~~~ 

His plate held what looked like balls of breaded fish, a small puddle of bright green....   He squinted, unsure.   Bright green sauce of some kind, at any rate.  He had eaten avocados stirred into a sauce in the south of Gondor and he supposed this must be some similar thing.  Steamed rice, an assortment of some sort of sea creatures–shrimp, he guessed, although not easily recognizable with the legs on and the heads still attached and eyes staring reproachfully at him.  And a pile of what looked for all the world like the tangled remains of last year’s bird nests.  He looked closer.  It was a bird nest.  Complete with an egg.   

Thorongil hid his sigh.  He was tired of strange food in strange places.  He thought of Butterbur’s fine roast lamb, served off the spit, and good roasted potatoes and carrots and a thick slice of steaming bread with butter melting over it, and a flagon of rich, dark ale to wash it all down... 

... and then he looked again at the shrimp looking back at him.  Valar, he was starving but to eat... that...   

Just the smell of it... and those eyes looking at him... 

He was not even sure how to eat any of it.  His host had handed him two sticks.  Sticks.  Not a fork and knife, nor a spoon.  But sticks.  Was he supposed to stab the egg and eat it like a child’s lollipop?    

Surely not. 

It would help if he could speak the language of his host, but he could not.  He was here at the banquet only because he had assisted, after a fashion, in fending off a gang of thieves bent on robbing a nobleman’s retinue, having come upon the battle quite by accident as he rode quietly through this extreme Eastern land.   Arriving at the tail end of the battle, he had not really contributed much to the fight other than brandishing his sword and swelling the number of the nobleman’s guard by one, but he had been welcomed in the giddy aftermath by the warriors who had done the actual bloodletting as though he alone had saved the day.  It was quite embarrassing, to be honest, and he had slid his unblooded blade into its scabbard as quickly as he could.  He had nodded and given them a somewhat shy smile and turned his horse, hoping to ride quietly away, but instead they swept him up in their company, and now here he sat in the nobleman’s grand house, at a banquet held in honor of the victory, feeling quite like he had stumbled into a party to which he was not invited, but allowed to stay because the gracious host could find no way with good manners to oust him.

He had never felt more uncomfortable in all his years. 

Still, since he was sitting at the table, nothing for it but to press on.  He cast a quick glance at the man to his left.  He had picked up the sticks and placed one along the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, bracing it against his thumb with his middle finger, and the other he held between his index finger and thumb, and he was deftly maneuvering them like a pair of tongs, picking up the fish balls–if indeed that was what they were–and dipping them in the sauce and popping the entire thing in his mouth.  He chewed, his eyes shut with pure pleasure. 

Thorongil swallowed hard.  Surely I can manage to do the same. 

He placed the sticks in his right hand, finding it a bit easier to use his ring finger to brace the bottom stick.  He then experimentally opened and closed them a few times and was pleased to see he could at least manage that much.  Whether he could actually pick anything up was another question entirely.   Taking a deep breath, he placed the sticks on either side of one of the brown, crisp balls on his plate and squeezed. 

The ball squibbed out from between the sticks and bounced across the table. 

Mortified, he quickly stabbed it with one of the sticks and brought it back to his plate, hoping no one noticed.  But the man across from him paused, nothing more than an infinitesimal break in his eating, but it was telling all the same.  His gaze flicked from the errant fish ball to Thorongil’s face.   Something glinted in his dark eyes–a smile, perhaps, or more likely evidence of otherwise well-hidden shrieks of hysterical laughter–and then he very slowly and deliberately picked up a fish ball, as if demonstrating how it should be done. 

Thorongil bent his head to the task and tried again, this time working to keep from squeezing too hard.   

The sticks slid off the ball without picking it up.   

His stomach growled.  He had to resist the urge to be done with it and pick up the cursed food with his fingers. 

He tried again and was delighted to finally achieve success.  He dipped the ball in the green sauce, coating it liberally as everyone was doing, and popped it into his mouth. 

And immediately felt like the top of his head was going to blow off.   

Hot... it was hot... not just in temperature but with some sort of peppery spice unlike anything he had ever experienced.  He felt his eyes well up and his throat close and he broke out in a sweat and dear Valar, he could not possibly chew and swallow but he knew he must... and somehow he did, and immediately reached for the cup sitting beside him.   The man to his left grabbed his wrist to stay his movement, pointing instead to the rice and nodding vigorously as he pantomimed eating it. 

Nearly blindly through watering eyes, Thorongil made a stab at the rice with the sticks and managed to pick up one grain.   

