Rance gutted their catch e-fish-ently and without slicing his own fingers in the process, managing neat work of the messy job. He worked quickly enough to keep Lily on her toes as the half a dozen medium-to-large fish - some dreamfish, others walleye and trout - made their way over to her station, wet and slippery but washed clean of guts and divested of heads. Isuma swooped down from the branches to claim one of the tossed heads, happily snacking at the bits of meat revealed at the cut end.
Lily 's prep was a bit more of a struggle, the difficulty scale-ing up with the size of the fish Rance sent her way. Her perseverance paid off, and Jigano grinned at her quip, and nodded at Amalia's answer, trying not to worry too much about the chance of failure this year. He took the opportunity to expand on her answer, since the meat would still be good when LongNight ended, if any remained.
"The process of smoking cooks the meat, whether hot smoked or cold smoked. We'll hot smoke them in the coals today, though. That's what the wet paper helps with. It's faster than cold smoking them, and this way we don't have to stand guard over them to prevent any other hungry creatures from trying to steal them over the course of several days." Ever the instructor, he was happy to share what he'd learned from reading up on the process in preparation for today.
"The longer we leave them in the coals, the dryer the meat will become. An hour should dry these out enough to let them keep for the next couple weeks, without completely losing the flavor of what you're filling them with," he added cheerfully.
Amalia managed to avoid getting water on her clothes, maneuvering the wrappings for the Spark Bird's meal deftly over the snow. Her clever hands had no problem swaddling each fish in its wet layers, and she was able to tuck the edges of the paper just right so they didn't come undone when she handed them to Jigano.
He struggled more with the coals than he'd expected to. They'd had better luck with fishing than he'd anticipated, and worse luck with the fire, and it was a challenge to try and get all the fish properly sandwiched in the coals, but at least they were hot enough to last.
Finally he sat back, watching the faint wisps of smoke beginning to rise between the glowing coals as the paper began to heat, prevented from igniting by the soaking it had received at Amalia's hands.
"We've got an hour to wait, and a fire to warm us. Now all we need is something to keep the boredom at bay," he announced with a grin to his friends.
"Who wants to go first? A story or a song to help pass the time?"
Almost done! Share a tale or a tune while the fish smokes and cooks through. No posting order.
