What might cibation look like in a story?
According to the cibation entry in Lyndy Abraham’s dictionary, cibation is “the nourishment of the philosopher’s stone” (p. 40) So any time the protagonist is being fed could work. Think of the great feasts in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, for example.
More specifically, however, Abraham goes on to say that “the cibation of the stone is frequently compared to the feeding of an infant (or baby bird) with milk and meat.”
Mylius, Philosophia reformata (1622), Emblem 12, “Cibatio”
You can just see the infant being nursed in the bottom of the image.
So I suspect all the times Pullman mentioned baby Lyra being fed by Alice and Malcolm in La Belle Sauvage were a nod to cibation. And perhaps when Will and Lyra made omelettes for each other in the Subtle Knife, which I posted about before, could be considered cibation as well.
