Bigguestinboots — Finding a 2nd life after the 1st one has vanished or is damaged beyond repair, and some solutions will be simplistic. Not making light. I've done some camping in the Shivering Isles. Good luck and don't lose your tourist visa. The bureaucracy there is insane when you want to exit.
GalacticHalfling — Not too closely. Parallel for now, but eventual separation.
Disclaimer: What's Bethesda's is theirs, likewise for mod creators.
Recipes For Life
"Are you kidding? My god! I can think of plenty of things for you!"
Savela shrank back. He was a little . . . loud. Not angry, she knew, but enthusiastic. He wore a scholar's robes now, but she recalled the drunken, violent brawler it took a half dozen guards to subdue.
It didn't help that he was circling her like a hungry sabercat.
"A food scientist and nutritionist at Winterhold would be fantastic. You're exactly what we need. I've been talking with Colette about starting up studies in nutrition, but she's got too many other things to really look at the problem. And since it isn't a magicka related art like being a healer, nobody really wants to look studying that field. They say, 'Food? We're mages, not farmers. We train masters of magic, not cooks. It's not even alchemy.'
"But food is life and you are what you eat. Argonians and Hist sap, khajiit and moonsugar, bosmer and the Green Pact. Flamingos wouldn't be pink if they didn't eat their shrimp. Golden dart frogs wouldn't be poisonous if they didn't eat all those toxic ants and centipedes. Falmer wouldn't have gone blind and warped if they didn't eat those mushrooms and continued to eat those mushrooms all their next generations. Zombie mushroom spores in the air and in their brains since birth. The food you eat can alter how a body regenerates and rebuilds itself, how well DNA replicates. Food is obviously an important field of study. Long-term good food and good nutrition are better than any quick-fix alchemy potion."
"I don't understand most of what you said, I'm sorry. And don't claim to be whatever it is you called me. I'm afraid—" Savela said.
"Good job, Curtis. You're scaring her," said Ilya, the dunmer's bodyguard, interrupting her and nudging Curtis aside. "Why don't you go over, oh, over there seems good. Look at the tool collection. Commander Avehan?"
The second commander of the Gray Guards chuckled and flashed Savela an encouraging grin while he led the strange, slightly mad, Winterhold scholar over to the tool bins.
"He looks dangerous, but he's mostly harmless," said Ilya. Savela tentatively smiled. In truth, the nord woman was hardly any more assuring. She wore the armor of a Stormcloak officer, except without the bear skull helmet, and across her back was a strange, two-tine spear made of golden dwemer metal. Savela's experience with the Stormblade class of warriors was that the females were more savage than the males.
"As you say, sera," said Savela, sighing. "Tirenea says she likes him and thinks he's funny. She says her grandfather respects him, and getting the respect of a Telvanni master is difficult. When he walked in, I couldn't believe that Master Curtis was the belligerent sot I saw in Raven Rock."
"Although," Savela paused to carefully look the belligerent sot formerly known as Slitter over, "he certainly looks respectable now, and healthier, and more vocal and well spoken."
"He's just very passionate about his projects and will talk your ear off if you let him. The more questions you ask him, the more he likes it as long as your questions have a point and aren't made to waste his time.
"But he's not so focused on his projects that he's insensitive to others. By now he's probably feeling embarrassed and worried that he's scared you away."
"I am worried I may disappoint him," Savela confessed. "I'm just exploring an idea. I can't really say if I truly wish to make this my life's work." Nevertheless, she walked over to Master Curtis who was examining and saying, "A power source, a power source, maybe a tiny soul gem? Bet my braids this is some kind of tuning fork or sonic screwdriver. Is there another one buried in here?" Savela hated to interrupt his enthusiastic digging, but she tugged shyly at his sleeve.
He looked down at her and smiled. Savela felt herself relaxing at the vast good humor in that smile that reached to his eyes. This wasn't the same mer she'd seen at Raven Rock, who'd worn anger and bitterness as visibly as his pitted, unkempt armor. "Hey, miss, I'm sorry if I came on too strong." Savela was now aware of the unusual, non-Morrowind rhythm he spoke with, a relaxed, warm crooning. "I get it. You're just exploring possibilities, not looking to lock yourself into a career.
"But I'd really like to talk to you, you know? Dinner or lunch at the Cornerclub with your parents or an adult you trust, my treat?"
+—+—+—+—+—+
"So that was the mad inventor of Winterhold. Ambitious," said Elani.
"Alchemy and food is not a new idea," said Savela's mother Selveni. "He sounds like a necromancer in the way he sees picking plants apart. A dissection. Vitamins? Nutritional value?" She shook her head. "I have a strong feeling the field of study he envisions is one that could easily take several lifetimes to study. He spoke of so many different intertwining disciplines."
