• Published 1st Jan 2013
  • 2,106 Views, 151 Comments

Tastes Like Heresy - Bugsydor



Hearth's Warming never happened: The three tribes went their separate ways instead of uniting. Royal Chef Amber Spice is a mostly model Unicornian citizen, but now she's getting exiled from the land. How'd she manage that?

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Chapter 2: Hunting for Inspiration

I didn't end up spending all that much time on hunting down ponies for their culinary opinions, as the first few conversations went about as well as you'd expect. Let me give you an example:

Me: Hey, other pony! Got any ideas for a new recipe burnin' a hole in your brainpan? Some combination of flavors that you've just been dying to try out? Please tell me. Tell me. Tell me tell me tell me Tell ME!

Other Pony: No, you psychotic filly. I'm a(n) (insert profession here), not a chef! Say, isn't that sort of thing your job?

I'd even tried to ask a few pregnant mares what kind of crazy stuff they'd been craving. That should have given me something novel, at least. Trouble is, pregnant mares are hard to find in the palace, and it is not fun for anypony involved when you guess wrong and it turns out your mark was actually just fat. It's especially unfun for me when I get a couple of temporary horseshoe-shaped cutie marks, but what can you do?

Even tried Asking that insufferable pig of a court magician, Pierce the Omnipotent, if he had anything to contribute. All he had to contribute, turns out, were some catcalls.

“Hey, babe! You look like you taste spicy!” he said, ignoring my question entirely.

I know that ponies say that when you find somepony insufferable, the best option is to ignore them. Some ponies, though, are just really hard to ignore. Pierce was one of those ponies.

“Gee, I've never heard that one before,” I scoffed while rolling my eyes.

“How would you like to take a ride with the most powerful stallion in Unicornia?”

“You may have won last year's Grand Magus Tournament to get your job, but I don't think you've got anything on King Lanthanum, Bucko.”

“'Omnipotent' means I'm potent in every way you can imagine,” he smoothly said as he sidled up next to me.

And then he purred. That pig-brained son of a horse purred at me.

After I finished cringing away from him, I continued rebuffing his advances. “Really, 'omnipotent' means one has unlimited or universal power, authority, or force,” I spat as I bumped him away.

Yes, I've read a dictionary. Try not to faint.

Sadly, the conversation didn't end there. The universe isn't nearly that merciful, it seems. Pierce must have been feeling extra horny that day, because he just kept the pick-up lines coming.

At one point, he even made some lewd comments on the first part of my name that I've almost finished blotting out of my memory. Suffice it to say that I introduced myself as “Miss Spice” for the rest of the week. At least I can say he “inspired me to take off in a new direction,” namely up the nearest palace spire.

So, with burning ears, bruised flank, and exhausted patience for other ponies, I began to climb the southwest palace spire and admire the view.

And what a view to admire! Thinking back to it makes me want to sneak up the spire more often... which would be a lot easier if I weren't about to be banished from Unicornia in the morning. Imminent exile aside, there is a lot to be said for the view atop the southwestern spire. Putting a palace atop Terra's Horn tends to give it a commanding view, after all, and I was on a balcony high above the rest of said palace.

To the east, there's the coast. Or so I've heard. Even the top of the world isn't high enough to see that far. A bit closer to us are the mudpony marshes fed by our river, the Swirlybeard. It's generally assumed that the filthy mud ponies have lived there ever since the Year of Exodus 372 years ago, when we all found our new homes. From what I've heard of those brutes' freakish resilience, I'm not too inclined to disagree with the council's graybeards on this. Apparently, it takes a lot more than a spot of mud and pestilence to put down those putrid ponies. One thing those hulking horses do have going for them, though, is their unique cuisine. In all of my experience experimenting with ways to spice up our traditionally drab dishes, I'd never even thought to— but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On the bright side, at least I'm not being banished to those bogs. Dying in all that mud, grime, and filth doesn't appeal to me at all.

Almost directly below me to the north and south were the Borealis Valley and Australis Valley farms, respectively. The valleys themselves were of a curious shape, two halves of a funnel laid on their sides, with the narrow, high end looking out over the desert to the west. They look as if Terra herself had gouged a hole out of a block of stone with her horn, cloven it in two with a strike from her hoof, and used each half to plug up a pass in her mighty mountain range. Thanks to their shape and that of our mountain, these valleys get almost all of the rain that would have watered the deserts of Pegasopia. The streams that flow through the middle of each valley meander a bit before meeting up on the mountain's eastern face, where they combine to form the windy Swirleybeard river. The Swirleybeard then runs down the mountain and through our center of industry, Riverton.

The Australis Valley to the south is the breadbasket of Unicornia. It's the prime land for producing oats and alfalfa, two staples of the Unicornian dinner table. The choicest of these crops are grown on our mountain's side of the valley, where it gets more direct sunlight. Not-so-coincidentally, it's also the hottest place around these parts.

The north side of the Australis Valley also contains a sizable plot of land dedicated to my favorite crop, saffron. It colors foods a glorious golden yellow and makes them smell like hay, honey, and a million other indescribable things. Mom makes a little bit of special mead infused with the stuff, and I don't think I've ever met two flavors that went so well together. That spice has given me so much inspiration to work with in times past.

Saffron isn't easy to come by— Even with the amount of pull I have as Royal Chef, I have to fight the dyers and doctors for every last thread of it. It doesn't help that yellow and silver are the royal colors, either.

If the Australis Valley is Unicornia's breadbasket, then the Borealis Valley is clearly the fruitbasket. Since most of it lies in the shadow of Terra's Horn, most farms there grow berries. All kinds of berries. Blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, raspberries, salmonberries, snozberries, the works. So many desserts waiting to happen, and I've committed to memory every last one that a unicorn has devised. No new inspiration from that angle.

