“Hardest thing to get used to in a new place? The food. Always the food.” - Ennoia Levendorf, famed traveling bard from the Kingdom Down Under.

“Uhh… So how do you eat this?” asked Celia with some notable confusion.

Celia had traveled a long way with Aideen over the past decades, but it was the first time she saw food like what was served before her. Some parts of it she could understand easily enough, like the small mound of crisped, flattened rice grains served on a broad plate. She was rather uncertain on what to do with the small bowl of what looked like some sort of soup full of tiny little snails still in its shells, though.

She definitely saw no tool to extract the flesh from the shells around, or ones to crack the shells.

The practice of eating snails itself was one she had seen at several places before, and wasn’t too uncommon in wetter areas where the creatures thrived. Her experience so far had mostly been limited to larger specimens, however, whereas the tiny snails in the bowl before her were barely as long as the last joint of her pinky finger each.

“Hm? Oh, right, yeah, I guessed this would be your first time with this sort,” noted Aideen after she thought for a moment, recalling their travels. “First you’d pour some of the broth over the rice, however much you like. Some like it soupy, some just like to wet it a bit, up to you,” she instructed, as she poured a good bit of the broth over her own flattened rice, enough to drench over half of the grains.

“As for the snails, you just go to put the opening by your mouth, and then suck them out, like so,” she added, picking up a couple of the snails and quickly sucking the flesh out from their shells in a practiced motion, before taking some of the rice with her fingers and chasing the snails with them, chewing everything up before she continued. “No need to suck too hard, just give it like, a quick, good pull.”

Celia gave it a try like Aideen showed. The first time she tried sucking the snail out of its shell, she sucked too hard and the morsel of meat ended up lodged in her throat before she coughed and dislodged it. It would have been a choking hazard if she was not an unliving, though it did elicit peals of laughter from Aideen and Calais, at least.

She fared better the second time around, successfully drawing out the morsel of chewy snail meat out of its shell without accidentally lodging it in her airways. The tiny creature itself didn’t offer much in flavor, and was likely used more for adding texture and nutrients. It was a chewy, juicy morsel, full of the flavor of spices – the Lichdom cuisine seemed to be the sort to use plenty of them – though not particularly spicy like the food she had in Alfheim in the past.

At least this particular dish wasn’t, though there was a creeping tinge of spiciness that she could feel as she shoved a bit of the rice – some of it had turned semi-soggy as they absorbed the broth, while some remained crisp – after the morsel of meat and chewed it together. The rice mildened the tastes, and added more variety of textures on her tongue.

“Hey, this is pretty good,” admitted Celia before she picked out a few more snails from the bowl and repeated the process, quite enjoying the meal overall. Before too long, all the little creatures had been sucked out of their homes and into her mouth, leaving only a pile of empty shells by the side. She had also eaten all the rice, though there was still a bit of broth left in the bowl, something she noticed in Aideen’s and Calais’ bowls too. “What do we do with the leftover?”

“Just wait a bit,” said Aideen with a smile on her face.

Sure enough, not long after they finished their meal, a waiter came over to their table to collect the plates and clean the piles of snail shells, but notably had not taken the bowls with the leftover broth. Instead, they returned a short while later with a large bowl in their hand, from which they ladled out a thick, milky-looking soup into those bowls, before bowing and leaving them to their meals.

“Mix them well before eating,” Aideen had advised, so Celia did just that, watching as the white, milky soup turned a slight yellowish tint after the color of the broth it was mixed into. Inside the soup itself were small white balls that bounced when she pressed it with her spoon – provided along with the soup, so she scooped one up and brought one with some of the mixed broth into her mouth.

It was a slightly odd taste at first, as the soup had an admixture of flavors, savoriness and spiciness from the snail broth, mixed with the gentle sweet richness of the soup itself, though it settled into a rather pleasant, mild flavor after they were combined. The small balls itself were chewy, made from glutinous rice, with a core of sweet half-molten palm sugar that gushed out as she bit into them.

The food was definitely quite unlike any she has had before in her life – or should it be unlife now maybe? – but it was definitely on the good side. She also noticed how the local cuisine heavily leaned into whatever ingredients were more freely available locally. Banyumas was in the wetlands, situated as it was in the bend of a river.

As such, things like river fish and snails were commonplace amongst the local food, as were locally grown rice, as the location suited rice paddies well, which filled most of the landscape around the town itself, other than the roads. The city even grew their own coconut and palm trees, slightly further away from the paddies, all of which were ingredients for the meal they just had.