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gilascaveNyah!
Anya is walking home with a sack of groceries in her arms. It is a perfectly normal, everyday thing that mortals do. She has never done this before, until now - until here. Back when she was mortal and had to worry about such things, people were still eating whatever they grew, or raised, or bartered from their neighbors.
Oh, sure, other cities and cultures had thriving metropolises. Food was brought to town and sold for coins, almost in exactly the same way as she does now. Only now the coins are paper, and the miracles of refrigeration and preservations and packaging allow her to buy whatever she wants, from anywhere in the world.
Sometimes she misses how it used to be. The milk, which was warm and slightly soured, fresh from the cow and only available to drink in the late winter. The rest of the year it was cheese: hard, round, slabs broken over bread. There was meat, salted until you could barely taste it, or fresh from the hunt with the blood and juices dripping into the fire. There was bread which was made from grain grown just one field over and she can still remember watching her mama working in the kitchen, hair escaping the handkerchief she'd tied to keep her braid out of her way.
The smells were, by modern standards, unclean and tepid and dirty. But they were also smells of home and hearth, and family. Nourishment, when there was enough, and the smell of hunger when there wasn't.
They lived closer to the land, back then, and she would be surprised if any of her fellow grocery shoppers today even remembered that spring was approaching, and why that was so important. Why there was any need to rejoice, when the days grew longer and warmer; rejoice for reasons totally unrelated to football championships.
She can't say she wishes she could go back. In her former line of work, she learned not to make idle wishes. But she thinks about it, sometimes. Especially when she has returned from the half hour it takes to procure food for herself, for two weeks at a time or more. All it took was handing over a few bills and a friendly smile to the clerk because retail always recognises retail, and they should stick together.
Now she can go home, and put her groceries away, and take them out little by little and eat them. Feed herself without thinking about it, without getting up before dawn and chopping wood and gathering eggs before anyone can even ask what's for breakfast.
She takes an apple out of the top of the bag, and bites into it. It is sweet, and crisp, and it fills her mouth with memories. It is also totally wrong, as apples are from autumn, and the winter store never lasted this long no matter how many apples had been saved.
She frowns, and eats it anyway, and heads for home.
Anya is walking home with a sack of groceries in her arms. It is a perfectly normal, everyday thing that mortals do. She has never done this before, until now - until here. Back when she was mortal and had to worry about such things, people were still eating whatever they grew, or raised, or bartered from their neighbors.
Oh, sure, other cities and cultures had thriving metropolises. Food was brought to town and sold for coins, almost in exactly the same way as she does now. Only now the coins are paper, and the miracles of refrigeration and preservations and packaging allow her to buy whatever she wants, from anywhere in the world.
Sometimes she misses how it used to be. The milk, which was warm and slightly soured, fresh from the cow and only available to drink in the late winter. The rest of the year it was cheese: hard, round, slabs broken over bread. There was meat, salted until you could barely taste it, or fresh from the hunt with the blood and juices dripping into the fire. There was bread which was made from grain grown just one field over and she can still remember watching her mama working in the kitchen, hair escaping the handkerchief she'd tied to keep her braid out of her way.
The smells were, by modern standards, unclean and tepid and dirty. But they were also smells of home and hearth, and family. Nourishment, when there was enough, and the smell of hunger when there wasn't.
They lived closer to the land, back then, and she would be surprised if any of her fellow grocery shoppers today even remembered that spring was approaching, and why that was so important. Why there was any need to rejoice, when the days grew longer and warmer; rejoice for reasons totally unrelated to football championships.
She can't say she wishes she could go back. In her former line of work, she learned not to make idle wishes. But she thinks about it, sometimes. Especially when she has returned from the half hour it takes to procure food for herself, for two weeks at a time or more. All it took was handing over a few bills and a friendly smile to the clerk because retail always recognises retail, and they should stick together.
Now she can go home, and put her groceries away, and take them out little by little and eat them. Feed herself without thinking about it, without getting up before dawn and chopping wood and gathering eggs before anyone can even ask what's for breakfast.
She takes an apple out of the top of the bag, and bites into it. It is sweet, and crisp, and it fills her mouth with memories. It is also totally wrong, as apples are from autumn, and the winter store never lasted this long no matter how many apples had been saved.
She frowns, and eats it anyway, and heads for home.