“Don’t be going to fancy places if you want a taste of the real, home-cooked stuff. No matter where you visit, it’s usually the street food that has the most authentic tastes. You just can’t beat that when it comes to filling your belly with the really good local stuff!” - Elsa of clan Ironjaw, Half-Orc wanderer and chef.

“She is… a truly magnificent specimen, Miss Greentusk,” said Tal a short while later as he observed Lumi closely. The young drake had not seemed to mind the attention, and even purposely preened herself for him a bit. “May I touch her?”

“Feel free,” said Leila in turn while she munched on a triangular pastry stuffed with chopped meats, onions, and potatoes then baked to a crisp. The two youngsters had grown up in the city, and quickly led them to a rather large open-air streetside restaurant, which had no issues with also feeding their pets, as evidenced by a pair of large, clearly tamed aurochs also eating not far from their owners. “Lumi seemed to like you, so she shouldn’t bite.”

Unlike Cal’s experience in Alcidea, Cal noticed that there were noticeably more tamed beasts and monsters around back in the region by Alfheim, and again here at western Ur-Teros. In Verozgrad she already saw at least a dozen such beasts of various sizes in one morning, where they were a relative rarity elsewhere.

Given how the restaurant owner was all too happy to prepare food for Lumi and Ida as well - for a rather hefty price given the size of the two and how much they ate - and even took precautions to exclude any ingredients known to be bad for their species, clearly having such tamed beasts and bringing them to eat was a common occurrence in the city,

The two beasts were served similar, but oversized version of the food the group was munching, more of the triangular pastries like the one Leila munched on, as well as platefuls of boiled dumplings, which came in three varieties, filled with minced meat, cheese, and vegetables respectively.

Like most food in the region, the foods that contain meats tend to be strongly flavored, to account for the less sensitive taste buds of the carnivorous therians, while the vegetable ones were flavored far more lightly, so as not to overwhelm the more sensitive taste buds of the herbivorous ones.

After such a long time though, the chefs had long mastered the art to either intensify flavors without making them taste excessive, or to simply draw out the ingredient’s own innate flavors without additional spices. As such, the food they made was quite exquisite even for outsiders, the contrast between the strongly spiced foods and the mostly spiceless ones creating a pleasant juxtaposition on the tongue.

From the chat they had with Mallard - the old duck was so knowledgeable partly because he had studied the subjects he was considered the experts of for longer than even the oldest elf had been alive - they learned that Igor was actually the eldest son and heir of the current Erstgertsog, while his cousin Tal had worked as Mallard’s assistant for a couple years now as he was particularly interested in therian and monster physiology.

It definitely explained why the young man was quite enamored with Lumi and Ida, over any of the girls in the group, at the very least. Cal had to smile a bit when she saw how he gently brushed Lumi’s scales almost as if he was handling fragile porcelain instead.

Igor on the other hand had been quite nervous since he learned of Cal’s identity, and the relations most of the others had with her. She also noticed how he tread gingerly around Kyara and Ashani. Clearly their tribe’s reputation was far more pronounced here, so close to their home region. Back at Alcidea other than some therians most people had not paid much attention to them other than a few curious looks.

Cal ceased her musings when a middle-aged therian waitress came over with two large, steaming pots in her hands, clearly freshly cooked by the proprietor and chef of the establishment. Another, younger woman followed behind her and distributed bowls on their tables, as the first woman ladled two different kinds of soups for everyone present.

One of the soups was quite thick, more like a stew of cabbages cooked until they nearly dissolved, slices of smoked meats, mushrooms, a sprinkle of spice peppers, and a dollop of sour cream on top of it, which the waitress stirred into the bowls for them. The flavor was a mixture of savory and spicy, with a hint of rich sourness behind it, which made it quite a pleasant, homely dish that also made one wish to eat more.

The other stew was heavy with slices of cucumbers, stalks of celery, chunks of potatoes, as well as pieces of chopped kidneys and giblets. It was thinner, but with a far stronger sourness tempered by the vegetables and given an earthy savoriness by the offal cooked in it. It was a warming stew, and the large rounds of flatbread served with it worked well to sop up the rest of the soup.

During their meal another group of what seemed to be local adventurers also came to the shop, as the man who seemed to be their leader looked at Lumi and Ida and whistled appreciatively. The man himself rode on a large lizard, with a rocky skin that hinted at an earth affinity covering it like armor and a large club-like boulder at the end of its tail.

Cal thought the beast was likely heavier than Lumi by a good bit, despite being only two-thirds her length, since it was far bulkier and was more heavyset. Some of the mercenaries also gave looks of Envy as Leila happily tossed Lumi some of her food for the young drake to snatch out of the air, and a surprised one when Ilena did the same with Ida.

That brought a thought to Cal’s mind that she had not considered much before, and as Mallard happened to be with them, she asked him as well as to why large tamed beasts and monsters were so rare in most regions she had been in.