The very first thing Kalaghi did when she returned to the tent was
diving out of the way and then, collapsing. Fine, that was two things, she mused while laying on the ground, gaze fixed on the puddle of sizzling oil that almost hit her.
When she still couldn't move after a minute had passed, she slowly started to realize that it was not just an ordinary attack this time. She would've sighed, but in her current state, she wasn't really able to - and the last thing she wanted was to disturb her breathing rythm. She did that once. No, thanks.
Watching the chaos unravel around the imperial and skydancer in front of her
was pretty entertaining, though. Or it would've been if she had a safe distance from them.
Kalaghi was so absorbed that she didn't even notice a twenty-meter-long blue imperial dragon sneak up on her. (It would be more amazing, had she not recently documented the invisibility of blue imperial dragons. It was astonishing.)
She yelped - or at least she tried to - when she was lifted into the air, coming to face a familiar pair of angry yellow eyes, way too high up for her liking.
"Kalli", the imperial growled. "You can't just wander off like that!"
Speaking didn't work yet, but humming was possible. "
I didn't ask you to follow me, did I? It's not my fault you lost me, Marcie."
Marcie, sadly, did not speak coatl, so all she did was blink and wait for something else to follow. It took quite a while until it clicked. "...you're suffering a cataplexy right now, don't you?"
The options for a communication between draconian-speaker and coatl were limited, but thankfully, showing approval was rather easy: "
Mm."
"Well, that puts us in a difficult situation, right?" Marcie put her back down, conveniently onto an empty counter, before taking a look around herself. "Oh, I remember this", she mused. "I've been here last year with Cadie - Mistral Meals, right? Well, what are the ingredi-"
Kalaghi registered she could move again and rolled from the counter, just in time to dodge the imperial's claws as she was trying to grab her. Any longer, and she would've had to worry.
"Oh, darn it, come here! We're leaving!"
"
I am certainly not! I'm participating today!" The coatl hid unter the counter, dodging again.
"You- you can't even cook! Much less an Incorporeal Dinner. Come on now!"
She grinned when it clicked in
her head. "You had to, last year, right? And let me guess. It evaporated?"
Stunned, Marcie stopped for a moment.
"Thought so. It's the most common problem. What you probably didn't know either is that it doesn't taste like turkey at all, even though it looks like it. It's said to taste like guilt - whatever strange taste that is." Kalaghi prodly raised her feathers. "You see, I'm well-prepared. I don't need your advice."
"...fine." Marcie gnashed her teeth. "Tell you what: I'm curious. I'll help you as long as I don't need to touch that thing, and if you can get it to taste acceptable, I'm even helping you tomorrow."
"Sounds nice. Listen up, I thought of the following..."
Kalaghi had planned to steam the turkey ghost at first, but then she noticed that it had no texture. Literally none. That, of course, just made things easier. Kind of.
While she herself ground up the
Acorns and soaked them multiple times, Marcie's task was to start with a rather typical cake: to whip a mixture of egg whites, water and cream of tartar, slowly add sugar and salt.
"Perfect, now take those and start on the fish.", Kalaghi ordered while snatching the bowl and pushing a part of her ground-up acorn over. She was still roastig the other part but quickly added it to the mixture began to stir. Now, she was at the point were the
Incorporal Dinner should come in - just that she still wasn't sure how exactly she would manage that, given the fact that she could barely touch it.
In the end, she settled upon gently blowing ghost pieces into the bowl. She tried not to overdo it; after all, she hadn't cooked that before. (Not that she'd really cooked at all before, except yesterday.) But while the batter was brown-ish and emitted a faint blue glow, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. Into a cake mould ant then the oven it went.
Meanwhile, Marcie had taken it upon herself to cut various fish from the
Bountiful Fishnet into pieces, toss them into the ground-up acorn and fry the pieces. Once done, she stirred up an easy sweet and sour sauce from pineapple juice, brown sugar, vinegar, catsup, soy sauce and corn starch. Then, she finally took the time to look at the cake-to-be.
"Is it supposed to glow loke that? It's spooky."
"Yeah." Kalaghi yawned. She'd almost drifted off to sleep, again. " 'tis fine. That's a Devil Food Cake, you know, like an Angel Food Cake, but with ghost - oh, and the acorn roast I made. It's called mocca faux, I think." She yawned again and scratched her head.
The imperial snorted and arranged her fried fish pieces on a plate with the sauce in the middle, so it looked like a silly sun drawing. She lamented in her head that she had no way to add a smile, but on the other hand, wouldn't that be silly?
Because Kalaghi was fast asleep by the time her cake was ready, Marcie took it upon herself to cut a piece and present it with some Frosted Violets from the other day. She then waited for the judge to arrive at their counter.
"This is an assortement of fried fish with sweet and sour sauce, as well as a Mocca Faux Devil Food Cake.", she calmly said. "...and I'm sorry for any trouble my friend here has caused. She's ill, you see... b-but it's not infectious, really! It's a neurological disease."
"That's enough, don't you think?", Kalaghi cut her off more sharply than intended. She'd woken up again just in time. "You don't need to tell everyone my life story."
After that, she stomped off, stubbornly deciding to stay around for a while. Maybe she could chat with another contestant... for example... where'd the odd duo from earlier go?
(Edit: it was violets yesterday, not lilies. I don't even know how I confused that. 0.o)