The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 1872: The Fish & The Dish (Part Two)

Jocelynn looked down at the fish floating in the basket beside the coble, trying to estimate what it would look like cooked and if it were large enough for some of the dishes that would be served at her family’s table during the most important feasts.

She thought about the great hall at Blackwell in the middle of winter, and the High Table, where her mother sat at the end of it wearing that particularly satisfied little expression she only ever wore once a year.

"Snow on the Sea," Jocelynn said decisively. Not many fish pulled from the river were big enough, but this one was. It had to be.

Ashlynn’s grin stayed exactly where it was, but everything behind it went somewhere else.

"Jocey..." Ashlynn said hesitantly.

"You know the dish," Jocelynn said. "She has it every year for her name-day feast. The one with the white rice all through it," Jocelynn said eagerly, her eyes lighting up as she sat forward. "Father complained about the sugar every single year and she made Master Ivar do it anyway, every single year, and it’s hers, Ash. Everything else we could make her is something anyone could make her. That one is only hers."

"I know whose it is," Ashlynn said carefully. Jocelynn wasn’t wrong. It was their mother’s favorite dish and it was a special treat once a year when Master Ivar prepared it.

This year, at the start of winter when they should have been celebrating, none of them had been together and Ashlynn was certain that the convent in DuCoumont City hadn’t served anything so decadent for her mother to celebrate... though if she’d visited Uncle Dylan, the odds were high that he’d have spared no expense to recreate the dish for his beloved little sister.

"Since you know," Jocelynn said. "You know why it has to be..."

"Do you know what’s in it?" Ashlynn asked, gently interrupting her sister.

Jocelynn opened her mouth, and stopped as she realized she wasn’t really sure about everything that went into the famously expensive dish.

"Rice," Jocelynn said confidently. "And... the fish, obviously. And the sugar that Father always said was so expensive to get from Keating," she said as she searched her memory for the details.

"And almond milk," Ashlynn pointed out.

"Well, yes," Jocelynn said. It was part of what gave the dish its signature flavor after all.

"Jocey," Ashlynn said patiently. "Where do you think almond milk comes from?"

Jocelynn looked at her sister. Then she looked at the sun, which had climbed a good way up the sky while they had been shouting at a trout.

"...Almonds?" Jocelynn said hesitantly, not understanding what her sister was hinting at.

"Almonds." Ashlynn held up a hand and started counting off on her fingers, and she did it gently, but thoroughly, walking through each of the steps she’d learned from Master Georg.

"Almonds which have to be blanched," Ashlynn explained. "Then skinned, one at a time, by hand, and there is no clever way to do it and still get good results, or at least, there isn’t a way that Master Georg knows. Then they have to be pounded into a paste. Then steeped. Then strained. Then strained again, through cloth, because if there’s so much as a speck of grit in it the whole dish is ruined and you can taste it."

"How many almonds?" Jocelynn asked, still trying to see what the problem was. It sounded like a lot of steps but it couldn’t be that bad, could it?

"For a fish that size?" Ashlynn glanced at it. "It won’t be as many as it would take for a swordfish, but we don’t have Master Ivar’s army of assistants to help. It’s just you and me in the kitchen today. It’ll take hours."

"And then there’s the rice," Ashlynn went on, before Jocelynn could respond. "The rice cooks in the almond milk and it has to be stirred more or less the entire time or it catches on the bottom of the pot and turns bitter, and once it’s bitter there’s nothing you can do but throw it out and start again."

"But we won’t have time to start again," Ashlynn pointed out. "And that’s before the sauce, and the sauce wants the same almond milk, so we need more of it than the stuffing takes," letting her voice trail off so Jocelynn could sit with the weight of the undertaking she’d proposed when she suggested making Snow on the Sea for their mother.

"So, what you’re saying is that it has to be right the first time," Jocelynn said. "Or it won’t be any good at all."

"Exactly. Marcell’s note said that they’d arrive around midday, more or less, assuming there are no delays," Ashlynn said with a nod. "I want us to have plenty of time to sit down and eat with her, but tonight is the contest between the Southern Steppe and the Aleese, and I have to be in the royal box at nightfall whether we’ve eaten or not. So I’ll say it plainly, because I don’t want you agreeing to something you haven’t understood."

"I can’t do this one alone," Ashlynn said. "Not today. Not in the time we have. If you pick this, I need your hands in it for most of the day, and it’s dull, and it hurts your wrists, and about halfway through you are going to hate me. So pick it if you want it. But pick it knowing how hard it will be."

Jocelynn looked at her sister for a long moment.

Then she looked down at her own hands that had just hauled in the biggest fish she’d ever personally caught and at the fingers that had finally stopped shaking.

It felt good, she realized, to have something to do. Something that kept her moving and that she could succeed at if she just worked hard enough... And if she had a little bit of help from her sister...