#miah'to

There was a time in Miah’to’s life when he only cooked for practical reasons. After his younger brother was born, his mother couldn’t care less if they ate at all, let alone if it was any good, and his older brother was far too preoccupied fathering the next generation of the South Shroud to take on the responsibility himself. That only left Miah’to, and, well, he did his best.

He wasn’t a natural at first, but as he dove into the theory behind cooking, how ingredients interacted with heat and each other, he fell in love with it. He’d burn his way through recipe books, determined to master different cuisines, and to take the techniques he’d learn from certain ones and apply them to others.

In all of his reading, he kept seeing the same claim: sharing meals and cooking for someone else would not only improve your skills, but also the taste of a dish. Even when he was young, he savored the rare praise from his family when he perfectly executed a recipe, but he hadn’t truly understood what that advice had meant until he came to work at the Cracked Cluster.

Feldspar taught Miah’to the more personal aspect of cooking, how to accommodate someone’s needs, how to anticipate their tastes. It was a different craft altogether, and Miah’to knew he wouldn’t master it quickly.

Learning from Feldspar, and working at a tavern more generally, did help, but it wasn’t until he started dating Jules that he felt genuinely challenged. Jules’s father, Alexois, was a traditional Duskwight—vegetarian, with an inexplicably strong fondness for Mun-Tuy beans.

For the first few meals after he and Alexois met, Miah’to tried to impress him with elaborate vegetarian dishes from faraway lands. Alexois was gracious about the effort, and was happy to spend time with him and Jules both, but Miah’to could tell there was something missing. He chose to dive into a few books on more traditional recipes from the Shroud and found a Duskwight recipe in many of them: Mun-Tuy bean and mushroom stew. He’d opted for one of the more involved recipes, complete with expensive smoked rock salt and parsley oil. 

This one, Miah’to hoped, would really wow him.

In his small kitchen, Alexois noticed what Miah’to was attempting almost immediately, and excitedly shared his own recipe, suggestions, and advice for the dish. Miah’to was not one to make changes on the fly, and he hated other hands in the kitchen, but despite his reservations, he followed Alexois’s lead, not wanting to disappoint him.

As they sat down to actually eat, Miah’to watched carefully as Alexois took his first bite. 

Alexois’s eyes crinkled, and he let out a low, pleased hum. “You let the beans rest after boiling."

“You told me to,” Miah’to replied, and immediately regretted how exasperated it sounded.

“It’s good.” Alexois beamed over at him. “Very good.”

After reaching to squeeze Miah'to's knee beneath the table, Jules nodded and went in for another spoonful.

Blushing at the praise, Miah’to finally took a spoonful for himself. It tasted different from the recipe he’d practiced on his own, earthier, sweeter, the skins perfectly soft. 

Feldspar barged back into the tavern just before dinner service, two oversized bouquets of sunflowers in hand and soil under his fingernails. Miah'to was busy behind the bar, still getting the kitchen ready for the evening rush.

It was rare for Miah'to to ask Feldspar for favors at all, aside from the occasional day off, so Feldspar was obviously tickled when Miah'to recruited him for what was clearly a romantic mission. He set one of the bouquets on the bar with a smirk. "For you, Miah'to~"

Miah'to hurried over, snatching the flowers and hiding them behind the bar. “Not for me," he insisted. "And I only needed one..."

"I'm sure your favorite bard will enjoy an entire bouquet even more than a single flower," Feldspar nodded sagely.

"You don't think it's too much?" Miah'to winced.

Feldspar thought of the chocolates he'd helped Miah'to make nearly a turn earlier, before Miah'to and Jules were even in any kind of real relationship—and how one seemed to follow soon after. It wasn't difficult to connect the dots. He shook his head. "He's a bard, I think he likes it when it's too much."

Miah'to nodded hesitantly, blush deepening, then gestured to the second bouquet still in Feldspar's hand to steer the conversation away from himself. "I take it you're stealing my idea for yourself, then?"

"Fen's usually the one to bring me flowers," Feldspar admitted with a chuckle, twine-bound paper crinkling beneath his fingers. "But since I was cutting stems anyway, I thought I'd return the favor for once..."

"I'm sure he'll like them too." Miah'to smiled.

