Chapter 607: Chapter 591 – A Relaxed Morning

“Some cultures often say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This is true to some extent, and you can often tell certain things about a culture from how they serve their breakfasts.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

The mood was rather subdued in the House of Nasrilemaz the evening following the performance, with the people mostly being quiet even through the feast set to honor the first performance done with the masterpiece instrument that night. Most of the House’s people were internalizing the experience and replaying the melody in their minds, often looking rather absent-minded to outside stimuli as a result.

 

They knew that they had been part of something that would probably be passed down in the history books. Not about themselves, no, probably not even about the Satrapi, even if she was a famous and skilled bard to acquire herself a noble title through her music. It was the instrument itself, the first of its sort, a hand-crafted masterpiece woven of reinforced glass by a master artisan, that would most likely make its mark on the history books.

 

While to some it might just be a curious item, a masterpiece that combined both form and function but little more, other, more enterprising minds saw things differently.

 

To patriarch Abdul-Hamid zem Nasril of the House of Nasrilemaz, one of the largest and oldest trading houses in the Hassid Caliphate, the item represented the first of many. Nobody had attempted to do what Mistress Balezouf did, to create a functional musical instrument out of the glassware they pride themselves on. For many artisans it would probably prove to be too high a hurdle, especially those who lacked the ability to reinforce their creations like Mistress Balezouf did.

 

However, with time – and practice, as well as plenty of trial and error – the patriarch was confident that such a feat should be reproducible, especially if they went for simpler instruments where durability would be less of a requirement. Mistress Balezouf made her masterwork out of heavily reinforced glass of her own formula partly to prevent it from being damaged, but also partly because the strings used for the instrument were ones that would likely cut through regular glass with ease, especially with how taut they were.

 

On the other hand, if they were to make simpler instruments like say, a flute out of glass, it would be far less difficult, the only difficulty being in creating a flute that would play a proper melody instead of discordant notes. It would take quite a bit of experimentation to find a proper composition that would be suitable for wind instruments, but the patriarch was certain that it could be done.

 

He outlined as much to his guests during breakfast the following day, with so much spirited enthusiasm that the man looked as if he had suddenly gotten a century or two younger overnight.

 

Breakfast itself consisted of some very traditional local fare, which the dwarves claimed to be the way to give thanks after they had been blessed to be given the chance to witness something marvelous like the performance the day before. Aideen found their traditional breakfast quite a curious one, as it represented a style of cuisine not seen too often in the present day Caliphate.

 

It was a style that harkened back to their much poorer beginnings, when they were refugees from another continent in search of a living in the barren desert they had been “given” to inhabit. A time when they had to make do with whatever scraps they could get their hands on, as long as it was edible, which to a dwarf, fortunately covered a far wider range than it does for a human.

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The breakfast laid out before them replicated some of the common meals from those days. The main dish itself was made out of some preserved meats. The meat originated from a mole-like creature native to that region of the desert, which had been preserved by frying them in their own fat – which the creature happened to have plenty of – and then keeping them in a jar. The fat would solidify and keep the meat edible for a good year or two that way.

 

Once it was time to use them, the cook would simply scoop out a portion of fat and meat from the jar and cook them to melt the fat once more and reheat the meat. They had the meat cooked together with horned lizard eggs that morning, also a staple of those early days, directly scrambled together with the meat and fat.

 

To scoop up the egg and meat mixture, they used a sort of thin flatbread that was made from a local tree. The tree was of the sort that would set its roots deep into the soil until it reached underground water veins, which allowed it to survive in the barren desert. The early dwarven settlers peeled off the outermost layer of bark from such trees, dried it under the sun, then ground it into a powder that they then used as a substitute for flour.

 

Aideen found that the flatbread made from the tree bark flour had a rather nutty, earthy taste to it, with a rather coarse but not unpleasant texture. She had no idea if that sort of tree bark was edible to humans or not, but given how the locals of Northern Ur-Teros never really took to using it as a food source despite the tree being a common one, she guessed that was probably not the case.

 

Good thing she was an unliving and no longer had to worry about issues like indigestion.

 

The preserved meat itself had a rather mellow taste, which cut the richness of the fat well, especially when taken in with bits of the fluffy scrambled egg. It was a far simpler meal that was commonly served in a wealthy household like the House of Nasrilemaz, but Aideen always found such simple dishes to have a certain comforting quality of their own.

 

Other than that, several small cakes were also served, which were made with more of the tree bark flour mixed with a certain type of edible clay native to the region, flavored with spices that grew locally. The cakes had a rather odd, crumbly texture, but did combine the nutty flavor of the tree bark flour with a mellow bittersweetness that probably came from the clay and spices.

 

It was probably the first time Aideen ate something like clay without it being an accident, despite her long life.

 

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