Gamelit Novel, 10 (Patreon)

Video game characters couldn’t cook.

Amanda wasn’t shocked by this. She might not have been a gamer, but she wasn’t an idiot either. If the point of games like this was to kill things in order to gain power, than the writers of the game had to give new characters with few abilities something within their measure to kill: in this case, domesticated animals small enough for a stewpot.

What she didn’t understand was how, having made that decision, the game writers didn’t give the questgivers even the most modest understanding of the cooking process. Especially since her decision to hijack the preparations from the clueless centaur by butchering the lizardhens herself made a fresh dialogue box appear in front of her:

Do You Wish to Open the Cooking Profession Panel?

“I… guess?” She had a Cooking skill, she recalled. But she had no idea what to do with the next panel, which listed at least twenty dishes and their ingredients, most of them unavailable if the desaturated font color was any clue. The only one that was available was ‘Lizardhen Roast,’ so she selected it to see what would happen.

A timer counted down, and then… a dish appeared in front of her, with a roasted chicken-like leg thing.

“Well, that was pointless,” she said. “Especially since they want to feed an entire camp. If you want to make the meat go further, you can’t just serve whole limbs of it to people. Is there a stew entry?”

There was no stew entry.

“Oh, for heaven’s—here, you, give me back the knife.”

Kavon the Cook obeyed with the same bemused respected he’d begun awarding her after watching her carve up the animals. “What will you do next?”

“Next, I’ll tell you to get me an onion.”

“An onion?”

“If there are onions in this world. Root vegetables of some kind? And whatever passes for celery, and carrots. And herbs. What do you have by way of spices? Oh, you keep your supplies in a wicker chest, that’s so pretty! Open it, now. And get that pot over the fire. I’m guessing you don’t already have broth, so we’ll have to start from scratch. Someone bring water.”

Soon the whole camp was darting to and fro on her errands, and Amanda was waving away game dialogues that wanted to know if she wanted to accept this task or that reward. She was busy cooking. How ridiculous was it that she had logged into a game just so she could end up in some new version of a kitchen? Except she missed cooking, and probably wouldn’t be able to do it for months. She shifted experimentally from hoof to hoof and her stout pony body reported no discomfort. She felt like she could stand for hours. How useful four legs were!

The stew was bubbling and she was instructing the tall female centaur on how often to skim it when Nick popped out of the brush. “Mom!”

“Nick! Are you hungry?” She pursed her lips. “Can you get hungry in the game?”

Her son looked someone had stretched a deer onto a human-shaped body and then elongated it, but he had the same facial expressions, which was both a relief and disturbing. “You can eat in game, but you couldn’t taste it before. Maybe you can now? What are you making? Wait, why are you cooking?”

“I had a quest,” Amanda said. “The stew hasn’t simmered long enough but you can try it, if you want.” She dipped the coarse wooden spoon into the pot and offered it to the deer, and a pang seized her, remembering the little boy who’d wanted a taste of whatever Mommy was making, and who ran off with spatulas full of brownie batter or half-frozen ice cream. Some of Nick’s body language survived into this weird version of him, and it didn’t quite hurt to see it, but the memories reminded her that nostalgia had originally been considered a sickness.

Nick’s eyes grew comically round after his first slurp. “You can taste now! Oh wow. This is amazing! Try it, Mom!”

He thrust the spoon at her, so she did and… in fact, she could taste it. Less like chicken and more like a gamier bird. Duck, maybe? Goose? She sipped again. “It needs salt. And pepper.” She called over her shoulder, “Do you people have pepper?”

“I can’t believe you’re bossing all these centaurs around,” Nick said as her posse scattered again to do her bidding. And then he laughed. “Also, Mom, you’re TINY.”

“I know!” she said. “I’m snack-sized for some of those monsters out there, I bet.”

He was leaning forward to spoon himself more of the stew. “This needs potatoes. Or bread? I don’t think there are any potatoes in the starting zone, or at least, there weren’t when I played it through originally.”

“But there’s wheat?” Amanda pushed up her sleeves. “Let’s make flatbread.”

Behind her, the camp of centaurs groaned.