His mouth was afire.  He was certain the foul green stuff was eating away his throat. 

He tried again, holding the sticks together and shoving them spade like into the pile of rice and this time he managed to scoop up a small clump of the sticky rice.  He shoveled it as quickly as decorum allowed into his mouth and followed it with three more bites and finally the burning started to abate.   

He took a sip of the tea and then let out a quiet, relieved breath.  His throat felt like it had been flogged, but at least he could breathe again. 

Another glance across the table showed him the man there was no longer bothering to hide his amusement at the spectacle before him.  Thorongil managed a weak smile, sniffed and blinked and took a deep breath and then picked up another ball.  This time he abandoned the green stuff, for he knew it must contain acid, probably imported straight from Mordor, and instead ate the ball without sauce.  He bit down, expecting the flakiness of fish, and was very unpleasantly surprised to feel instead something rather gelatinous and rubbery and tasteless between his teeth, something he had entirely missed in the burning fiasco of the sauce-coated first bite.   Trying carefully to school his features, he continued chewing.   It seemed a bit chalky but also a bit like boiled egg and, taken altogether, completely disagreeable.  But he gamely worked his way through the pile. 

The last one slid away from his sticks but this time at least landed on his plate instead of escaping across the table in a bid for freedom.  Some of the breaded coating flaked off and out of curiousity, Thorongil pried off a bit more so he could see what it was he was eating. 

He immediately wished he hadn’t. 

An eyeball looked back up at him from the crumbles of breading.  Oh, sweet Elbereth... what is wrong with these people, eating nothing but creatures that are still looking back at them? 

He swallowed the bile rising in his throat and hoped he did not look as green as he felt.  As green as that sauce... 

He grabbed his tea and took several gulps.  Then he picked up the sticks again and turned the eye over so it was no longer staring at him. 

But the man across the table was staring.  And his lips were twitching as he held back his laughter.   

Thorongil felt heat rush to his cheeks. Thank the Valar for Gandalf’s wisdom in telling me to travel Arda under an assumed name.  It would never do for word to get out of how the future King of Gondor completely humiliated himself in front of an entire delegation of... whoever these people are.

He indeed wished he truly knew who these good folk were, other than having merely the vague knowledge they were from the far Eastern realms beyond Khan, whose deserts he had crossed in the last months.  But his one brief foray into conversation, speaking Westron, was met with blank stares and then such a babble of garbled, yet strangely musical, speech that he quickly sank into silence and simply let events take their course.   

He managed a weak smile at the man across from him, whose own smile broadened considerably.  He gestured encouragingly toward the egg and nest arrangement on Thorongil’s plate, then attacked his own.   Thorongil nodded his thanks and then watched as the man started peeling his egg in thoroughly ordinary fashion.  

Relieved, Thorongil picked up his own egg and tapped it against the table quietly, then started to peel it.  But as the first chip fell away, he knew once again things were not what they seemed.  In fact, it seemed something had gone horrendously wrong. 

There was a chick in the egg.   

Horrified, Thorongil froze.  Keeping his head down, he glanced across the table.  The man’s egg also held a chick, and far from being shocked, the man smiled broadly and stuffed it into his mouth. 

Thorongil put his egg down and pulled his shaking hands into his lap.  This time he knew, he absolutely knew, he was going to be sick.  He took several long deep breaths through slightly parted lips, fighting to keep his stomach from utterly rebelling.  He finally shut his eyes, opened them, then stared at the rice.   

The wonderfully normal, white, fluffy heap of rice.  He marveled at its lovely simplicity.  How had he never appreciated the wonderful qualities of rice? 

He picked up his sticks again and turned the egg with its hellish contents over and moved it toward the eyeball, telling himself to pretend it was merely a hard-boiled egg and nothing more.  Then he took a bite of rice and chewed and swallowed and when it did not lodge in his throat, relaxed a bit and took another bite.  Rice grains fell onto the table but he found he no longer cared.   

Unfortunately, the remaining bit of rice did not take long to finish.  Then he was left staring at a row of shrimp staring back at him.  Still, at least they were ordinary sea creatures, things he had eaten once before and actually enjoyed.  He picked up one in his sticks and somewhat clumsily bit off all but the head and legs. It had an odd spice on it, and had a much stronger fishy taste than the shrimp he had eaten in Belfalas, but otherwise was quite good.  He made quick work of all of them, then gently put his sticks across his plate and hoped that was the end of the meal.   

It was not.   

