed, by golly. A little day old bread, some sauteed onions and celery, and a lot of black pepper and dried sage. Maybe I'd even feel ambitious and mix in some old corn muffins, too. Roast on a bed of root vegetables, and it's a whole different experience. Much heartier and heavier and so warming in the dead of winter.
The last time I went to Goldshire, the peddlar was back with his spices and other food products from far away. I bought a jar of black liquid, heavily salted and slightly sweet and fermented tasting. I also got a package of some kind of paste, slightly reddish in color, that also tastes of far away. He told me how to use it to season a chicken that I first steamed and then smoked in a closed pot with tea leaves and sugar providing the smoke. Soooooo good, and too heavy for summer, also. But in the middle of a snow storm, it brought to mind places that are perpetually warm and so different than here that I can hardly imagine them.
I also ran into Maldora. She's been to some place so far away, she says it's not even on this world, but somewhere out there beyond the night sky. I guess that a lot of the enemies from the last War are there, so heroes go there to fight. She says that Boswell is there, with Pipniff, and that they are doing well. But she couldn't stay there, even though she is a great hero when she wants to be. She said that staying there left the Defias to grow here unchecked.
I asked her why not let Harald handle the Defias while she fights demons, and she said he can't handle them alone, that he is really a man of peace. But then the two of them went out and cleaned out two more camps of the outlaws. I guess it's a good thing they are doing, given what happened in Westfall when the outlaws gained the upper hand over the people who were just trying to live their lives.
But I don't really like to think about it, because I was very scared that night. I don't want to be scared again like that. So I pretend that if I stay snug in my little room, and do my work, and live quietly, that I will be safe. But what I really want is for the safety not to be an illusion.
It's safe enough for now, but it's not really good enough to last a lifetime.
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Post by Deyla on Aug 21, 2007 6:44:13 GMT -5
Harald invited Granma, Jamie, and me to a "winter picnic" yesterday. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, but not enough that a carriage could not safely travel over the roads. So Jamie hooked up the wagon again, and put the round top over the back part. Then we bundled up Granma and me in warm clothes and blankets, and he drove us down the river to a small backwater area where part of the river is diverted into a sort of little lake.
The backwater is surrounded by large boulders, and there is an area there where the boulders form a sort of wall against the prevailing winds. It's not really a cave, because it doesn't have a roof, but it is very protected. In that area, Harald had set up some logs to sit on and built a nice fire.
He made us a sort of camping meal, which I actually enjoyed a lot more than I enjoyed the ones where we were really camping when we went to Westfall. He had wrapped potatoes in some find of leaves and put them in the coals on the edge of the fire. When they were cooked, he dug them out and scooped out most of the potato, leaving just the skins. Then he mixed the potato with some milk and butter and cheese and dried herbs and a bit of dried sausage (sort of like my Redridge sausages, but a different kind). He filled the potato skins back up with this mixture and then wrapped them up in leaves again, and put them back in the coals for a few minutes until the cheese got all melty.
We ate them with hot tea. They tasted wonderful and the company was pleasant.
Well, it really was, even though I was terribly nervous. I couldn't help remembering that last moment in Granma's front hall when Harald came to dinner that time, and I was very self-conscious pretty much the whole time we were there. I know he was watching me, too, and that made me even more nervous.
Anyway, we stayed out there a couple hours and then Jamie brought us home. I spent the afternoon finishing a lacy wrap for Her, which should bring me another gold coin or two. I couldn't help thinking more about what it would be like to wear clothing like that, but for whatever reason, thinking about that made me blush. It didn't used to.
I made a simple supper of squash soup and biscuits this evening -- those potatoes were really filling. As we were eating, Granma told me about how she and her husband had known Harald's parents quite well. She kept saying how tragic his story was, and I guess it is. But the thing is, the world is so ravaged by the Wars that I hardly know anyone who is untouched by the tragedy. You'd think now that the fighting is calmed down, things would go back to normal, but maybe that's the worst part of War, where nothing is ever the same again.
And then I realize I don't really know enough about the way things used to be to know. Perhaps things are always uncertain and dangerous.
What I do know is that Granma's cottage is a safe haven, warm and cozy, with good company and the right kind of work. It could be so much worse.
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Post by Robbyn Jonathan on Sept 23, 2007 12:39:02 GMT -5
((Sorch, mea culpa, I have only now caught up on Deyla's story. It remains thoroughly engaging, even though it's mostly about food I will follow along on her adventures. Sometimes I want her to be swept into a grand adventure (despite her intentions?) and sometimes I think that a tale about the adventures that form part of a "mundane" life is perfectly tale enough. ))
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on Sept 24, 2007 4:04:46 GMT -5
((I finally figured out the one sentence answer to "What is this story about?". It's not "Food," despite what you may think. And it's not "Make a character to drive Van nuts," nor has it been for a long time. One of these days, the story will weave enough of its parts together that you will also know what it's about. In the meantime...
I wish I could work this into Deyla's story, but I can't because she doesn't have access to fresh citrus. So just for you people who actually like to cook, here is my favorite duck recipe....
Easy Roast Duck
You need one duck, about 4 pounds or so, with the pin feathers all removed.
Make a marinade by mixing:
1 cup coffee 2 cups soy sauce 3 or 4 slices of fresh ginger 2 TBSP honey 2 TBSP brown sugar the juice of a lemon the juice of a lime the juice of an orange 1 pkg instanst red miso soup, single serving
Put the duck and the fruit rinds (which you got by squeezing the juice out of them...) in a 2 gallon ziploc bag and marinate 24 hours, turning the duck over once. (It's better if you prick the duck skin all over first, but it's okay if you don't want to take the time.)
After the full 24 hours, take the duck out of the marinade and pat it dry. Shove as much of the fruit rinds into the cavity as you can. Twist the wings back on themselves, like you would do for a chicken. Tie the legs together.
Now put it on a rack and stick in a 450F over for 20 minutes. Turn the heat down to 350F. It will now take about 40 more minutes until the breast meat is about 160F, which is medium rare. If, heaven forbid, you like your duck well-done, cook it to 180F.))
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Post by Vangelis on Sept 24, 2007 16:51:50 GMT -5
(( Sorcha: You say that this story is NOT about food, and then in the same breath you post us a recipe. That has to say something about you... I'm just not sure what. Maybe you ARE just trying to drive me crazy. ))
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Post by Sorcha'Rei on Sept 24, 2007 17:33:36 GMT -5
((The story is not about food. I didn't say that food wasn't a major character in the story. The story is not about driving Van crazy. I didn't say that driving Van crazy was not a desirable side-effect.
See?))
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