Chapter 4 - The Farm in Irttat
Cocoa cake with milk was Lucita's lunch today.
According to Teresa herself, cocoa cake was her specialty dessert, and it indeed lived up to its reputation. The baked cake had a beautiful brown color, a soft texture, and melted in the mouth. She boiled milk in her new kettle to go with it, which took care of lunch.
She didn't know why, but she couldn't quite get used to the bread that everyone else loved as their staple food, she always felt something was missing. When she lay down on the bed for her midday rest, Lucita resolved to quickly finish organizing the yard so she would have time to make savory meat and vegetables.
Not long after she got up in the afternoon, Javena came over with several neighbors to help.
The first to enter was a smiling red-haired girl wearing a string of colorful shell necklaces, named Sylvette. She’s a fisherwoman.
There were also two tall, sturdy middle-aged people: one with short brown curly hair and an honest expression, the carpenter Skloot; and one with short black hair wearing a small brown cap and thick overalls with large pockets, it’s the builder Durani.
Among them was Irene, whom Lucita had only said goodbye to that very morning. She smiled and pulled a message feather box from her bag and handed it to Lucita: "New neighbor, this is auntie's welcoming gift. Will you accept it?"
Besides Irene, Javena had brought two bottles of wine, the fisherwoman Sylvette had carried over a net of seasonal sea bass, and the carpenter Skloot and builder Durani had worked together to carry a large wooden cabinet. With their imposing physique, the two stood one on either side like two knights, placing Skloot's housewarming gift in Lucita’s living room for her storage.
As for Durani herself, she said, "I found out too late and didn't have time to prepare anything. In the future, if you need to repair or build a house, come find me. I won't charge you."
Faced with the neighbors' goodwill, Lucita was overwhelmed with gratitude and thanked them repeatedly. Without further ado, everyone quickly got to work.
The front and back yards had originally been two vegetable plots. After two years of neglect, the loose soil had become compacted and even formed damp ground cover. Under the bushes that hadn't seen sunlight for years, much moss had grown.
First they used shovels to remove the weeds. The remaining bushes needed to be both cut and dug up. The cut wood was all gathered together, the fallen leaves on the ground swept clean, and only then did the entire yard become open and presentable, suitable for habitation. It would also be much more convenient to cultivate vegetable gardens and flower beds in the future.
Of the remaining wood, the smaller pieces were taken back by Skloot to make small decorative items, while the larger pieces were piled in a corner of the yard, so it would be ready to use when repairing the house in the future.
By the time they finished working amid the lively atmosphere, it was already near dusk. In good conscience, Lucita should have kept everyone for dinner. Nevertheless, everyone knew she had just moved in and hadn't had time to prepare anything, her cookware and tableware were probably insufficient too. After some discussion, the group, still in high spirits from their conversation, grabbed the net of fish and went to Javena's house.
As soon as Sylvette entered, she tossed her red braid and rushed excitedly into the kitchen, calling out with great enthusiasm: "Just wait, I'll show you my skills!"
The fresh bass were still lively, their tails slapping the cutting board with a "smack smack," slippery as could be. Sylvette, as a fisherwoman, was expert at handling fish. She wielded the knife skillfully, scaling and gutting in one smooth motion. Placing them on the cutting board, she asked Javena beside her: "Should these fish be roasted, made into soup, or what?"
Javena glanced over: "I'm making soup, so don't make soup with the fish."
"Then let's roast them. Sea bass are small, so one fish per person is the perfect portion."
Although sea bass were small in size, they had fat bellies and thick meat, so they wouldn't be dry when eaten. What was rare was that they had almost no fishy smell. The meat was tender, smooth, and sweet. Paired with spices and lemon for roasting, they had a distinctive fragrance, very suitable for dinner. Sylvette ate them often and had mastered the art of roasting fish.
Sylvette dried the fish and coated both inside and outside with a layer of olive oil, applying coarse salt to one side. She stuffed a sprig of rosemary and a clove of garlic into the belly, then sprinkled salt and black pepper. She cut a lemon, squeezed a few drops of lemon juice into the belly and on the skin, and tucked the cut slices inside the belly to seal it. Finally, she sprinkled more coarse salt and black pepper on the fish's surface and placed them in the oven that had just been extinguished for sealed roasting.
Javena was busy making soup. Yesterday Aurora's place had sold out of mushrooms, so she'd gone over first thing this morning to buy a pound of chanterelles. Chopped onions, garlic, thyme, and other spices were fried in butter, then diced chanterelles were added and cooked, followed by water and cream to simmer slowly. After the broth had reduced to a little less than half, it had a milky white texture. Salt and black pepper were added, and after serving, it was garnished with a little parsley, rich and fragrant.
Several people bustled about in the kitchen. Lucita helped out while openly stealing techniques, feeling that it all looked quite easy.
Perhaps I was also a great cook before I lost my memory, which is why I'm learning so quickly, she thought smugly and let out a little laugh.
"What are you laughing about?" Sylvette had a sharp hearing, and she immediately poked her head over curiously: "What's so funny?"
Lucita smiled and deflected the question, then suddenly felt another wave of dizziness.
It had been like this these past few days.
Was it related to her amnesia? She harbored a secret concern.
The dizzy spells always came quickly and left just as fast. She closed her eyes, and when the dizziness passed, she handed the bread knife to Javena with a composed expression.
