#parvaneh

“Yes, you can help.” Her mother chuckled again as she grabbed a small stool from under the kitchen table. Setting it next to the stove, she beckoned Parvaneh to stand on it. “Now, be careful! It’s hot.”

Obediently, Parvaneh clasped her hands behind her back as she hopped onto the stool. From up here, the kitchen felt different. This was a chief’s view, where everything felt smaller. Parvaneh grinned as she turned to the stove where a large pan sat on a burner. Inside, several small seeds sizzled in oil, sending up a delicious smell. This was it; this was cooking.

When she looked at her mother expectantly, her mother ruffled her hair gently. “Let’s start with adding in the onions.”

One by one, they added in tomatoes, chicken, peppers, and garlic. A pinch of a yellow spice, a spoonful of a red one, and Parvaneh lost track of the different jars that her mother opened and closed. By the end of it, there was bubbling brown chicken curry that filled the room with a mouth-watering aroma. 

Her mother took a small spoon of the curry and blew on it before holding it out to her. Parvaneh blew once carefully (she’d burned her mouth too many times and as a big kid, she knew better) and then took a bite. Flavour exploded in her mouth, and she stared at her mother with wide eyes. “It tastes so good!!”

“Of course it does,” her mother said, a twinkle in her eyes. “We added a special spice, after all.”

“A special spice?” she repeated curiously.

Her mother gently bopped her nose. “It’s a secret you’ll learn when you’re older.”

-x-

As all little girls do, Parvaneh grew up. Her nose was still stubby, her bobbed brown hair poofy, but her fingers were neither a painter’s nor a pianist’s hands. No, they were a scholar’s hands. As an adult, she fell in love with the world of studies, with the smell of ink and fresh sheets of paper. There was so much to write, so much to observe, so much to test. With that in mind, she’d left behind her small village and moved to the big city, joining the Akademiya. 

Every day was a new adventure, with new foods to try. Still, sometimes, she craved her mother’s cooking, a taste she couldn’t find no matter how many restaurants she went to. 

Her mother had given her a cookbook before sending her off to the big city, a notebook full of meticulously written recipes. Parvaneh carefully thumbed through the pages, her fingers lightly pressing against her mother’s cramped handwriting. 

Chicken Curry. She stopped at that recipe, remembering her birthday long ago when she’d first learned to cook. It had been ages since she’d picked up the kitchen knife, but she couldn’t forget that recipe if she tried. What better dish to treat homesickness with than her favourite meal?

The first curry she made was a disaster, the spices burning in the oil before she could go any further. The second time, the meat was still raw. The third time, she forgot to add in the tomato paste. 

The sixth time, however, it was curry, brown and bubbling and just like her memories. Parvaneh took a spoonful, making sure to blow on it (she’d burned her mouth too many times as a child and as an adult, she knew better) before taking a bite. 

It was…ok. Fine. Average.

It was chicken curry, but just that. It wasn’t her mother’s recipe at all. 

The seventh attempt was the same, as was the eighth. The fifteenth was nothing special, nor was the twentieth. Her mother had listed all the ingredients and Parvaneh had made sure to buy only the freshest produce and meat. 

I use a special spice, her mother had said. It wasn’t turmeric or ground up peppers or garam masala, it wasn’t saffron or cardamom or cumin. All of those were in the recipe, were in the bottles littered on her kitchen counter.

A special spice. Parvaneh remembered the taste of that curry, of her mother’s cooking. While she didn’t live in the forest anymore, she still knew how to navigate the wilds and scavenge. It couldn’t be that hard to find the plant that her mother used. 

-x-

While Parvaneh had grown up, the forests of Sumeru had stayed the same. They were big and wild and full of more plants than she could count. Her father had once told her that whatever she forgot, the forests would remember, and she could believe that standing under the canopy of thousands-of-years-old trees. 

Hopefully, the forests would also remember the spice her mother used. Parvaneh started simple, grinding up mourning flowers and nilotpala lotuses. She mixed together henna berries and padisarah leaves. She even chased shroomboars. 

Yet, no matter what she added, the curry still didn’t taste right. Something was missing, something vital. Parvaneh sat in the forest in front of her cooking pot, watching the oil gurgle and bubble. Was there an ingredient she didn’t know?