"We'll have to compare notes tomorrow~" Feldspar teased, and Miah'to predictably sighed at that, ears flattening.

"Or we could not... but," Miah'to nodded. "Thank you."

It was always a special time at the tavern, when the night was darkest and the dinner rush was slowly replaced by third and fourth rounds of drinks, long conversations at the bar, and traveling bards working the dining room for tips.

Miah'to never thought he'd enjoy this kind of work when he started at the Cluster, and had merely accepted it for the opportunity to spend evenings in the kitchen. It was a cruel irony that his nocturnal upbringing made him a perfect fit for the late-night shift, when the least actual cooking needed to be done.

It grew on him over time. While he was not as outgoing as the tavern's owner, Miah'to still enjoyed overhearing conversations, progressively wilder and less plausible as the drinks kept coming. His life back in the South Shroud had been fairly insular, and that was partially by his own design, but these days, every night widened the world for him just a little bit.

On this particular night, one large party of almost a dozen adventurers, all men, had taken over most of the dining room, dragging the tables and benches together into a single long table. Miah'to kept an eye on them as they broke out Triple Triad decks and scattered gil, hoping he wouldn't need to forcibly escort anyone to the inn at Rowena's. But so far so good. Every once in a while, one of them would raise an empty pitcher of mead, and Miah'to would come rushing over to refill it. Business as usual.

Between refills, Miah'to tried out a couple of more creative drink recipes, subjecting the lone patron at the bar to them for testing purposes. An older Highlander woman—and apparently a former Scion—she visited on a handful of occasions, alone and on their busier nights, always catching Miah'to up on her latest adventures. He was usually wary of attention from women, but she had been persistent, and had clearly sensed his discomfort, never crossing over into flirtatious territory.

"Strange," she noted with a wrinkle of her nose, setting the glass on the bar top.

"Good strange, or bad strange?"

"Not entirely sure." She reached for it again, taking another sip, just to be certain. "I just didn't expect it to taste like fruity pine needles…"

"I'll take that as bad strange, then." Miah'to chuckled and nodded once, resolving to make a few changes to the recipe.

This plan was interrupted with a loud thunk and cheering as one man at the table rose to his feet. Then the shouting started. Miah'to sighed.

Before he could even psych himself up to intervene, the woman at the bar spun around in her seat, shouting for them to settle down, unless they wanted her to weigh in. Just as Miah'to was worried that he was now going to need to break up a fight between three people…

"Aye, aye." One of them had mumbled, both of the instigators settling down like children scolded by their mother.

"Sorry about that." She rolled her eyes, reaching to take another sip of the fruity-pine-needle drink. "I'll be sure they don't do it again."

"Do you know them?" Miah'to asked, eyes wide.

"Of course." She chuckled. "They're all my lovers."

Miah'to blinked, fairly certain that at least two of the adventurers at the table looked like brothers, and that some of them were even younger than he was.

It was a rare day off from work, one without even Jules to distract him. Miah'to had been putting in even longer hours than usual at the Cluster—thanks to his boss's seemingly endless vacation—so he'd been looking forward to it all week. After weeks of making the same eleven menu items on repeat, he was going to get truly creative, he'd decided, and make a recipe just for himself.

He stared blankly into his cupboard, countless ingredients staring back at him. Jars of spices, salts, and oils. Bags of lentils and other grains. An icebox with plenty of ingredients that would likely go bad if he didn't eat them soon. Typically, some inspiration would have hit him by now. Anything. When he was working, it was like the ideas came to him effortlessly, almost intrusively, but now that he actually had the time…

Miah'to told himself to start anyway. He should start with onions. Every recipe started with onions. But the crate of onions looked impossibly far away. His knife impossibly heavy. He really didn't want to wash the cutting board again.

He pinched a lentil. A stew would be easy enough. He'd have to soak the lentils, roast some of the spices a bit, maybe zest that almost-rotting lemon over it at the end. Instead, he let out a groan, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache bloomed behind his eyes, and closed the cupboard with a decisive click.

Ignoring his pride, Miah'to put on his boots. At least the skewers from the food stall wouldn't ask anything of him, aside from his coin and his dignity. He'd be back at the stove again tomorrow. Tonight, he would drink wine, listen to his orchestrion, and give himself some mercy.