Kade Rill timed the sizzle with the patience of someone who had learned to count heartbeats by the way steam curled. His stall sat in the lee of a broad awning that smelled permanently of citrus and toasted grain; the awning hummed when the evening wind passed through the stringed flags that merchants insisted were decorative though everyone knew they were a kind of weather music. Kade worked without theatrics because his livelihood was the quiet miracle of service: a bowl handed across a counter could nudge a player’s mood, extinguish a small anxiety, or steady a jitter of focus enough that an artisan could finish a quest. The game's rules called it Feastcraft — the profession screen listed Comfort, Focus, and Empathy as primary buffs, and his bar flickered when a customer accepted a course he’d composed.
When he chopped, he didn't merely slice vegetables; he tuned a rhythm. The mini-game at work was all muscle memory and small, exact choices: pick a base that suits the diners' recent events, layer a note that responds to the crowd's current mood, and breathe life into the dish with a performance flourish — a sideways flick, a whispered seasoning, a small shouted toast. On-screen, tokens trilled when he hit timings: a silver ripple for a clean sear, a warm bell for balance in flavor nodes. Kade's hands moved; he adjusted flame and fold, pinched herbs at the last of the timer. His PalateSense perk pulsed — a soft, internal readout that told him a player across the lane had an empathy deficit and might need Comfort rather than Focus tonight.
A rustle of cloaks, a bell-like laugh, and Asha leaned on the counter with that kind of tired smile reserved for people who had learned to take the small mercies in a world that often rewarded spectacle. "You're doing the slow roast again," she said, nudging a chipped cup toward him. The cup was a relic of a previous summer promotion; players loved using odd crockery for charm effects. "You make it look like studying an old poem."
Kade grinned and scraped a rim with a flat knife, tasting a warm glaze from the tip of his blade. "If the poem tastes like roasted fennel and regret, then yes. Consider it performance art."
Asha's laugh folded into a sound that warmed the stall more effectively than any cooking buff. She had a soft authority in the way she asked after regulars; she asked today about Milo, her younger sibling, a thin player who had recently started frequenting the neighborhood's quieter nodes. "He's coming through this week," she said, voice having the small edge of worry people tried to hide from friends. "He said he'd try the festival circuit. Crowds make him... unstable. I hoped you'd have something that might steady him."
Kade's palms found the bowl he'd been glazing. He wanted to say the right thing — to promise something realistic and kind — but he also had the practical itch: his stall's income had flattened over the last season, and festivals were how small vendors punched above their weight. Then, across the stall line, a laugh like trimmed glass split the evening: Rowan Vale had arrived, and Rowan moved like a headline. He wore an apron polished to a shine and carried three sachets of a spice that glittered faintly when he tilted them. Rowan's smile was the kind that measured a person's worth and decided quickly whether they were useful.