Speaking of desserts waiting to happen, the Borealis Valley is also the source of most of the honey in Unicornia. The berry farms need bees to make berries, so beekeepers are nearly as commonplace as farmers. Some farmers keep their own beehives and sell the honey for extra money, but their stuff just doesn't hold a candle to those beekeepers with a special talent for it. I don't know how they do it, but some of these unicorns can even control which kinds of flowers a hive will visit, even when the berry plots are mixed.

The Borealis Valley has always been important to my family. The berries go into most of my father's baked goods. The Golden Bun Bakery just wouldn't be the same without its blueberry bran muffins. Other ponies use the berries in various wines, and Mom keeps a few varieties in stock at The Amber Mare for the fancier lightweights. The real reason we love the Borealis, though, is the honey. Mom uses a special blend of salmonberry and blackberry honeys when she brews our top seller, mead. There are a few big reasons why The Amber Mare is so well beloved, and our signature mead is one of them. That mead has helped me put together a myriad of dishes before, but even that font of inspiration had dried up.

To the west, I could see the Great Pegasopian Desert. Looking at its crackly brown-gray parched earth transitioning to yellow-brown graininess made me imagine a dessert made of ground-up crystallized honey interspersed with oats... This would have been great, except that I'd made that very dessert four nights ago, and then a fortnight ago, and then another ten days... Let's just say that it wasn't a new idea and thus wasn't helping.

According to the graybeards, the desert exists mainly because the mountains of Terra's Crest are too high for clouds to carry much rain over. I remember some old pony tales about fiendish pegasi attempting to steal our rainclouds and ruin our crops, only for the clouds to keep raining out partway up our mountain, giving our oats and alfalfa some extra water.

Arid as the desert is, it's not totally cloudless. That's how we know those pegasus devils still live: we see the occasional clump of clouds slowly shrinking whilst drifting towards a bigger, stationary clump, which then gets absorbed into the roving clump and heads towards a new clump of clouds. The pegasi are probably behind the clouds' peculiar procession. Sometimes a few clouds would break formation and do their own thing for a while until they finally disappeared. Don't really know what to make of that. Maybe that happens when a pegasus gets lazy and drops their clouds?

That gets me thinking: What would a cloud taste like? I figure it'd be light, fluffy, and melty, and it sure is cold up where clouds hang out... Maybe if I lightly packed together a snowball of shaved ice and drizzled honey all over it... Dangit, that sounds delicious! Why couldn't I have thought of this while I was looking at those clouds? If I had, I wouldn't be getting banished to that blasted desert in the morning!

Well, like I said, I'm getting banished to the Great Pegasopian Desert. Part of the council was feeling merciful (or especially cruel? It's hard to tell), so they'll be teleporting me someplace close to one of those roaming cloud clumps. Maybe some of those bat-winged devils will descend from their flock to feast on me? At least I wouldn't run out of water and die of thirst. I'm a chef and I don't get out much, so I figure I'd be pretty tasty...

Disturbing thoughts about how I'd taste aside (probably extra salty and a bit tender, with a hint of saffron), I'm going to be exiled into the middle of a desert. Hopefully the aggression of its purportedly warlike natives has been exaggerated a hair or two, because I don't know much more than any other pony here does about living there. I'm going to need to find some pegasi and rely on their hospitality if I want to live more than three days. Wonder if they know how to cook anything?

Exile— what are you supposed to pack when you go into exile? Are you supposed to pack warm? I read someplace that deserts get quite cold at night without clouds to keep the Sun's heat trapped (kinda like the mountain top I've been living on for a few years, come to think of it), so I'd better pack a fur cloak.

Then there's the other temperature extreme during the daytime. How am I going to deal with the heat? Come to think of it, when's the last time I've had to deal with being too hot that I couldn't solve by taking off a cloak or coat? Away from the stoves, that is. Probably when I was visiting a farm in the Australis Valley last summer to see if their oats were fit to touch King Lanthanum's Royal Tongue (and to convince them to grow more saffron).

While dealing with perspiration was... irksome, it was manageable once I'd stripped. The real problem, though, was having to deal with the hot sun on my face. Granted, I have to deal with having the sun in my eyes at my home altitude as well, but it just isn't nearly as easy to shrug off down below, where you aren't welcoming the extra warmth it brings.

How did those Australian farmers deal with it again? They weren't wearing much. Just some work booties, tool belts, and... HATS! They wore broad-brimmed hats to keep the sun out of their eyes and faces. I don't have anything quite like those farmers' hats, but I do have a small collection of chapeaus. My chef's toque wouldn't do much aside from keep my sweat-sodden mane out of my face. My pointed wizard's hat, though, seems like it has a wide enough brim to do the trick.

It's a midnight purple and periwinkle dealy with some light yellow stars spangled around it. I don't particularly care if it looks gaudy on me, I didn't buy it so I could show it off in public. I mean dangit, I'm a chef, not an archmage! I've got as many cantrips as the next pony, but my magic is better suited to cooking food than unraveling the secrets of the universe. Don't even want to think about what Pierce the Omnipotent would say if he caught me wearing this thing. Still, is it a crime to buy something so you can look in the mirror and feel great and powerful once in a while? Even if it was, what could they do? Banish me?

Hah! There is no way the fashion police can have any claim on me once I'm in the desert. No longer will I have to value form over function. I guess I'd never thought about there being upsides to banishment before. No rules, no fashion police, no princess to whine about the quality of mead she's served, no parents to nag you about bringing in their mead to replace it... no parents...

Now I've gone and made myself sad.