Cum

Headcanon time:

In terms of culinary culture, I imagine Skywings have a strong preference for intense and somewhat bitter flavor profiles. Roasting, charring, and smoking are all very common ways of food preparation up there, and overdoing it is preferable to underdoing it.

If you rolled up in a food wagon in their kingdom and started selling smash burgers... well first you would have a hard time getting the thing up the mountains, but once you're set up, you'd be good for the rest of your life.

On the flipside, very bland or particularly sweet flavors are mostly frowned upon. There is a bit of a stigma among Skywing warriors that sweets are for peacocks and dandies who cannot fight and are only good for squatting in the palace and kissing up to the Queen. While it is acceptable to eat fruit if you're holed up somewhere and it's the only thing you can get, you are expected to make a face and complain about it. If you don't, you will be seen as a fruit-eater, and fruit-eaters make poor warriors.

Carnelian secretly loves sweets (many Skywings do), but pretends that she doesn't because she is young and insecure about her reputation. If you were to leave something sweet where she can get it, she will be tempted to indulge, but only if she thinks she can get away with it undiscovered. Expect furious denial if caught, and threats and insults if you persist in pressing her about it.

Once something sweet has found its way into her mouth, she tends to lose all ability to moderate herself. If it's a beverage, she will drink the entire thing in one gulp, then put as much distance between herself and the empty glass as possible and pretend she is unaware of it.

Carnelian perceives herself as very sly and stealthy about this habit, but Moonwatcher generally notices every time it happens. Kinkajou thinks all of this is extremely funny.

Tangentially related, but Skywings have invented coffee. They habitually roast everything, and coffee is just roasted beans dissolved in water, so this is no big surprise. They tend to drink it black (Kestrel was a big coffee drinker, as was Glory because it helped her stay awake and study longer). An ancient Mudwing minister once greatly offended a visiting Skywing envoy by offering them coffee with cream in it. Of course this nearly resulted in a war.