His and everyone else’s plates were whisked away, and then steaming bowls of soup were placed before them.  He leaned over and cautiously sniffed.  It smelled of nothing more sinister than chicken soup.  And praise the Valar!  There was a spoon beside the bowl.   Still, he plied the golden depths cautiously, half expecting to bring up some new horror from its depths.  But the spoon came back with only broth and bits of what looked like egg in it.  And indeed, on tasting, it proved to be chicken broth with shreds of cooked egg floating in it.  An unusual combination, he had to admit, but it was very tasty and did much toward restoring his faith in the eating habits of his hosts. 

The empty bowls were again whisked off, and then an air of expectancy fell on the men, one Thorongil could feel despite having no sense of their language whatsoever.   Thorongil sat back, watching with more than a bit of trepidation as a servant of some sort entered carrying a platter covered with a silver dome.  This was placed before the nobleman seated at the head of the table, and then removed with a flourish.   

Everyone leaned forward and then as one murmured approvingly.  There was much nodding and smiling, but Thorongil was not sure what the fuss was about.  He leaned forward to see better and immediately berated himself for his stupidity. 

It was yet another eyeball.  This time a very large one, apparently served still in the socket.  He watched with sick fascination as the nobleman expertly ate what apparently was a great delicacy.  Thorongil simply swallowed hard and was grateful he had not been served one.   He was sure he would not have been able to contain his revulsion... or the contents of his stomach... had they presented one to him in such a manner. 

He could not hold back a sigh as he looked down at the table in front of him.  How he wished he were home... or even out in the woods somewhere at his own campfire eating his own cooking, which, lacking though it usually was, actually held quite the appeal at the moment.  At least he would serve himself no eyeballs.   

He just managed to suppress a shudder. 

A movement behind him, and an arm crossed over his shoulder with a covered plate.  Panic welled up in him.  They were about to serve him a giant eyeball... oh Valar, his nightmares would be haunted by this until he crossed the Dark Sea...  and he knew he would be unable to graciously eat such a thing and he would gravely insult his hosts... 

The cover was pulled off and there before him lay several pieces of perfectly roasted chicken on a bed of steamed rice. 

He felt like grabbing the hand of the server and showering it with kisses.  Instead he turned around and nodded his thanks.  Nodded them quite enthusiastically, in fact, with a great smile that he could not hide.   The server returned his smile with a smaller, more decorous one of his own, then waited while Thorongil plied his sticks and worked a bit of meat free and put it in his mouth. 

Tears came to his eyes, but this time of sheer bliss.   

The server behind him leaned down, and in perfect Westron, said, “We do not often have Men of the West at our table.  Had I known, I would have served this to you instead of the máodàn, the fertilized egg.  It is not widely accepted by those outside our nation.   When your plate was brought to me with the egg nearly intact, I realized my error.  Please accept my humble apologies.” 

Thorongil stared, taken aback that here at last was someone who spoke Westron.  He quickly found his tongue, however.  “There is no need.  It is I who should have simply enjoyed that fine delicacy of your nation.” 

The man bowed, then retreated through a door that presumably led to the kitchens.   

Thorongil watched the doorway for a moment, then turned and looked up and down the lavish table, with its silks and fine tableware and candles... and the evidence here and there of the nightmarish food selections... and thought of the kindness they had shown to him, a stranger who did not even speak their language nor understand their customs.  Someday, when he at last came into his inheritance, he would return to this nation. 

And he would eat the máodàn even if it killed him.    

~~~ 

A/N:  The foodstuffs in this story are real, if tweaked a bit in their preparation to fit a more generalized version of Asian cuisine that might have been found far to the East in Middle-earth.  I hope the spelling of “máodàn” is correct; if not, my apologies.  While I have not partaken of all of these dishes, I have at least seen them served, seen them in videos, or espied them in Asian markets in Guangzhou.  I have never tried máodàn, nor tuna eyeball, nor will I ever (I’m not as noble as Thorongil, what can I say).  But while eating a dish of peanut chicken in Beijing, I did bite down on a hidden pepper than nearly took the top of my head off, and though much of the cuisine I loved, there were some meals where I was never so glad to see the steamed rice.  And on my travels in China, I was always impressed by the graciousness of our Chinese hosts, and the humor ever lurking beneath the surface as they watched our group of Western travelers react to the sometimes... unusual... dishes placed before us.  Like Thorongil, I hope I did not cause any offense when I had to decline some of the dishes.  Unlike Thorongil, I have no plans to ever eat máodàn.