Chapter 80: A Chewy

There wasn’t a whole lot left to do. Arthur circled through the town one more time, failing to spot a tea or drink shop. Despairing of entertainment options, he decided to head back to the tavern.

“Tea, please,” Arthur said, talking to the cook behind the counter. “Pepped, if you have it.”

The cook nodded, pulled some water off the heat, and steeped Arthur a big cup of what smelled like a full flavored blend of tea. Arthur added some milk and took a sip, fighting back a grimace as he swallowed the drink.

It wasn’t bad. Back on Earth, he wouldn’t have had a negative opinion of it at all. And it wasn’t the ingredient’s fault. The tea leaves weren’t anything special, but they weren’t bad. The milk was fresh enough. It was just… uninspired. It was a cup of tea, brewed by someone without a tea or drink-specific class. It was good enough for the job it was supposed to do, which was to wake people up through a combination of the bitter taste and pep, and it did nothing more.

Look at me. Arthur Teamaster of Earth, looking down on someone else’s work. For the first time in my life, I think I’m a snob.

“Tea not to your liking?” the cook asked. He was one of the predatory cat-based demons, but Arthur couldn’t tell much beyond that. The spotted ones were hard to differentiate.

“Oh, it’s fine. Sorry, I was thinking about something else.”

The cook laughed. “Liar. I saw your face when you sipped it. You looked like you had stepped in something. I know my tea isn’t all that good. I never really got the hang of it.”

“It’s tough.” Arthur decided to try his best to be gracious, and it was luckily true that tea was hard to make well. “Water temperature. Steep times. Different kinds of tea. Different kinds of teapots… It took me weeks to feel like I had a handle on it.”

“Oh, now that’s interesting.” The cook leaned on the counter. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a food class. Tea related?”

“Tea specific. I make something called boba,” Arthur said. “Sort of a snack tea. It’s hard to explain.”

“Well, do you have the stuff?” the cook asked. “To make it, I mean.”

“Sure. Tons.”

“Go get it, then. I’ll move my stuff over.”

“Are you sure?” Arthur looked around at the people eating. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of your turn feeding the tavern.”

“I’m sure. For one, I’m not that greedy. And second, I need to learn tea better. And…” The cat suddenly drooped a bit. “You have no idea how much I need a change in my life right now. It’s been a slow week. Go get your stuff. And get ready for a rush. As soon as people hear there’s new food available, they’ll go crazy.”

—

“These drinks are down as boba because we add the chewys,” Arthur said as he finished assembling his latest cup.

“What in the world is a chewy?” asked Potil.

Word that Arthur was slinging a new kind of beverage had gotten out. Ever since, he had a constant stream of customers. He didn’t have all of his ingredients with him, but he managed to whip up at least some boba varieties with things left sitting around that the other cook assured him were fine to use. Some of the customers were so unmistakably dusty that he came to the conclusion people were skipping out on work to get them, which made him feel both good and oddly nervous at the same time.

“A chewy is a ball of dough that’s chewy. They’re hard to describe. Calling them chewy lets people know what to expect without having to explain that the things at the bottom are semi-cooked root starch gelatin five hundred times.”

“Ah. I see.” Potil the cat-cook had been around for the last few hours, trying to pick up what he could about tea-making while still slinging his food alongside Arthur’s drinks. “I can see how that would get to be a mouthful.”

“It’s just one of those foods that everyone likes until they hear the description of it. You say it’s dough, people imagine raw eggs. You say it’s gelatin, they ask why it’s so chewy, and it grosses them out,” Arthur said.

“And this is an actual problem?”

“It didn’t exactly put me out of business. People still want to try new things. But the amount of time I’ve saved since I started saying ‘a chewy’ like it was a real thing is staggering. It’s unbelievable how much easier it’s made things.”

“What’s the real term for them?”

“Pearls. Or bubbles. But the only thing that makes them pearls is that they’re round but they’re not hard. So people expect to bite into something that's hard or like a pearl, but instead find themselves with a soft balls. Similar problems, different reasons.”

“Well, either way, this is delicious.” The cat sipped on his drink, pulling a few pearls up and chewing on them. “They don’t even taste like anything and they make the drink better.”

“My theory is that they give the drink permission to be sweet. Something like that. You can put in more flavor than you would otherwise. More cream. More whatever. And the pearls balance the taste out.”

“Fair enough. Now, serious question. Are you actually doing all that stuff you said earlier? Varying how long the water cools in the kettle for each tea? Steep times? All that?”

“All that. Plus a bunch of stuff my class working in the background that I don’t understand. It takes a lot to make tea well.”

“I’ll never remember it,” Potil said. “My class helps with drinks, although not nearly so much as yours is probably doing. If I could get all this down, I’d be passable. But I’ll forget as soon as I sleep. I always do.”

