Tag: The Cook For Any Price

Culinary myths for the mystically inclined (with a few ancillaries).

Welcome to My World … Literally and Literarily

Prosatio Silban in his galleywagon / Illo (c) 2008 Alana Dill, http://youbecomeart.com Click to enlarge.
O Fellow Connoisseurs of Mythic Fiction (and Gastronomy), please: Lend me your eyes.

For many years now, I have been writing occasional fantasy tales about Prosatio Silban: a self-defrocked holyman turned mercenary cook in a far-off land containing a vast and disparate multitude of ancient and oft-commingled peoples, creatures, exiles, cultures, prophecies, landscapes, and cuisines. They vary in length from one-half to ten-and-a-half printed pages, with most ranging between three and five.

I enjoy writing them (“Do it for the buzz,” quoth Stephen King). I also enjoy having people read them. Thus, should the Universe so allow, I will here publish one every Thursday morning until further notice. (If you like what you read, you may also want the preface and introduction, as well as every story published up to now [plus ancillaries].) The subscription box at upper-left (or, if you’re on a tablet or phone, the box way below) will enable you to receive them via email as they become available. (Or, should you want 85 of them in one place (plus ancillaries!), may I suggest the e-book?)

Please enjoy. And if you’re so inclined — kindly spread the word.

Prosatio Silban and the Leisurely Eggs

(If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.)

TO THOSE WITH LITERALIST SENSIBILITIES, the phrase “ridiculously beautiful” may suggest mere hyperbole and labored contrivance. But take dawn by the western bank of an iridescent river – black sands washed by rippling indigo sparked with silver and rose – with a golden mist muting the eerie calls of magah-birds and other early risers, and add the clean smell of a cooking fire, and words will fail utterly.

Prosatio Silban was, at least for the moment, content. His previous client had paid him well enough to obviate immediate further employment, and the beefy cook had taken the unusual opportunity (and the lesser-traveled of two roads) to bumble along with no plan other than to see if one would occur to him. So far, one hadn’t. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Leisurely Eggs”

A Prosatio Silban Amuse-Bouche: Balance

“WHEN IT COMES TO DINING, the quality of the food isn’t the only concern,” Prosatio Silban explained, sliding diced potato into an oil-slick skillet and spreading the cubed tuber evenly with a satisfying hiss. “I have cooked gourmet dinners for wealthy patrons whose pleasure derived more from novelty than savor, and prepared simple pots of rude porridge for poorer folk who savored and drew life from every tiny bite. What’s interesting is the customer’s approach – are they merely Eating, or are they Dining? Fortunes have been lost by those who didn’t know the difference. It’s an old, old game.”

Who’s “Prosatio Silban,” you may ask? Here’s a partial answer: https://metaphorager.net/tag/prosatio-silban/.

A Prosatio Silban Amuse-Bouche: Writing

“THOSE MARKS ON YOUR CUTTING board look like words in an ancient language,” observed Prosatio Silban’s customer.

“They are, actually,” the cook explained. “The story it tells has been written by me almost every day for all my professional life, not in Uulian but in the older and more universal language of meat and green and root and knife. If you listen closely, you can hear a swallow echoing from every cut; often enjoyable but always nourishing.”

Who’s “Prosatio Silban,” you may ask? Here’s a partial answer: https://metaphorager.net/tag/prosatio-silban/.

Introduction: Prosatio Silban and the Golden Moment

You’ve read the preface. Now here’s the introduction.

ALTHOUGH NOW A FORMER SACREANT, Prosatio Silban retained a sensitivity to the more spiritual aspects of his daily routine – but since his was the life of a mercenary cook in a buopoth-drawn galleywagon, the word “routine” was not always applicable. Continue reading “Introduction: Prosatio Silban and the Golden Moment”

Words To Bring Back: “Proffer”

– Definition: v. t. To offer for acceptance.

– Used in a sentence:To you the reader, I hereby and humbly proffer my Cook For Any Price stories.

– Why: It implies a social contract somewhat different from its rhyming synonym; I think of it as a kinder, genteeler sort of offer.

Prosatio Silban and the Starving Survivor

A BUOPOTH IS A STRANGE beast: some say it is half-composed of dreams, others prefer not to speculate. But of the little that is known, one thing is certain: no matter what shape the beast takes, its eyes are the most soulful of any creature in all the Exilic Lands.

