"..." Silence pervaded the smoky, sausage-smelling clearing outside Nick's house after everyone took their first bites.
"It's…" Nick started saying, a little unsure how to put it.
"...Underwhelming," Sosora bluntly finished for him. She looked up and noticed the other three staring at her.
"I-I didn't mean it like that!" She hurriedly said. "It was just…You got my hopes up so high after what you said about Kai refusing to eat anything else!" She blamed Nick.
"No, I agree." He nodded with a solemn expression.
"I think it's good," Kavam said with a hearty smile as he polished his plate.
Lora froze in the middle of doing the same when they looked at her.
"Y-yeah. It's the best sausage I've ever eaten," She added.
'Isn't it the only sausage you've ever eaten?' Nick thought to himself but without saying it. He glanced at Kai. This was a far cry from the bought ones he had given to Kai. The taste was just off.
However, Kai had also slurped the sausage down. Maybe it was a difference of palate. The Ursa people maybe preferred that gamier, ranker taste.
That wasn't it.
Kai coughed like a cat spitting out a hairball before doing something similar. But instead of a lump of hair, Kai spat out a lump of skin. It was the sausage casing. Nick raised an eyebrow.
"That would explain it," He said with a sagely nod.
"I think we cheated a little with clearing the innards," He explained to Lora and Kavam. They tilted their heads toward each other while looking at Nick with question marks in their eyes.
"Try another one without the casing this time," He said simply.
Lora and Kavam did not need to be told twice and grabbed a sausage each from the frying pan. They used sharp nails to open the sausage like it was a banana before eating just the meat. Their eyes widened in realization.
The meat had absorbed some of the casing's bad taste, but it was still noticeably better without it.
Nick turned to Sosora.
"We used the innards of the boar to hold the meat together, but the innards aren't exactly the most fresh. I think that's where the problem lies."
Sosora nodded, grateful for the explanation. She thought they had minced the innards to, contents and all, and added to the sausage.
"If that's the problem, I think I might have the solution," She said. Nick's eyes widened. He had no idea how they were supposed to clean the innards properly other than with more water.
"When we make the strings for our bows, we use the sinews of some animals. The process for cleaning hides is also a little similar, now that I think about it. But when we clean those sinews, since we don't want anything but the sinews, we use water mixed with sand of different sizes. The grains help grind away any residual flesh or blood," She explained.
Nick nodded. That made a lot of sense. It was like a primeval method of sandblasting, sandpaper, or polishing.
"That could work." He was a little worried about grains of sand getting stuck in the casings and then biting on them, but there were worse problems in the world.
He looked at the pile of sausages in the pot and on the frying pan, as well as the ones that were yet to even land in the pot. He looked at Lora and Kavam.
"You two are still hungry, right?" He asked.
They nodded slowly.
"Great. I'll help you cook the rest, so eat as much as you want. You too, Kai." He turned to Sosora.
"Does any sand work?" He asked as he started tending to the sausages again and moving a few from the pot to the pan and a few from the table to the pot.
"We use a specific kind from a cove—Wait, that's a tribe secret, so I can't tell you the location. But I'll see if I can borrow some of the sand. She was interested in what the sausage would taste like if it was a complete success. She was also interested in getting closer to Nick and the Ursa family.
She might have her duties, but she was free enough to assist them with the sausage-making.
Since everyone wanted good sausage, they agreed to try again the following day. Sosora was going to bring sand and tools they might need to clean the innards, the Ursa family was going to bring another boar, and Nick was going to do what he did today.
With the addition of Sosora and her tribal secret sand, they had moved away from the goal of teaching Lora and Kavam to do it themselves, but the sand could be replaced with something else. It was a non-issue.
Kai stood for making sure the sausages were up to par.
Lora, Kavam, and Kai ate until they were satisfied. But they had made sausages from an entire boar, so there were still a few left over afterward. It took them refiling the fire a couple of times to cook them all, and by the time they were done, the sun had already started setting.
They had spent an entire day cooking sausage.
Sosora helped out with the boiling, frying, and replenishing firewood until she had to leave, andw hen it was time for the Ursa family to leave, Nick helped them pack up the leftover sausages in bundles of newspaper.
He had been about to just stuff them in a plastic bag before realizing that he didn't want to contaminate this beautiful forest with macro or micro plastics. It also felt wrong introducing plastic to such a barbaric and primal way of life that the Ursa tribe seemed to be living. It would be like giving a child from the Victorian era a smartphone.
Nick stood with his hands on his hips as he stretched his back after watching the Ursa family leave. It was getting late. He considered cleaning up, but he was tired, and it wasn't like the dishes and whatnot were going anywhere.
He grabbed a plate with the sausages he had saved for the tentacle and headed inside.