ataraxion | voice.

Entry tags:

voice.

[ katniss is restless with illness, crabby with it. she wants to do something to get her out of her head, but she's worked herself too much already today, knows she's reaching a point where pushing through will only make her worse, not better. so she rests in bed, and tries to find something to talk about. she's not very good at small talk, often only exchanges a couple of words and then considers the conversation over, but there's one thing she could listen to people talk about forever. ]

Would anyone like to tell me about their favourite foods?

[ voice, because she still finds texting too fiddly. after a pause, she adds an addendum: ]

Be as detailed as you'd like.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

It's a bit simple, but I will never turn away macaroni and cheese. It can be out of a box and made with the powdered cheese and I'll still be fine with it.

[It's probably one of the few things that she was able to find cheaply, no matter where she was living.]

I've also started to get a taste for gumbo, but I wouldn't say I've made it one of my favorites. I just like knowing how everyone can make the same thing taste so different.

What's in gumbo?

[ she's never heard of it. she's never had macaroni and cheese, either, but at least she understands the component parts. ]

It's a stew, I guess. People start with their own stock from scratch and then add in different things. Beef, scallions, shrimp, different peppers and onions - whatever they want to go with for that batch. Then they use something to thicken it. A lot of people use okra to thicken it or this specific spice that's a powder. The easy way is to make a roux.

I've never made it myself, so all the little details I'm sure are lost on me, but it's one of those meals that can have a hundred different ways to add in all different sorts of things.

[This passenger's voice flows, low and mellow, like nostalgic smoke.]

There lies before you a basket of apples. Apples with crisp white flesh and polished skins gleaming gold. There are boards stacked in rows of fragrant cheeses and pots filled with butter smoother than the milk which bore it. Eggs, pickled sour, or boiled and bathing in spicy mustard. Roasted onions, sweet and soft as fruit. Fish, salted or smoked, fish spreading open their bellies, offering you their meat, pink and orange, marbled with fat; and scores of shellfish, so tender inside their armour. Succulent lamb roasting whole, greasy hogs' heads and ox-tongues, legs of goat dripping fat while they turn over the fire, the flames spitting their delight. Mead-filled horns spilling joyful foam.

In your hands, a loaf of bread, whispering its warmth like a secret into your palms till your thumbs pry open the honeyed crust... then it spills all its softness to you like a lover's sigh.

[ r u trying to seduce her, sir? ]

[ katniss doesn't know what to do with this, but it's so clear in her head. what's even better, besides the loving description, is that it's food she knows, food she might have eaten herself, if she were rich — not the fancy dishes of the capital, but still luxurious despite the simplicity, for the abundance if nothing else. ]

That sounds really good.

I like stew like that. I knew a woman who used to keep a big pot of it bubbling for anyone to buy.

[ greasy sae, back in twelve. ]

She could add anything and make it palatable. One winter it was wild dog and rhubarb for three weeks in a row.

Sounds... [Disgusting?] like it made an impression.

Why are you asking about food?

Because I wanted to talk about food.

[Obviously.]

Is there something that's your favorite?

I like stew, too. Lamb stew, with roasted plums in it. Bread made with processed flour, so it's white and fluffy as a cloud, still warm and a little elastic. Oranges.

[Talking food to the pregnant woman is a good thing.]

That sounds incredible. I don't think I've had lamb before.

It was. Every night, a feast, the like of which shall never be had in these wretched halls.

[Despite the way he doted on those visuals, there isn't much fondness here—only a sedate bitterness, which he'd likely express even if he weren't feeling so rotten. Whatever this ship-wide malady is, he's found himself woefully susceptible to it. (ps, yes. in a way.)]

You must have had a lot of money, to eat like that every night.

[ she has a lot of practice keeping her voice blank when it comes to other people's excesses, but the idea of that much fresh food, even simple, being available every night, seems a little wasteful — could anyone truly eat all of it? ]

It makes good stew. I wish we could get it here.

Maybe one time we'll luck out and land on a farming space station. [Or someone just suddenly has a baby lamb in their locker... oh the tragedy that would create.]

I would definitely stock up on fruit.

I've been trying to taste every kind of fruit they have on board. I think my favourite is the fresh berries you can pick in the gardens.

[the voice probably sounds a bit ...odd, like tombstones slamming and seems to just appear in your head as you hear it from the device. The topic it brings up is much lighter then that build up I promise.]

CURRY. I FIND IT IS LIKE BITING INTO A RED-HOT ICE CUBE. IT HAS BEEN A FAVOURITE DISH OF MINE FOR CENTURIES.

[extra miserable voice]

Meatpies. Chips and gravy. Crisps. Sandwiches, especially bacon, especially bacon with tomato. Massive soft pretzels. Peach Melba. Pizza. Why are you asking about food, don't you feel like you're dying?

Fresh baked bread. When it's out of the oven and it's all you can smell.

[ Not pilfered out of a long abandoned house, where he had to pick the mold out of it. He feels starved just thinking about it. ]

[He replies with a short hum, sounding distracted, but more or less affirmative. There's a silence, and then his voice again, renewed in energy... though not by much.]

Now— [A pause to clear his throat—it's too dry.] Tell me yours.

It wouldn't last long.

[ killing that lovely dream with practicality, sorry. ]

Unless you could pickle it. Or can it.

[ katniss closes her eyes. ]

[ the capitol's plum stew has always been her default answer, the answer she gave in all the interviews. but as good as it is, it still has that connotation: of the capitol, of the games. ]

Three squirrels. A rabbit. A partridge. An arm full of watercress and bitter greens, and the first prickles of wild strawberries, tiny crimson bursts on your tongue. I trade two of the squirrels for a loaf of grain-studded bread so fresh that it's still warm and elastic with yeast. The third for a cup of red wine, which my mother stews the rabbit in. My sister's made a soft white cheese with the milk from her goat and some herbs, and we char the partridge until the meat is falling off the bone, burn our fingers eating it before we've even set the table.

[ thanks george r. r. martin. there's a nostalgia in her voice, though: it's clear what she loved about this particular meal was not just the food, but eating something special with her family. ]

Have you tried an orange?

[ oranges are the best ok, she'll fight you. ]

That's a clever description.

[ she hasn't had much spicy food, but she knows it immediately, even by a different name. ]

I once tried a dish that flavored shaven ice with a sweet, spicy oil.

[ which was... exactly like biting into a red hot ice cube. ]

I don't even know what half of those are.

[ she sounds amused by it, though. ]

Talking about food makes me feel better.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 5

voice.

voice ||

voice ||

no subject

voice;

voice;

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Voice

[voice]

[voice]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

voice

[voice]

[voice]