“Something that was not very common knowledge because most people never thought it to be important to teach others was how most races had a different palate to each other. This was one major reason why food often tasted odd or even slightly off when you tried some that was cooked to the taste of other races.

For example, say we use humans as a baseline, dwarves had less sensitivity to sweetness and bitterness, while their tongues taste saltiness and sourness more vividly. This difference varied by race, as others like certain tribes of therians could barely taste sweetness at all, whereas yet others practically only tasted the sweet flavor in things above all else.

This is why the cuisine of the various races often had vast disparities in flavors and textures, as each cook usually adjusted their cooking to account for the preferences of their own people. This sometimes comes as a rude shock to tourists or other visitors, especially where the disparity in taste was particularly pronounced.” - From a lecture by Garth Wainwrought, Dean of the Levain Institute of Higher Learning, circa 692 FP.

“Oof… if you weren’t eating the same thing right in front of me… haah… I would have thought you did this on purpose to prank me or something…” said Cal to the old tortoise Archmagus Ssuil. Both of them were seated at an eatery that oversaw a lava flow, which was part of the channels specially carved to allow the molten lava to flow into the forges further away.

Unlike her usually calm countenance, Cal was sweating all over, with her sweat dripping from her chin at an almost constant pace, her face, neck, and back all wet with perspiration while she panted with her mouth open and kept drinking glass after glass of the ice-cold beverage served in a large pitcher beside her.

The culprit for her current state was a plate of seemingly innocent food. At first glance, it looked relatively normal, some sort of long-grained rice with chunks of what looked like fish and seafood mixed within, all doused with a thick, reddish sauce that had oil floating on top. It was what Ssuil had recommended to Cal when they arrived at the eatery.

In retrospect, she should have noticed something was wrong when Kino refrained from ordering the same and had a different dish with a milder-looking sauce the color of cream instead. At the time however, she was fascinated with how the locals cooked the dish.

They had sealed water, raw fish and other seafood, uncooked rice grains, and some spices in an airtight metal container, which was then lowered into the lava stream below where it cooked for a while. When the cook pulled the container back out after a minute, it still dripped molten rock and glowed a dull reddish color while they left it to cool and steam.

After a while the food within was plated, then the cook ladled the sauce over them from a large pot that was kept on a constant simmer deeper in the kitchen. They also scraped the crisped and burned rice that stuck to the lining of the container and placed it on top of the cooked food as a sort of garnish.

It honestly looked like an appetizing meal, so Cal had not questioned the large pitcher of iced beverage - some sort of light fruit liquor that was mixed with a large amount of ice cubes - that were also brought to the table, having thought of it as just a local custom. She took some of the food from the larger platter where her order and Ssuil’s were plated together and placed it on a smaller plate and took a bite vigorously.

At first, the flavors proved to be pleasant and delicious, with the fragrant rice soaked through with the flavor of seafood, while the rich, thick sauce on top gave the meal even more flavor. The bits of burnt and crisped rice also gave some more textural element to the meal.

Then slowly, but surely as she ate, the heat began to creep. It was a tolerable, pleasant spiciness at first, but it kept intensifying as she ate more, until the sweat began to bead on her forehead and back. Eventually, by the time she had finished the plate in front of her, her sweat had drenched her whole body as it dripped to the floor. She imagined it would have formed a puddle by now if not for how the floor was porous and allowed the sweat to just seep through to fall on the ground below.

Cal’s tongue felt as if it had been set on fire at that point, as had most of her mouth, which was why she drank so vigorously of the beverage set brought by the waiter and even poured the leftover ice cubes from the pitcher into her mouth and crunched on them with her teeth. An understanding waiter had noticed her plight and brought a second pitcher of beverages, to which Cal nodded in thanks.

All the while, Kino giggled from the side as she slowly enjoyed her plate of food, which was clearly nowhere as spicy as what Cal had just eaten. Ssuil herself had eaten from the same plate as Cal, but had not shown much distress, and seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed the meal instead.

“I may have forgotten to mention that Ssuil’s kind had very different taste buds to you and me,” admitted Kino as she held in her laughter for a moment. “It’s something that caught many visitors who gave the local traditional cuisine a try quite a bit of surprise, to say the least.”

“How different?” asked Cal when she managed to finally calm the burning sensation a bit after she consumed most of the second pitcher of beverage.

“Well, my kind doesn’t really taste the flavors your kind are familiar with that much, to be honest. What we taste is mostly the difference in textures, and the sensations of heat and cold,” said the old tortoise as she drank straight from the pitcher and gave a satisfied sigh. “Spiciness is the one sensation we feel as well, so most of our foods revolve around it, though most people said that even there we are far less sensitive to others. This is just pleasantly mild for us, honestly.”

“Your idea of pleasantly mild would likely set many tongues and asses on fire,” said Cal rather curtly as she took another drink and finished off the rest of her second pitcher. “That said, I had to admit that it tasted good… until it got way too spicy at the end.”