Before long, dinner was ready. In the center of the dining table sat half a tureen of cream of mushroom soup, a bowl of asparagus salad, a smoked ham, and a strawberry cake bought from Mrs. Teresa's. The cake had a golden color, and at the cut edge one could see distinct fluffy grains.
On each person's wooden plate sat a roasted sea bass with a golden-brown skin. Javena, as the host, served everyone a bowl of soup, cut a small plate of cake, and gave each a slice of ham.
The sea bass had a crispy, fragrant outer skin, with fresh, tender, smooth meat carrying a faint scent of rosemary. The asparagus salad was sweet and juicy. Taking a bite of the smoked ham, an intense savory saltiness burst forth in the mouth. The strawberry cake was a perfectly qualified dessert, the cake base moist and delicate. The only pity was that Teresa was too stingy with the cream, only spreading a thin layer on top. In the mouth, it was completely overwhelmed by the cake and strawberry juice, leaving only a pitiful hint of cream fragrance.
Sylvette chattered away about storms at sea, while Irene and Javena occasionally offered commentary. Durani tried several times to interject and boast about her construction achievements but never succeeded.
Even casual conversation was a good opportunity for Lucita to gather information about the town. She listened carefully without saying much. Noticing that Skloot also didn't talk much, the two made eye contact, and the tall, short-haired woman revealed a somewhat silly grin.
Full of wine and food, the day was also coming to an end.
Lucita returned home, tidied up on her own, and it was near the dusk of nightfall again.
Fortunately, she didn't have to spend tonight in pitch darkness. A circle of bright sturgeon-eye lamps hung on the walls. Light-seeking flying insects circled the outdoor lamps. Looking through the glass window, the glimmering halos appeared somewhat weak.
The brightest lamp she placed on the desk in the study, illuminating the study as bright as day. She took out the town chronicles to read under the lamp.
The beginning of history was a natural disaster that occurred more than five hundred years ago.
Mountain peaks collapsed, rivers ran dry, the world fell into a prolonged polar night, and humans died in batches from hunger, disease, and war.
The Creator Gaia spent a full seven days reshaping the peaks, dredging the rivers, awakening the sun, and preserving some of humanity's remaining sparks. The humans who survived the disaster built this entirely new world.
Although they managed to continue with difficulty, countless lost heritages destroyed in the disaster could never be recovered.
At the same time, magic power became increasingly diluted. Fewer and fewer humans possessed magic power, resources on the earth were scarce, and the flames of war erupted everywhere.
But the Esti Mountains were an exception.
Elves, merfolk, and even the few remaining dragons had been driven by the massively expanding humans in prehistoric times into the depths of the Esti Mountains. This place was close to the Creator's divine kingdom, and precisely because of this, under the god's protection, the area around the Esti Mountains was spared from the disaster's ravages.
After the disaster, the foreign races lived in seclusion in the Esti Mountains, but how could a vibrant heart tolerate eternal confinement? When love and desire occurred, the boundaries of race became infinitely blurred, ultimately producing countless human hybrid descendants.
They were human hybrids among elves or merfolk, some even mixed with dragon bloodlines, possessing some weak abilities of other species and long lifespans.
Originally, these hybrids tried to live in the human world.
Among crowds, abilities different from ordinary people could be carefully hidden, but when peers of the same age grew old and decrepit while they remained in their prime, they would stand out like goats among sheep.
For most post-disaster humans, elves and merfolk were merely legends, and magic was pure nonsense. They were naturally regarded as monsters, burned to death or driven out.
No wonder Irene said that today…
Lucita thought again of the pointed ears of the two sisters Elsia and Garcia. Was that elven bloodline?
She continued reading.
Hybrids were not tolerated by the human world, so under the acceptance of the foreign races, they came to the Esti Mountains, gathered at this dwelling adjacent to merfolk and elves, and established the isolated Irttat.
Perhaps a blessing in disguise, humanity's magical heritage had been severed, but the foreign races' heritage was completely preserved. The residents of Irttat obtained prehistoric potion formulas and the principles of magical tool creation from the foreign races. Therefore, when mages on the continent had almost disappeared without a trace, they still lived in a world with magic.
Unfortunately, even though hybrids inherited part of the foreign races' natural abilities and could maintain basic potion preparation and magical tool creation, they were also limited by bloodline and could not study magic. Not even the basic magic books that the foreign races preserved merely out of interest. Those prehistoric magic books were therefore sealed away in the town library, and only some elderly people would sigh about the glory of the magical era of the past.
As for the rare preserved human prehistoric civilization, it was not within the scope of the town chronicles' narrative. To research it, one would probably need to visit the library.
Lucita flipped through it roughly and developed a strong interest in her own body.
Am I also a hybrid? What about Javena? Irene? Sylvette? The glimmering lamplight reflected in her pupils, and in her dark black eyes danced waves of exploratory light.
Lucita stood up, preparing to search the bookshelf to see if there were any magic books, when suddenly a wave of dizziness struck, the world spinning around her, interrupting her thoughts.
The dizziness was getting worse.
Lucita leaned against the table and rubbed her temples, her worry gradually deepening. This was her second day after losing her memory and arriving here. She knew almost nothing about her past or this world. These frequent, irregular dizzy spells, what could be causing them? She truly had no clue.
She took a bowl of water and extinguished the sturgeon-eye lamps on the walls one by one. The room plunged into darkness. A pale moonlight shone through the window. Tonight the stars were sparse, and the rising and falling sounds of spring insects were irritating. She felt that before her eyes lay layers of fog concealing unknown dangers.
The second day had passed.
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