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[sythyry]

Yylhauntra to Dinner, part 1 [11 Lage 4261]

The Cani made dinner. That's Anoof and Narngi, plus Havune and Broon and Leiska. (Havune and Leiska are definitely going to be mates when they get married -- that's the middle degree of marriage -- and everyone in that not-yet-family is glad at how diligent Havune is being about girls despite not actually being attracted to them.)

At dinner were: Yylhauntra, me, Dustweed, Tethezai, Agrimony, Mendrugai, Esory, and Sprillet, and of course a pile of Cani.

It was ... um ... just like a dinner, except that the Cani were showing off their culinary prowess, and we had a fair number of guests.

Some culinary prowesses included:

1. Chub-beetles smoked over smouldering ginger.
2. A roast breast of wudgeon, stuffed with about six hundred and eighty-three kinds of onions, doused in pren brandy, and served levitating and ablaze.
3. Cream of Three Flavors of Parsley soup. I didn't know there were three flavors of parsley. Havune smugly informed me that there were actually five flavors of parsley in the soup, with one of them being (1) fresh, (2) dried, and (3) dried and toasted. I refrained from turning Cani to try to taste them.
4. Glazed prens with clotted cream.

Yylhauntra and Mendrugai and Havune got into a long discussion about Creithian iconography. Yylhauntra and Esory and I got into a medium discussion about the use of ginger in ceremonial fumigations. Dustweed, Broon, and Leiska got into a short discussion of appropriate marriage practices for Cani, and for Herethroy.

Agrimony pointed out to me that the discussion was entirely theoretical in Dustweed's case, even if she (not zie, but she) weren't planning to get married to someone of another species.

Me:"Dustweed uses 'zie'. And I hadn't heard zie was planning to marry Tethezai."

Agrimony:"Who else would have her?"

Yylhauntra:"Tethezai's the Rassimel woman there?"

Me:"Yes. And Dustweed's the both-female Herethroy. They're sweethearts." I was hoping to either (1) embarrass Agrimony enough so that he'd leave this topic alone forever, or (2) delicately probe Yylhauntra's opinion of transaffection.

Yylhauntra's:"They seem as devoted to each other as Cani."

Which I took as a good sign.

Agrimony:"Were there both-females in the first days? Or traffs?"

Yylhauntra:"No both-females ... the first one was Kivretta, and that must have been ... at least thirty or forty years after I was born. She was third generation Herethroy. What's a traff?"

Me:"It's a vulgar word for 'transaffectionate person'."

Yylhauntra:"Not in the first days, no. We were all made cisaffectionate. Intentionally, on the gods' part. We were supposed to have lots of children in a hurry, after all."

I lost the next few minutes to private moping.

Comments

[kensaro.livejournal.com]

Yylhauntra:"Not in the first days, no. We were all made cisaffectionate. Intentionally, on the gods' part. We were supposed to have lots of children in a hurry, after all."

I lost the next few minutes to private moping.

Now personally I would have seen that as an encouragment, after all, if there was some effort involved by the gods to make sure that everybody was cisaffectionate this implies that this is not the 'natural' state of things, or at least that these restrictions were later relaxed either intentionally or unintentionally. Either way it would suggest that the gods either approve of or don't care about transaffection.

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

Indeed. What was needed for the first days isn't nessisarily appropreate for now.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

While random advice from monsters is something to consider carefully, I would take this opportunity -- or some public opportunity, at least -- to ask Yylhauntra some pointed questions about the first days and about today, and which zie prefers living in. Zie's shown hints of a remarkable clarity about zir past experiences, rather than looking back at them with the sort of dewy-eyed filter that often gets applied to the past in MonsterWorld...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

*grin* Zie said that zie and I share a few traits, like clarity of vision about other peoples' lives combined with utter cluelessness about our own. Zie hasn't figured out what to do with it in four thousand years of trying.

There's one obvious solution . . .

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the natural solution would be for you two to get together and "pool your resources", so to speak. *grin*

Re: There's one obvious solution . . .

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Um ... you may have noticed how well I listen to good advice?

[esory.livejournal.com]

Thank you for inviting me to dinner, Sythyry. It was a real pleasure to meet your great-grandparent. Zie is delightfully knowledgeable and yet so normal about everything. I would've expected someone who'd been alive so long to be so much more ... intimidating. Unapproachable. But Yylhauntra seems quite reasonably friendly.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for overlooking some of the rest of the evening.

[Bard forgot to write "Part 1" on the title.]

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

[This is what the 'edit post' button is for. :-) ]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I do not expect people to reread Sythyry entries in so much detail!

Even I don't often.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

*looks impressed by Cani cooking* They are clearly fanatics for subtleties of flavor. Of course much of the sense of taste does come from the sense of smell, so it does stand to reason!

[alari.livejournal.com]

You're making me so hungry. *whimper* I doubt they have TV dinners there. What's the cheapest meal available that doesn't consist of only one thing in your world? (by "only one thing" I mean a meal that isn't just, for example, potatoes.)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Rice and pondweed soup, I suppose. Recipe: some rice, a little spicy pondweed, about five times as much water as rice, some salt. Simmer 'til rice is all goopy in the water. Add salt and pondweed to taste. Eat. Feel less empty.

[alari.livejournal.com]

Mostly rice I guess. Is pondweed is pretty substantial?