"Yes, but his main focus is finding what foods and combinations of foods can best support one's health, and is readily available for the long term and affordable," said Elani. "And it is not like you are to discover all this. It is obvious he has some knowledge and he has specific ideas he needs proven, but that he has neither the time nor skills to do job himself. From all I hear of him from my contacts in Winterhold, laziness is not a quality anyone there would ascribe to him. 'The right tool for the job,' seems to be his motto."
"Perhaps the right ego for the job, too," said Salveni, jabbing at her pie. "I'm sure the College Restorations school is too proud to reach out to the various temple schools of healing for their observations and gleaned knowledge. The ideology, the pride and arrogance of secular mages. You'd be amazed to learn how many necromancers are renegade temple healers. Your sire was one such. I don't remember which Redguard god, but he'd been a acolyte before deciding the temple life was not for him. He wanted miracles on his own terms.
"I remember — and this was before you were born — there had been a sickness going around and he mandated that all porridge and stews and soups be prepared in iron pots and any water for teas be boiled in the same. And among the first lessons he made me learn was how to properly prepare those plants he used most often for his own health. I'd tried to use his recipes when I was getting sick during pregnancy, but it wasn't working. The bastard only showed me how to make changes when I got too sick to see to his comfort. Recipes that specifically benefited dunmer women undergoing certain changes in their bodies. He had to force me the first few times to drink those formulations because I feared he was trying to kill you." She reached out and stroked Savela's shoulder. "I've seen him prepare teas that caused women to be rid of their unwanted babes. At least he knew that I was serious that I would kill myself if he made me lose you.
"The soups were actually pretty good. More importantly, they helped. I wasn't vomiting my guts out and I got stronger."
Savela lifted her mother's hand to stroke it against her cheek. "I don't believe he wants me there to be an alchemist, mother. Not exactly. It sounds like he wants a cook to create recipes according to alchemy principles. But he's avoiding to say who or what he wants food prepared for. I noticed that. One of the first things Master Revyn taught me was to how to identify our customers as soon as they walked in the door and to target their needs."
+—+—+—+—+—+—+
Strange clients. She hadn't missed that her master and his wife had strange clientele and friends. She knew there were secrets around her and she'd been careful to avoid learning too much about them. She had enough memories of the necro den she'd lived in before the nightmare of Honorhall Orphanage. You never, ever wanted to pry into the business of the people around you.
She had learned willful ignorance was sometimes a valid survival method, yet she wasn't blind and she didn't think she was stupid. The master and his wife — no one got that rich that fast and made conquests in so many different Holds or survived so many dangers without divine impetus behind them. But Savela didn't ask. It wasn't necessary she know. Her apprenticeship papers stated she was to learn her master's business of buying, evaluating, and selling second-hand goods.
She left her mother and her guardian talking in the Cornerclub and went next door to her master's residence. All the office workers had left and there was only the night watchman Balithan and the cleaning staff. According to Balithan, the master was at the palace and would be staying there for the night. Muthsera Dana was upstairs in her rooms.
Savela paused in the front lobby, halted by memories of this once being a small storefront. No bins of paper forms, no benches for people to sit as they waited for clerks to attend to whatever business they brought in, and the side room didn't used to be the group office for more clerks. Yes, the new store was larger, more spacious, and much busier. It was a good place to work, the master made sure it was. It just wasn't here, where it all started. She went to the kitchen and used her keys to access the master's private larder and made some tea for herself. She liked the apple flavored black teas from Goldenglow. She lingered here, sipping her tea. She could sense the spirits that wandered the house. Most of them were downstairs keeping guard on whatever great secrets were hidden in the master's office. She recalled the day they came. Guardians; no need to worry, he'd assured her. Yes, and she'd often see the guardians during quiet times and always felt peaceful around them. She wondered why nords spirits guarded a dunmer home, but it wasn't necessary she know.
She finally went downstairs and through the faux brick wall that hid his office. She bowed respectfully towards his family shrine and went to new shrines of Divines on the other side of the small ash yam garden in the center of the room. The Divines being honored were Akatosh, Zenithar, and Jhunal. The first two were traditional to his wife's Imperial family. The last was new one they'd found together, a Divine Prince of Oblivion. An owl perched on top of the pyramid base that normally would have signified Julianos. Master said that Jhunal the Owl was an old Nord god of wisdom and learning like Julianos but whose hands-on approach was more akin to Zenithar. Savela liked this new old god. The Deadric Princes frightened her though her kind master seemed comfortable with them. Talos, well, he had his nords. She only knew Akatosh as the chief of the Divines. Zenithar had to do with industry and commerce. Jhunal, a god of discovery and learning by doing. All else she knew of Jhunal was that he'd helped save the mistress while she was in the Oblivion realm of Apocrypha and fighting a dragonpriest of Hermeaus Mora, and that Jhunal now ruled Apocrypha.
