#rowdy minnow staff

[weatheredpileoftomes]

a reluctant envoy

For FFXIVWrite Day 1, “envoy”. Grishild, early A Realm Reborn, ~800 words. Reference to war, PTSD, a little internalized ableism.

There has to have been some kind of mistake.

“I don’t know what the Admiral’s thinking.” Grishild rests her head in her hands. Around her the kitchen of the Rowdy Minnow is unnaturally quiet, everyone gathered in and listening.

Dinner with the Admiral and no few of the rest of the thalassocracy had been bad enough. She owns a bloody tavern. She pays her dues at the Culinarians’ Guild, and they haven’t managed to find an excuse to get rid of her yet, but she’s no restauranteur, and even when she was a soldier she wasn’t the kind to get the attention of admirals, or generals.

“I had one of my fits while she was making speeches,” Grishild says, and starts shivering again.

She’d been there. Carteneau, the skies blood-black and lowering, and stars falling, and the screams of the fearful and the dying. She’d heard Flame General Aldynn giving orders. She’d never gotten the order to retreat, which means somewhere on the killing fields below the Admiral’s lofty viewpoint Grishild’s squadron was already dying, or dead.

And stars falling, and the moon, and the sky—

She drags her head up out of her hands. Outside the streets are quiet enough that she can hear the shushing of the sea, never far away in Limsa Lominsa, and she slows her breath to match it. Water drops glitter on the pans drying in the draining rack; herbs sway gently on their cords; steam rises from the stockpot; Linana is chewing worriedly on one of her fingers. There’s a gouge in the surface of the table, pale where a knife has slipped.

Baderon’s fancy shoes pinch her toes in a way she’s never put up with, and the weave of her dress is uncommonly smooth against her skin. The table is smooth under her elbows, too, scrubbed silken with honest use. She flexes her feet to feel the flagstone—not tile, nor dirt—scrape under them.

A log snaps in the fire. Outside a streetwalker is calling for a client, and always the sea—the lulling waves, and the salt tang that twists around the yeasty smell of rising bread as it reaches even into her kitchen. She’s glad it does.

Herlwyda hands her a mug, and Grishild drinks without asking what’s in it. There’s enough sun lemon in the water to make her eyes water, barely cut with honey, and she almost chokes but swallows it and feels better.

“Thanks,” she says. Her voice is hoarse. She wonders if she screamed, at the Admiral’s fancy dinner, or if it’s just the strain of not screaming that’s done it.

“I’ll make some tea,” Linana says, all her brightness dulled with worry.

Grishild stirs herself. “You will not.”

“I’ve got the tea,” Pfardoen says.

He can at least boil water, though not much more, and Grishild is too bone-tired to argue. “They want me to be an envoy,” she says instead, as the pump swishes and the kettle clangs onto the hook. “Some kind of politics. I thought for sure they’d change their minds when the…” She gestures, a weary flap of one unmoored hand. “But apparently it doesn’t bother them. At least I wouldn’t be flying the bloody airship, if I were going.”

Linana’s ears droop. “You’re not? But’d be such an honor!”

“Honor, hell.” Grishild stares at the gouge in the table again. “I said I’d help find Q’zazanh and the others, and I don’t like the Yellowjackets getting ideas much more than Jacke and V’kebbe do, and if I’m going to be stalked by wizards in robes I’m not going to just sit there and take it. That’s all… That happened. But it happened to me, you know?”

“And now politics are happening to you,” Herlwyda says dryly.

Grishild twists around so that Herlwyda can see her eye before she narrows it. “No, they’re not. I’m sending word to the Admiral in the morning she can find someone who knows how to handle all this shite to do it instead.”

“We’d take purr-fect care of the tavern.” Q’ralka clasps her hands pleadingly, giving Grishild the big-eyed look that never fails to get tips from the customers, or at least the ones who like women or have a protective streak. “Don’t you trust us?”

Grishild damn well knows better and even she feels herself wavering a little.

“We’ve got this, miss,” Pfardoen says from the hearth.

Herlwyda nods.

“But I don’t! There has to be someone better the Admiral can send.”

Linana rolls her eyes. “Oh, yes, there’s heaps of people better than you just lying around in piles at the marketplace. I wouldn’t work for just anyone, you know!”

