Tales of a Wandering Nord

Chapter 10 At the Edge of the Wood

We arrived at Arenthia around past midday, and well past the time for our meal. The night before we had camped just outside the wood itself and now pushed on to reach civilization before we had our midday repast. Three days before, we had begun to see the trees on the horizon. Their size is truly breathtaking. They reminded me of ships approaching Solitude. Our caravan master, Flavius was excited because we could see a walking city approaching the trading village. Over the next days we could see the city’s slow amble as it came abreast of the village, and the quick, unending moving of goods up and down lines and winches.

We passed the village walls just as a hunting party arrived, walking with the fresh game slung over their shoulders, or on sleds made of fresh hide and fresh bone. We left the merchant we’d ridden watch for, this being my first time in Valenwood I asked after an inn. He thanked us for our service, paid well, and suggested the Walking Aspen.

The inn was a stone structure and seemed to be built on a stone outcropping, as I was told most permanent settlements are. As they say, “No roots are deeper than those that move.” The inn was crowded and I settled into an imported wooden table and chairs with a friendly and weathered Bosmer and an Imga with a shaved and powdered face, who pulled out a strongly perfumed handkerchief as soon as I sat across from him. Inorra-Ko stayed curled on my shoulder, but I could feel more than hear her purring laugh as she watched him. As the Imga stood up to his full 7 foot height and harrumphed off, the Bosmer and I stuck up a conversation.

Just as an aside, the food at these border towns is interesting. There is a constant awareness of the green pact, combined with an understanding that not all their travelers are bosmer. You rarely see vegetables displayed or even mentioned, though they are most able to have ready supplies from outside the Valenwood. There is no bread, but breaded sweetbreads, no fried mushrooms, grilled leeks or baked potatoes, but perhaps they’re wrapped in your pork roast. The bosmer take an alchemist’s view of cooking, using many of the ingredients for food that the rest of Tamriel only use when more concerned with effect than with flavor. This doesn’t mean that Bosmer cooking is bland, quite the opposite in fact, it bursts upon the tongue with a variety of new scents and flavors.

The plate they brought had a blood sausage, a dark cheese, and a bowl of warm milk for Inorra, which required some slight of hand to sweeten. We couldn’t afford to obvious, considering how the Bosmer receive Khajiit. My new friend’s plate was very different. He had two roasted centipedes almost as long as my arm and as thick as my finger, roasted on slivers of bone, and a bowl of something that looked like rice and long beans, and smelled strong and spicy. He said that is was jewelwing ankuri, roasted jewelwings over a bed of larva and drowned in ant paste sauce.

The innkeeper also brought us each jagga in an ornate stoneware bowl. It looks like milk, and has enough of that flavor to remind you of childhood, a touch of that honey sweetness to remind a Nord of home, and enough of a sharp finish to remind you that you are somewhere else entirely. We talked and drank, and he told stories of great hunts, raucous parties and life among the trees. He was a wandering hunter who often traveled among the walking trees and apparently an accomplished storyteller. He asked if I wanted to accompany him on a hunt the next day, but I begged off claiming some business in town. Besides as friendly as he was, as they say in the ‘wood, “Jagga makes friends of the leaves, not friends of the trunk.”

*I'm thinking of a mod that includes a series of books and some provincial cooking recipes. I thought I'd post it and see what people thought. One note, the author would be a well read and cultured nord, but his understanding of the slang, dialects, and languages of other cultures is far from complete.