“Some things don’t become obvious until you see it from a different angle.” - Old philosophical saying.

In a crowded food vendor’s stall at the side of the street, Aideen came to the realization that as far and wide as her journeying had gone in the world at large, she actually had not traveled through much of the Lichdom itself. The thought came to her as she looked at the people around her, other customers of the apparently popular local food stall, and realized how she could place their origins from many clues, yet had no idea that such people were amongst those who called the Lichdom their home these days.

She was in a quaint little town to the south-west of the Lichdom’s territory, which she passed on her way back from the forest of shadows and paid a visit out of curiosity. There happened to be a larger proportion of orcish people living in the town compared to elsewhere in the Lichdom, though the ones that lived there had clearly adapted to life in the Lichdom long ago, given their choice of attire and fluent language.

It was not like she went there with any purpose in particular, and the food stall she had gone to – which pretty much amounted to a cooking area with several tables and chairs set around it in an otherwise open space – mostly piqued her interest due to its clear popularity with the locals. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, but the stall was already packed near its full capacity.

The place’s proprietor and cook was a tall, burly orcish matron of rather elderly age, as evidenced by the wrinkles on her dark greenish skin and her gray hair. Even so, the old matron still moved energetically as she served her customers, treating many of them like a grandmother would to their grandson, which the locals took in stride.

As for the food served in the stall itself, it was in some ways one of the simplest, homey dishes around. The orcish matron even made the main ingredient right on the spot as she mixed some flour – likely millet, barley, or a mix of both given what was grown in the region – with water and a bit of powdered salt to make a dough that she then kneaded for a while until it turned glossy.

Once the dough was finished, the matron then tore thin pieces off the clump with her fingers and tossed them into a constantly roiling pot of soup whenever an order came in. After only a couple minutes, the pieces of dough would be cooked and scooped up into carved wooden bowls along with a generous helping of the soup, to be enjoyed piping hot.

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The pieces of cooked dough itself were simple and hearty, a bit like a flat, broad, and short kind of noodle, though one with rather uneven thickness given how it was torn by hand. The somewhat uneven thickness actually gave the cooked end product an interesting texture, as the thinner parts would be tender and very slurpable while the thicker bits had some chew and body to them.

It was the soup that really brought the dish to life, though. Orcs were known to prefer bold and strong flavors, not unlike carnivorous breeds of therians, so it had not surprised Aideen much when the soup had a strong, pronounced taste. She could tell that the thick broth must have been made by boiling bones for hours on end, if not overnight, though she couldn’t pinpoint what sort of bones were used.

Probably a mixture of bones from various meat animals, she guessed.

To that thick, meaty broth, the orcish matron likely added some sort of dried fish – there were crumbled bits of rehydrated fish meat floating in the broth, as well as still-crisp pieces of fish bones that added an interesting textural element as well – as well as some kind of fermented seasoning, probably the sort of savory fermented bean paste that was a semi-common seasoning to the south of the Lichdom. There was also a hint of prickly spiciness characteristic of ginger, so it was likely part of the soup’s seasoning base as well.

On top of all that, there were also slices of chili peppers that added a fruity sort of spiciness to the flavor as well as pieces of garlic and onion that had been chopped roughly and then deep fried to a crisp sprinkled over the soup along with some freshly chopped green onions just before serving. The additions added another punch of flavor to the soup.

Taken altogether, the overall effect was that of a hearty, flavorful soup with the bits of cooked dough providing a body to the heavy broth. Also suspended within the thick brock were chunks of tendons that had been boiled until they were pleasantly chewy and strips of dried cow skin that absorbed the soup and positively gushed with it when chewed.

It wasn’t any fine cooking or the like, more the sort that made someone think of their homes, of a home-cooked meal made by their own parents or spouse, something that reminded people of the feeling of a meal had around a warm hearth, with their family around them. It was the perfect sort of food to evoke all sorts of nostalgic feelings and memories.

Aideen might not be the target of such nostalgia, as she recalled seeing similar cuisine in the far western regions of Elmaiya, supposedly a popular dish with the orcish people there. They used somewhat different ingredients, less meat and more fish, with a somewhat different fermented seasoning, but the general strokes were the same.

For all she knew, the orcs in the town might well be descendants from refugees that originated from a tribe in those regions, who had moved to the Lichdom ages ago. Given the timeline and how long the Lichdom had existed, she could well believe that to be the case. Nature does bring strange bedfellows indeed, though it still irked Aideen somewhat that she knew more about distant parts of the world than the place she had been living in for a good chunk of the past centuries.