“Then I’ll write it down for you. It turns out I know a pretty good stationer,” Arthur said with a smile.

—

Eventually, people Arthur knew a little better started to find their way in.

“I rented a room. It has five cots, which is more than we need, but it’s by the room, so no harm, no foul. I’m thinking I’ll put the extra two side by side so I can roll a bit.” Milo grabbed the drink Arthur made and took a big swig. He had asked for ice, cold weather be damned. “That hits the spot. Make me another one when I come back too. I’m gonna go wash off the coal dust before I ruin my reputation as a sophisticated city dweller.”

Talca came in right behind Milo, having finished whatever business he had in the town.

“Looks like you set yourself up here pretty quick, Arthur. Good on you,” Talca said when he saw Arthur’s setup.

“And Milo got rooms. It sounds like we have extra cots, if you want to save on room and board.”

“Not me, I’m afraid. I’ll be doing some short distance runs until you free up. I have friends and family near enough to here that I can probably get a few visits in if things work out. Either way, I’m heading out on my first run tonight.”

“You might talk to Milo first. I know he did some work at the smith today. He might just have something to make your runs smoother.”

“I will, at that. Enjoy the show, by the way. It’s a good one.”

By the time Spiky wandered in with an ex-stationer on his arm, Milo had returned and taken up residence at a table with several crafters. Arthur took a break to go talk to him and in a way that was entirely impossible on Earth, nobody in the long line to get drinks complained at all.

“This is the offworlders I told you about. Arthur, meet the crafters. Crafters, meet the Arthur. He’s the one who gave me the idea for the shock absorber.”

“How did you even come up with it? It’s amazing,” an older metal elemental asked. “Converting mechanical energy to heat is genius. Absolutely genius.”

“Oh I didn’t. It was technology on my world.” Arthur turned to Milo. “Is that what it does? It heats up?”

“Not so you’d notice. I don’t understand it either, so don’t be embarrassed. Ghint here is a class that has to do with mechanical design. Can’t build a thing, but also doesn’t have to. Just knows how things work. He can do what he does from anywhere, so he does it from here.”

“Got it. Ghint, could you explain it to me? I’m interested, in an offworlder sort of way. It will be like learning something new about home.”

Ghint lifted a small glass filled with brown liquid he had apparently brought with him. “Maybe another time. I’ve had a few too many of these to explain how everything works. Still, quite the thing. I wish I had come up with it.”

After meeting the rest of the crafters, Arthur went back to work just in time for the band to take the stage. Demon World tavern music was a lot like folk music back on Earth, if it had been intentionally louder and more boisterous for the purpose of getting the crowd whipped into a more fun-conducting mood.

And they are good. Wow.

“Are they music classes?” Arthur asked. “It’s odd, but I don’t think I’ve listened to that much music since I got here. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a concert.”

“No, they aren’t,” Potil replied. “And if they were, it wouldn’t make them much better. Most music skills are rolled into performer classes, as an add-on that just helps with learning speed at the beginning of the process. The classes that are music-specific tend to be instrument makers, and that helps anyone who can afford the instruments.”

“That’s… odd. I would have thought the system would do more with that,” Arthur said.

“You and about a thousand system experts around the world. For some reason, the system doesn’t mess with art that much. You get paint formulator classes, stationers, luthiers and piano designers, but hardly anything that has to do with using them. And nobody knows why for sure. I have an idea about that, though,” Potil said.

“Oh?”

“It’s not just mine, but yes. I think that the system wants to see the art we make. That it thinks about art in a special way. I paint a little. Not much, but the stuff that I like the most has been when I almost unknowingly create it. If the system was guiding my brush strokes, I wouldn’t have the same accidents and I wouldn’t go in the same directions.”

“Huh. That’s interesting.” Arthur thought about it a bit. “One of the things that surprised me when I got here was that cook classes don’t have skills that explicitly do the cooking. There’s a lot of my class that make me faster and accurate at tea but even my most hands-on skills mostly points at ingredients that it thinks I need. People can still make good tea without any of that. And they do.”

“Almost everything is balanced like that, but with art, it’s obvious. Well, besides freehand skills.”

“Which are?”

“Every once in a while the system takes a class that doesn’t allow for much artistic expression and loosens it up a little. It makes a class stat driven and then lets the person practice for it. Like it can tell someone wants less guidance and allows them make the class their own.”

“Sounds hard.”

“Maybe. I think the system picks them. Almost every demon with one of those classes I’ve ever known has been an absolute master. The best at what they do, or close to it.”

The band kept playing. The room slowly filled to close to capacity. Nobody really sat and just listened to the band. They talked, joked, and yelled. People played darts-like games and even a few kids were running around playing. The band didn’t seem to mind, they just played louder and made sure everyone had a good time.