Cooking for the Court

The halls of Atlantis were cold and unfriendly to outsiders. Mary plodded around, a large sack held in her beak. The residents avoided her, oviraptor scouts slipping past her with yelps of fear, and the guards and court giving her disgruntled looks. The parasaurolophus sighed. Working up trust was going decently, at least. Beforehand the reactions had been much more extreme, and the tasks had been much worse. Today she had been tasked with bringing produce to the kitchen, and then preparing a meal. Pushing her way through the doorway into the worn down kitchen, she froze- who was that in front of her?

Kassadin was focusing hard on his task, cooking and preparing a meal for the Court. The purple crested styracosaurus was not by any means the best chef around, but the Iguanodons seemed pleased enough with his efforts and the flavour profile his meals had. 

Next to him was his assistant, a cream coloured utahraptor with brown tabby, who also happened to be his adoptive daughter, Camille. They were rather lucky that they had managed to stay together and that the Iguanodons didn't force them apart. 

Camille was hardworking, and despite being rather young still, was very good at keeping up with her father's pace as they prepared everything together. Her main task was to clean and chop up chunks of fruits and vegetables, while her father dealt with cooking and seasoning them. While things were boiling on low heat, the two of them took turns cleaning the kitchen to keep everything nice and tidy. 

Just as one of the dishes had finished cooking and Oviraptors had swarmed in to plate the food up and run off with it to the banquet, Kassadin and Camille noticed an unfamiliar face in the doorway. It was a red parasaurolophus. 

“Hello there!” Camille happily exclaimed. “Have you come with more produce for us? Will you help us cook?”

The young raptor was always excited to meet new dinosaurs, she would befriend everyone if she could. Kassadin smiled and chuckled lightly at his daughter's enthusiasm. 

“We will gladly help you with anything you need, stranger. What is your name? I'm Kassadin and this is my daughter, Camille.” the calm styracosaurus said as he nodded towards the island in the middle of the kitchen. “You can place the produce here and we will get things sorted together.”

Mary walked forward slowly, nervously looking between the two. “Mary.” She introduced herself, her voice coming out muffled through the bag but just barely understandable. She threw the bag down on the counter with a huff, poking it with her hooves until the bounty rolled out- strange, exotic fruits she had no names for but the residents seemed to love. She looked between the two a bit oddly. Her skepticism was, well, fair. While the utahraptor had long, powerful forelimbs, sharp claws, and nimble fingers, the styracosaurus only had his horn. Mary couldn't help but puzzle over how the other could cook but pushed it from her mind, barely raising her tail in time to avoid tripping an oviraptor with a clawful of products. “What do you need me to do?”

Kassadin was thinking briefly before replying to Mary.
“Well, seeing as you have no effective way of cutting things, like me, could you perhaps sort everything into their respective containers? It would help speed up immensely for Camille as she cuts everything up. After that you can start washing those hard, yellow clumps. Potatoes, I think they called them. Very tasty stuff!” he finally replied as he turned back to the large cooking pots and threw in some more diced up vegetables into them to get some more vegetable soups going. Upon completion, he gladly turned to help Mary sort all the produce, as there was nothing to do but wait now.
Camille was beside herself, seeing the beautiful para in front of her. Being raised by herbivores, she had no issue at all liking them, and she was eager to start a conversation but also did not want to seem too pushy. As she grabbed some carrots to cut up, she couldn’t help herself, the silence was just too painful.

“Have you been down here long? Have they been treating you well?” the young tabby utah asked, carefully wagging her tail in excitement.
“I can’t remember when we got here but since they made us cook they’re pretty nice to us, they seem to appreciate what we do.” she added before Mary had a chance to reply.

Mary shrugged a bit as she reared up on her hind legs, almost uncomfortably large in this kitchen once made for humans. This allowed her much greater mobility, however, so she began to nudge the fruits into a nearby basket. “I came down here with my party to meet the queen.” Mary chose her words carefully, knowing that behind every door was a scout or warrior. “We have not been treated horribly- we were in a cell for a few days, but once we convinced them we wanted to help we were moved to a room. So I suppose we are helping now. Maybe we’ll get to meet the queen soon.” 

Clumsily she grabbed the basket in her beak, placing it along the wall before nudging the potatoes into a nearby container of water. The water quickly turned brown, causing the para to grimace- those would not be fun to take out. “How much more food do you think we need to prepare, anyways? How often are they working you?”

Camille nodded eagerly as Mary was talking, to show that she was listening and paying attention. She let Mary finish before speaking, despite wanting to interrupt and speak her mind, she had been taught it was rude.
“We have yet to meet the queen as well.” Camille responded as she looked over at the muddy potato water. “You can just splash them around in there and I can pick them up after, it’s no problem.” she added.

“As for how much we need and how often we work..” Kassadin interjected, to respond to Mary’s questions. “We are currently preparing for a rather large gathering, a banquet they called it, so it is unusually much work. We normally just cook once a day for them but today has been rather hectic with very few breaks. I’m sure things will calm down after this, though.” he explained as he stirred one of the soup pots a bit so it wouldn’t burn to the bottom of the pot.

Mary nodded, before turning back to the pot and signing. “Well. I suppose we better get to work.” Hopefully the queen appreciated this…