One of these eyes was fixed on Prosatio Silban as the cook approached with a bag of fatberry cakes. “Buopoths can lumber all day on a fatberry cake and a kind word” ran the proverb, and today had certainly proved it: a brisk sixteen-hour galleywagon pull along the Reaching Road through the light-forested countryside north of cosmopolitan Soharis. Prosatio Silban dug into the bag and surveyed his environs; a small clearing under a circle of maiden-oaks. A fine evening, and a good place to camp. He patted the beast, fed it, told it what a good buopoth it was, and made plans for his own dinner. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Starving Survivor”

Prosatio Silban and the Visitor From The Sands

Prosatio Silban in his galleywagon / Illo (c) 2008 Alana Dill, http://youbecomeart.com
PROSATIO SILBAN WAS NOT KNOWN for nothing as “The Cook For Any Price.” He had long ago foresworn the Sacreanthood and serving people’s souls, for serving their bellies and letting the souls look after themselves. Yet every now and again, he wondered if The Flickering Gods were still playing tricks on him.

He was cleaning up his galleywagon late one night at the edge of one of cosmopolitan Soharis’ more workaday fish markets, making ready to fold down the ‘wagon’s canopy-awning, when the Siddis appeared.

Now, to understand this story, you must know that Soharis, a city perched where the Rimless Sea meets the Uulian Commonwell, is the sort of place where one may expect to meet almost anyone at almost any time. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Visitor From The Sands”

Across The Rimless Sea: Folk

FOLLOWING ON THE INFORMATION REVEALED in “Who Is This Prosatio Silban, And What Does he Want?” here is a chart listing the Exilic Lands’ inhabitants. It’s meant as a quick reference rather than a last word.

Attentive readers will recognize some of what’s named herein but may or may not have light shed thereby, so: the Xao, Xai and Xax are, like the Aydnzmri and Mazei, descended from the “Antecedents” whose millennia-ago war broke the Exilic Lands (and first gave them that name); but unlike their more refined counterparts, reverted to barbarism. Continue reading “Across The Rimless Sea: Folk”

Who Is This Prosatio Silban, And What Does He Want?

Prosatio Silban in his galleywagon / Illo (c) 2008 Alana Dill, http://youbecomeart.com
IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S DIABLO VALLEY c. 1978, Dungeons & Dragons was barely known outside the fantasy-and-science-fiction community. I first learned of it around that time via David Hargrave‘s Arduin: a created world not unlike J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, or Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar.

The most addicting D&D element for me has always been “worldbuilding” – establishing an ecology of people, monsters and treasure within a self-consistent storytelling framework. It’s an excellent outlet for structured creativity, and one day, while at my day-job as an offset printer, I grabbed a pad, scrawled a coastline and bay, added some mountains and a river basin, and began describing those who lived there.

Some years later I had compiled several notebooks and folders full of maps and diagrams, charts and lists, races and religions, legends and monsters, mostly written in two-to-60 minute slices during and between offset jobs. It was a lot of fun. But it was also pretty lonely; at that point, I didn’t play D&D anymore, and I felt a bit … unrequited. And, to be honest, somewhat silly.

The Exilic Lands and environs

So in 2005, I decided to tell stories to answer the question, “What would it be like to actually make a living in one of these invented worlds?” After all, somebody has to clean up all those slain dragons (and, probably, buy groceries and pay rent). Thus was born Prosatio Silban, self-defrocked holyman and mercenary cook.

Worldbuilding and its fruits have brought me great joy (and occasional comfort) during the past several decades. I hope you have found some joy in it too.

Prosatio Silban and the Best Dish In The World

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE Emerald Incessance, that great sprawling grassland east of epicurean Pormaris, Prosatio Silban was searching for the Exilic Lands’ tastiest meal.

The Incessance was hundreds of square miles of hummock, tussock, occasional trees and overtowering reeds, only inhabited by roving beasts, societal castoffs and furtive oal-hunters — not a likely group among whom to find something described with bliss as every man’s favorite dish, all in one skillet-fried bundle.

“Like my mother’s potato-and-pea fritters, only more so,” sighed one of three wizened indigines of the Cook For Any Price’s hasty acquaintance.

“The Soup Demons take you!” objected his friend. “Roasted oal pancakes, like I hadn’t tasted since my first hunt.” Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Best Dish In The World”

Prosatio Silban’s Table Tips: Place (A Literary Amuse-Bouche)

SOMEONE ONCE ASKED PROSATIO SILBAN his thoughts on “presentation;” i.e., how a dish should look when it leaves his kitchen. The Cook For Any Price thought for a moment before replying.

“I suppose it depends on your notion of what the food’s for,” he said. “In ancient and epicurean Pormaris, more than elsewhere in the Uulian Commonwell, cooking is an art like music, painting or courtesanry. There, the current fashion is to pile the food as vertically as the ingredients and imagination will allow. Perhaps they think it accents the dinner setting. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban’s Table Tips: Place (A Literary Amuse-Bouche)”

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