Grishild looks around at her staff, all looking right back at her with pride and affection, and shakes her head. It’s just going to be the Culinarians’ Guild all over again. She might as well pack.

[weatheredpileoftomes]

a rowdy minnow

For FFxivWrite2022 Day 11, a free day, written for Mjrn’s request of more WoL + jobquest NPCs. Grishild, a year or two before the start of A Realm Reborn, ~750 words. Cut short thanks to an unexpectedly frantic morning at work, oops.

Limsa Lominsa is home to many great culinarians, and also several twits.

“Have you ever thought about membership in the Culinarians’ Guild?” Herlwyda asks late one afternoon as Grishild guts and scales two dozen trout, fast as she can, before the evening rush.

Grishild has not, for the very good reason that she isn’t a culinarian. She’s a cook, and she’s learned to be a damn good one if you ask her, but she cooks regular food for regular people, without any fancy sauces or exotic imports.

It’s not even that she scorns the exotic imports, but her and what bloody budget?

“What for?” Grishild asks. Scales peel away from her knife, flashing bright silver in the smoky light.

“It might be useful.” Herlwyda interrupts herself to direct a wine delivery, and Grishild is left to think in peace. A culinarian? Guild-sealed and all?

She owns—through luck better than she ever would have expected, and at the cost of another good man’s life—a tavern on the lower decks. The people who could afford Ul’dahn saffron and Gridanian mead don’t come to her shop, and the people who come to her shop can’t afford things fancier than what she serves. Even more to the point, that doesn’t bother Grishild. She makes enough to live on and pays her staff enough for them to live on.

“I think it’d be fun!” Linana says.

Grishild doesn’t jump, knife in hand as it is, but it’s a near thing. When had Linana come into the kitchen? “What would?”

Linana twirls. “‘Welcome to the Rowdy Minnow! Culinarian Wyght will be preparing tonight’s meal for you.’”

“They can eat the food or not as they like,” Grishild says, but she’s thinking about it now.

“You own a tavern called the ‘Rowdy Minnow’,” the guild receptionist says, squinting at Grishild.

She thinks about walking out, but once Herlwyda and Linana get an idea in their heads it takes a force to stop them, and thanks to Linana everyone had liked the idea of her joining the guild. She could have refused. She could just leave. But she hates to disappoint her staff if she can help it. “That’s right.”

“We don’t cook beer here,” the receptionist says. He’s got a nameplate at his counter in neat quartermaster’s script—Charlys. The quartermaster is probably the woman next to him, who isn’t trying to sneer down her nose at Grishild despite being a good few ilms shorter.

“Good,” Grishild says. “You don’t cook beer anyway, unless you’re putting it in batter for frying to make it crisper or putting it in stew to add flavor. If you were cooking it to serve, I’d leave.

The quartermaster bites her lip.

Charlys’s face pinches like he’s just bitten lemon rind, then smooths. “You can talk to Lyngsath if you want. He’ll sort you out.”

Grishild suspects “sort you out” is a way of talking around “mock you then throw you out on your arse,” but if that’s what the great Lyngsath’s plan for her is she might as well know it now, and she wouldn’t want to work for him anyway.

Lyngsath decides to test her, which is much more fair than Charlys’s take. Good. A reasonable man.

Grishild has made maple syrup before, when she can get the sap. It has a different flavor than any honey she can afford—sweeter, more floral, the kind of thing to give a pastry or a sweetmeat a totally new and fresh character. It’s quicker with fire shards than long hours over a flame, too, thickening and darkening as she stirs almost as fast as a gravy.

He looks surprised when he tastes it. “Good. Very well done.”

“You can’t just leave,” Q’ralka protests. She’s eyeing the counter like she’d like to lean on it, but Grishild has whacked limbs on counters with a ladle before and she’ll do it again if she has to. Nobody wants to eat whatever got leaned on last.

“Can I not?” Grishild asks, chopping popotoes into wedges. Vinegar-spiked water is already boiling in a pot on the stove. She’s running late arguing with everyone.

Herlwyda says, “If you walk out of the guild, they’ll just think you couldn’t handle it.”

Damnation. She’s right, is the thing.

“All right,” Grishild says. “All right, fine, now get out and let me work.”