fine china and cloth napkins

She'd spent the better part of summer perfecting this recipe. Everyone in her family had tasted in a billion times. She swore she'd even heard some of them mutter that they were sick of salmon, but she just pretended not to hear such blasphemy. By borrowing a raven from her aunt and some luck, Fable had managed to stoke a blistering cooking fire beneath a long, flat and thin rock. The wood had burned down to coals now. Nearly drooling with anticipation, she added some more kindling to encourage it to flame again before carefully unwrapping her ingredients. Two roughly cut slabs of salmon, two halves of the same tremendous fish she'd carefully fileted earlier in the morning lay splayed out on a flat cedar plank. It had taken Sparhawk only a few tries to understand what she was requesting before he'd quickly fashioned his beloved daughter the tools she sought. He doted on all of them and she loved him dearly for it.

A glimmering, trickly honeycomb sweated between the two filets. Fable dragged her ingredients to the water's edge and rinsed her paws before carefully smearing each half with the wonderfully sweet honey. Bits of comb glittered like lost treasure on the beautifully ribboned with fat fish. The fish had had plenty of time to themselves over the long winter - they'd all grown unusually fat and lazy. Perfect for Fable, since her preferred food always came from the ponds, streams, and ocean.

She fumbled with the small sachet of spices she'd made. They were coarsely ground because there was only so much she could do maneuvering a mortar and pestle with her mouth (and she thought she'd even cracked a tooth, but she was afraid to tell her parents). Fable liked to think the roughly ground spices made the flavors pop - as long as she coated the fish evenly and made sure they didn't bunch up. There... ohmigod, ohmigod, this is gonna be so good. With a satisfied grunt, she hauled the honey-and-herb salmon back to her well-tended fire and slid the cedar plank on top of the hot stone. In no time at all, smoke curled towards the overcast sky and the sweet, sweet smell of salmon drifted through the surrounding woods. Fable sat back, occasionally tending the fire and resisting the urge to fiddle with the salmon. It always turned out best when she left it alone to cook.