15min fic #134
Jan. 3rd, 2006 08:19 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
annarti.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
yrae
Title~ Galonen's Fate
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ He's mine, much as I don't want to claim him =P
Notes~ 15 minute fic, word 134. Little folk story parents tell their kiddies. The reason why there are very few gluttons in Raykin *nods sagely*
~ ~ ~
Galonen had always been very fond of his food. His dinners were always lavish occasions, and his dinner parties even more so, with only the richest and most influential people coming to eat at his table. Most nobles chose quantity over quality at their parties, a select few preferred high quality, but the guests always left hungry.
Galonen was insistent on both. He was adamant that his servants and chefs always have the best and freshest ingredients available. If it hadn’t been bought that day, it was to be thrown out.
“But Sir,” his head chef asked him one day, “What if another Great Drought should come? We’ll have no food at all! We’ll starve!”
But Galonen just shook his head and laughed, his great gut shaking with the motion. “Don’t fear, Chef, there hasn’t been a Great Drought in more than three hundred years! We’re perfectly safe.”
“The Ra-Lin already seems lower than usual…”
“Stop worrying, Chef, and go fix dinner for the evening. I’m having some very important guests around tonight.”
Chef couldn’t stop worrying, but he kept his thoughts to himself, then returned to the kitchens to continue preparations for the evening’s dinner party.
The servants had come back from the markets with food so fresh they’d seen it being killed in front of them. The chickens were so fresh they were still flapping their wings and clucking.
Cooks were already hard at work. Some were preparing a manner of sauces for the evening, others were cutting up vegetables, more plucked the feathers from ducks or shaved the scales from the freshly caught river salmon. Rich ginger and garlic smells permeated the air, making Chef half-wish he could maybe, just once, eat some of the food himself, but every tiniest stuffed olive, every freshly roasted macadamia, had to go upstairs to the dining hall for Galonen and his guests.
Chef sighed with lament, but this was what he was paid to do, and paid very handsomely too, so he never complained.
Chef always worried that he had cooked too much, but there was never so much as a stringy chicken wing left over from Galonen’s parties. The dinner that evening went just as planned, as did every other dinner Galonen put on. The guests praised him on his kitchen’s marvellous cooking, praises which he always passed back to the kitchen.
Over the coming weeks, Chef watched the river nervously as it slowed from a river to a stream, then a creek, until it was nothing more than a line of stagnant puddles, surrounded by dry, cracking mud.
“The Ra-Lin is almost completely dried up,” he told Galonen, “Everyone’s taking what supplies they have left and are fleeing Ni-Yana.”
Galonen was shocked. He’d heard tell of the drying up of the Ra-Lin from his important guests, but he never believed for a moment that it would stop flowing completely.
“Pack up what we have, then!” he ordered Chef, but Chef shook his head forlornly.
“There’s nothing, Sir. Not a grain of rice nor the seed of an apple. We have nothing. You and your guests have eaten it all.”
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ He's mine, much as I don't want to claim him =P
Notes~ 15 minute fic, word 134. Little folk story parents tell their kiddies. The reason why there are very few gluttons in Raykin *nods sagely*
Galonen had always been very fond of his food. His dinners were always lavish occasions, and his dinner parties even more so, with only the richest and most influential people coming to eat at his table. Most nobles chose quantity over quality at their parties, a select few preferred high quality, but the guests always left hungry.
Galonen was insistent on both. He was adamant that his servants and chefs always have the best and freshest ingredients available. If it hadn’t been bought that day, it was to be thrown out.
“But Sir,” his head chef asked him one day, “What if another Great Drought should come? We’ll have no food at all! We’ll starve!”
But Galonen just shook his head and laughed, his great gut shaking with the motion. “Don’t fear, Chef, there hasn’t been a Great Drought in more than three hundred years! We’re perfectly safe.”
“The Ra-Lin already seems lower than usual…”
“Stop worrying, Chef, and go fix dinner for the evening. I’m having some very important guests around tonight.”
Chef couldn’t stop worrying, but he kept his thoughts to himself, then returned to the kitchens to continue preparations for the evening’s dinner party.
The servants had come back from the markets with food so fresh they’d seen it being killed in front of them. The chickens were so fresh they were still flapping their wings and clucking.
Cooks were already hard at work. Some were preparing a manner of sauces for the evening, others were cutting up vegetables, more plucked the feathers from ducks or shaved the scales from the freshly caught river salmon. Rich ginger and garlic smells permeated the air, making Chef half-wish he could maybe, just once, eat some of the food himself, but every tiniest stuffed olive, every freshly roasted macadamia, had to go upstairs to the dining hall for Galonen and his guests.
Chef sighed with lament, but this was what he was paid to do, and paid very handsomely too, so he never complained.
Chef always worried that he had cooked too much, but there was never so much as a stringy chicken wing left over from Galonen’s parties. The dinner that evening went just as planned, as did every other dinner Galonen put on. The guests praised him on his kitchen’s marvellous cooking, praises which he always passed back to the kitchen.
Over the coming weeks, Chef watched the river nervously as it slowed from a river to a stream, then a creek, until it was nothing more than a line of stagnant puddles, surrounded by dry, cracking mud.
“The Ra-Lin is almost completely dried up,” he told Galonen, “Everyone’s taking what supplies they have left and are fleeing Ni-Yana.”
Galonen was shocked. He’d heard tell of the drying up of the Ra-Lin from his important guests, but he never believed for a moment that it would stop flowing completely.
“Pack up what we have, then!” he ordered Chef, but Chef shook his head forlornly.
“There’s nothing, Sir. Not a grain of rice nor the seed of an apple. We have nothing. You and your guests have eaten it all.”