As she was thinking this, she spotted a small, green plant moving in the corner of her eye.

Now, living in Sumeru, Parvaneh was used to moving plants. There were dendro slimes and whopperplants, things that were annoying on the best of days and downright dangerous on the worst. Quickly, she readied a knife, her other hand reaching for a log so she could set the thing on fire. 

The plant’s head poked out from behind a tree. On top of its head was a cute, jaunty green hat. 

Whopperplants did not wear hats. Neither did slimes. Parvaneh narrowed her eyes as she studied the creature.  Another head poked out from another tree—this time a blue plant with a blue hat. Then another (orange with a red hat) and finally a last one (pink with a green hat).

Plants with hats.

Parvaneh glanced at the herbs she gathered. Had she accidentally taken a poisonous mushroom?

“What is that Nara doing?” the pink plant asked in a high-pitched voice.

“Something strange,” the green plant answered in a deep, husky voice. 

Parvaneh pinched herself but the plants kept talking as they crept forward. Half-convinced this was a dream, she asked, “What are you?”

Unlike her, the short creatures weren’t surprised or scared. If anything, they brightened up and left their hiding spots.

“Aranara,” the blue one said cheerfully.

“Nara is in danger,” the red one said, pointing at the fire. 

“Aranara?” Parvaneh muttered. “That fairytale?”

Like most adults in Sumeru, Parvaneh had heard of the Aranara, the guardians of the forest. And like most adults, she had dismissed it as a fairytale for children. For you see, once upon a time, like most adults in Sumeru, Parvaneh couldn’t dream and didn’t remember magic of her childhood. Most importantly, she didn’t remember the magic of the forest or the Aranara that she had once played with so fondly as a child. 

But the forest remembered and the forest would never forget and these Aranara might not be the same ones she had played with but they knew her all the same.

“You’re real?” she asked, pinching herself again. The Aranara were still there, curiously peeking into her bags and tugging on her clothes. 

“Nara can control it,” the pink Aranara said as it tried to peek into the pot. “Nara is burning the plants.”

“Nara can’t control it,” the red Aranara huffed, glaring suspiciously at the fire. “That’s why she’s burning plants.”

“That’s not—I’m cooking.” Parvaneh quickly blocked the blue Aranara before it could toss water on the fire. “Wait! Stop! Don’t do that!”

“But Nara is in danger?” the blue Aranara said, cocking its head. 

“What’s cooking?” the green Aranara asked curiously, eyes wide. 

“Not in danger, definitely not in danger!” Parvaneh glanced at the pot—fortunately, nothing was burning. Not that it mattered, her curry still wasn’t right. “And cooking is…mixing together food and…um. Well, it’s hard to explain. Here, eat this—wait, can you eat?”

“Aranara can eat,” the pink Aranara confirmed solemnly, holding one of the bowls she’d handed out.

The red one spat out the food after a single bite. “This tastes horrible.”

“Disgusting,” chimed in the pink Aranara (though that didn’t stop it from eating more).

“What is taste?” the green Aranara asked, still curious and wide-eyed, the spoon still in its mouth.

Maybe she should have just ignored them. It was one thing to hate her own cooking, another for a bunch of strange, mystical creatures to come in and agree with her.

“Cooking…” The blue Aranara rubbed its chin seriously. “There are some Aranara that do that.”

“Who?” the green one asked and Parvaneh had the feeling that the number of Aranara that cooked had just increased by one. 

“Arapacati said the Golden Nara had taught her,” the blue Aranara continued sagely, as though it were a wise man of old. Maybe it was. She had no idea how old any of them where. “And her brothers cook.”

“What’s a brother?”

“Is it food?”

“Arasaka is a brother.” The blue Ararnara scrunched its face, pondering the questions deeply. “I’m not sure what else is a brother. I don’t think it’s food.”

This was the most ridiculous conversation Parvaneh had ever heard. She rubbed her forehead. She couldn’t even explain cooking, did she really want the headache of explaining family members? “Brothers aren’t food.” Quietly, thinking of her own siblings, she mumbled, “As much as I wish they were sometimes…”

“Of course not. Arasaka is Aranara,” the red Aranara said bluntly. “Aranara are not food.”

Parvaneh felt a tinge of irritation—she wasn’t even the one who had asked that stupid question in the first place! 