The master had been a bit nervous introducing the Atmoran god's shrine to 800-year-old nord guardians. The Empire of Tiber Septim had not existed yet for them and they did not fully recognize Talos as the latest aspect of Shor. He'd explained to her that Jhunal was a god the nords had abandoned because of his association to magic and favoring intellectual pursuits. Too elven for the Atmorans who were at war with the snow elves. It was unfair to the god, but there it was.
Savela scooted a stool closer to the alter table and put down a shallow bowl in front of the owl god.
"I hope you like this, Holy Jhunal. I was told Skaal beer was the closest to ancient Atmoran beer." She took a small bottle from her pocket and filled the little bowl to the brim and took a small sip herself from the bottle. She grimaced at the strong burnt flavor and then began telling the god of her day and her thoughts.
Really, telling the little owl statue — and likely an entire room full of friendly spirits — was as good as telling her master. Actually, maybe even better. She'd watched him since that first day. On all the shopping and trading trips she went on with him, she'd studied as he coaxed others to talk or to show him items. Afterwards, he would test her on what she saw or heard, and he was always delighted when she could catch things he missed, and those usually because she saw the world differently than him. But here and now, she wasn't being questioned by anyone judging the quantity or quality of her thoughts. She could meander a bit. Go off in fanciful word games and make little jokes, even ridicule little absurdities and giggle at odd notions. "You should . . . play a little," her master had said a week ago.
The strange tenseness, the fluttering in her guts. Was she making a mistake? The last time she felt this confusion was the days she plotted her escape from Honorhall. She knew if she didn't get out, she'd die. Now she wondered if safety had made her a coward. Oh, in her mind she knew she wasn't going into exile into unknown, unmapped territory. She was only going to Winterhold and she would be staying with Tirenea and her grandsire in their new house in the center of town. She was going to do a year's apprenticeship in general magic at the College with side studies in alchemy with an emphasis on the medicinal properties of common foods and herbs. Maybe experiment with new recipes . . .
The shopkeeper was talking with a pair of customers about bolts of cloth and jewelry. It was stupid to try stealing in a near-empty, quiet store, but the pain was getting more than she could bear. He'd caught her almost as soon as she'd slipped the box up her sleeve. "If it's tea you're looking for, why not this one? It's very good for coughs and light fevers. The one you picked is pain relief for female problems."
The nord lady at the Frozen Hearth who was providing pies for the Azura's Day feast laughing and saying, "A little alchemy trick with snowberries to help with ice chills. The potion is on the sour side so a little honey to sweeten, but another trick there with honeycomb essence to toughen one's stamina and shore up the armor of one's flesh against the snow. The recipe has been in my mother's family for generations."
"Food is life and you are what you eat . . . better than any quick-fix alchemy potion," Master Curtis insisted.
"Long term and readily available," added Muthsera Elani.
"The right tools . . . the right ego . . . for the job. I get it . . . you're exploring possibilities," Master Curtis said with a smile.
Me? I like cooking, but is that enough to say what's good food and bad food? She asked the owl god.
"Advantages and disadvantages. People can have strange responses when you tell them something's either 'good' for them or 'bad' for them . . . take into account circumstances, the product user's needs . . . and expectations," Master Revyn counseled.
She smiled then and sipped the last of the beer. "Take into account . . . I know accounts. Master says I'm good enough now to run my own shop. And that's what Master Curtis really needs; he needs someone to set up shop for him! I don't know enough to be a good researcher, but I am trained to organize and plan and evaluate old stuff; find ways for a second or third life. And I know respectable alchemists in all Holds of Skyrim. I've even contacts with temples in Morrowind through all the letter-writing to find my mother. And there's the ex-temple healers and mages in Ivarstead; they know me. And all the big temples in Cyrodiil that have teaching schools for healers, they'll ignore a letter from a novice alchemist. But once I get permission to use the College of Winterhold's name, they can't ignore me then. I have no problem asking for their help. I can at least get things started even if I decide to do something else later on."
She heard a noise to her right and looked. Nothing there. Then she noticed the owl god's bowl was empty. Lucky for them, just on her master's desk was a bottle. Ashfire mead made by a nord brewer on Solstheim. Well, they were out of Skaal beer. Maybe Jhunal would like to try something else? She staggered a bit as she walked over. That Skaal stuff was stronger and sneakier than she thought and she wasn't all that experienced with drinking. Always under supervision and just to learn how to recognize good stuff, bad stuff, expensive stuff, and cheap stuff.
This brew was strong stuff. Popular with nords. Seemed like regular mead but infused with Solstheim plants. Maybe she'd look up the alchemy properties of the ones she could guess. Later then. She wanted to keep exploring her ideas with Jhunal. "Oh, stop clicking your beak like that, Holy Lord. This cork's in there good and I don't want to break it."