Ignoring her, the Aranara started to talk to each other.

“Where is Arasaka?”

“I don’t know, he’s not here.”

“Maybe Araphala knows?”

“I don’t know where Araphala is…”

“Arapacati doesn’t know either.”

“Oh, but Arapacati said…”

Parvaneh watched as the Aranara huddled together, their whispers sounding like wind through the leaves. Tiny heads nodded, their hats not falling off as they came to a consensus. It wasn’t long before they turned around.

“Don’t worry,” the blue Aranara said seriously. “We’ll help.”

“We know what to do,” the green one chimed in.

“What?” Parvaneh’s jaw dropped; this wasn’t the response she expected. 

“You keep an eye on the danger,” the red one ordered, giving the fire one last glare. 

“We know where everything is!” the pink one said. “We’ll be quick!”

“You don’t even—” Parvaneh bit her tongue before she could finish her sentence. The Aranara bounced in front of her, eager and earnest and impossible to refuse. What did it matter that they didn’t know what cooking was?  She was stuck as it was, and things couldn’t get worse.

She sighed, rubbing her forehead as a headache started to form. “Fine.”

-x-

As children of the forest, the Aranara knew where everything was. They knew the best places to play hide and seek, to play tag, to create castles out of sand and mud and a little imagination. They knew the spots where the little Nara pretended to be pirates and the caves to hide from big Nara. They knew the trees with the sweetest fruit, the bushes with the tangiest berries, and just where to pick the starshrooms.

So when the Aranara returned after an hour, Parvaneh had a spread fit for a king in front of her. A junkyard king, perhaps, but a king nonetheless. Proudly, like children showing off their secret trove, each Aranara presented their findings. 

As expected, the blue Aranara stepped forward first, several orange-red fruit grasped in its hands. “Araphala said sunsettias are the best for cooking.” 

“Mushrooms are even better,” the red Aranara interrupted with a huff as it dropped several mushrooms on top of the sunsettias. There were small, white buttons, large portabellas, tall shiitake, and broad oyster mushrooms. Yet, hidden amidst the usual brown and white varieties, red and yellow mushrooms peeked out.

Parvaneh narrowed her eyes, squinting at the pile. Fly agaric. Sulphur tuft. Destroying angel—she paled as she recognized the more poisonous mushrooms, the ones her father carefully taught her to avoid when she was little. 

The downside to relying on the Aranara for cooking: poisons did not apply to them as they did to humans. 

“Some of that might kill me,” she pointed out.

“Water won’t hurt Nara!” The pink Aranara came forward with a small wooden cup, water sloshing inside with each step. “Arapas said to use special water.”

“Special…” Parvaneh could only wonder what that meant. Dew? Underground springs? Or, just like the poisonous mushrooms, something that man wasn’t meant to find? 

Finally, it was the green Aranara’s turn, who marched forward with a spring in its step. All sorts of bright and colourful things spilled out of its arms. “Arasaka said cooking was about the taste of happiness, so here are all the things that make me happy.”

Happiness meant different things to different people, and that was true for Aranara as well. For a certain plucky green Aranara, happiness was a bright, chiming feeling, and so it had gathered golden bells and purple bellflowers alike. There was orange cardboard and bright green grasses, spotted rocks and a striped leaf. The sort of trinkets and treasures that catch your eye when you take a walk, the little things you bring home to share with others. 

Most of it was inedible but as sharp as Parvaneh’s tongue was, she didn’t have the heart to tell the green Aranara that. Not when it looked at her so happily, as though it was sharing its favourite treasures to her.

“Thank you,” she finally said.

The Aranara were still looking at her eagerly, then at the pot. Even the red Aranara had overcome its fear of the flame enough to linger nearby. Clearly, none of them would leave until she actually cooked. While the ingredients they’d brought her were terrible, there were still some usable herbs and fruit. If she combined the best of the bunch, it had to make something tasty.

Or at least edible. 

Sunsettias and garlic, lemongrass and oyster mushrooms—Parvaneh looked at them all doubtfully before chopping and tossing them into the pot. As odd as the flavour profiles were, maybe a little Aranara magic might make them mesh together.

In a world of gods and adeptus, of sea monsters and ghosts, it wasn’t an odd thing to believe that the Aranara could make a terrible dish into a good one. 

The only problem: the Aranara didn’t have cooking magic. They barely knew what cooking was, let alone how to fix it. 

In the end, the curry that came out was soupy and brothlike, a stew that looked like it had come back from the Archon war. Parvaneh scrunched her nose. The Aranara took a step back. Even the green Aranara, the most cheerful and hopeful of the bunch, had to turn its back on the curry.

Cooking was cooking, whether it was done at home or in a mystical forest surrounded by fairytale creatures. You couldn’t simply throw random ingredients together and hope for the best. It would take incredible luck for that to succeed, the kind of luck that was barely keeping a certain Mondstadt pyro-adventurer alive. 

(Or, the kind of skills a certain chef from Liyue would have, one that Parvaneh would one day meet when her nose was still stubby, her hands still scholarly, but her hair longer and less puffy. He would remind her of the Aranara long after she’d forgotten what they were.)

“This isn’t working.” Parvaneh sighed. Would it count as a bio-hazard if she dumped it in the woods? Her shoulders slumped as she looked at the last of the ingredients she’d brought with her. What was the point? She’d spent days trying to cook and recreate the magic of her mother’s cooking, and she just couldn’t quite get it. Maybe it was time to give up.

The Aranara gathered around her, disappointed as well. The pink one patted her leg, trying to comfort her as the others discussed the problem.

“Arapacati said to mix the things together.”

“Maybe the food wasn’t happy enough? I have more happy things.”

“Nara should have used the mushrooms.”

“The red mushrooms looked happy!”

“Is there another special water?”

Parvaneh burst into laughter. How could she not? Their suggestions were so serious and earnest and yet entirely ridiculous. Just what had she expected would happen, going to them for help? They didn’t know what taste was and it showed, oh it showed in the curry-turned-stew. 

It was silly and yet with every chuckle she felt her bitterness dissolve into sugar-sweet joy. A joy she hadn’t felt in years, back when she was younger, cooking with her mom, touching the stove for the very first time. She’d made food for her family then, simple dishes that were rough and unpolished and yet eaten as though they were made by a top chef. 

Despite the imperfections, the meals had felt perfect. 

Parvaneh rubbed the tears from her eyes. How could she have forgotten that? While the Aranara didn’t know the first thing about food, they were cooking with her, for her, and wasn’t that the most important thing? 

“I know what to do,” she said, silencing the Aranara as she sat down for her last cooking attempt. This time, she’d follow the recipe as it was, her body having long memorized it from her many failures. Parvaneh chopped up the garlic, ground up the spices, carefully measured teaspoons of oil and water and tomato puree. 

And when it came to the Aranara’s ingredients, she made sure to pick only one (edible) thing from each of her helpers. Things that would work together, things that could blend well, things that contrasted but didn’t clash. 

A spicy smell wafted up from the curry, something that was both familiar yet new. Parvaneh carefully doled out the curry into several small bowls, handing them out to each Aranara. 

(And while she wasn’t a petty person, she gave a little less to the red Aranara and a little more to the green one.)

The colour wasn’t right, but she dipped her spoon into her bowl all the same. Bright, warm flavours hit her tongue and she closed her eyes as she swallowed. Her mother’s was better. Her mother’s was much better.

But this was tasty too. She had a second spoonful, then a third, and she knew before she was halfway through that she’d want another bowlful.

“Cooking is nice,” the green Aranara said, as though hearing her thoughts. 

“It is,” she agreed, breaking into a smile. “It really is.”

It had taken her so long to realize it, but the special spice her mom had told her about was the spice of lo—

-x-

Parvaneh woke up on the edge of the forest, her bag empty, her dishes clean. It was strange. She’d come here looking for a special spice and after a week she hadn’t been able to find it. Yet, she didn’t feel disappointed in the least. Maybe it was the dream she’d just had. Though she could barely recall it, there was a faint memory of laughter and a warm belly. A delicious taste lingered on her tongue.

She’d found the spice. 

If only she could remember what it was. 

“Guess I’ll just have to try again,” Parvaneh muttered as she packed up. The only question was when—she still had to do her thesis and it was hard to find time to sleep let alone go out on excursions like this.

Unless…

“That’s it!” Parvaneh hit her fist on her palm, excited. “I’ll change my thesis!”