“Call me Aria, dear,” said Muscaria with a smile, she was a tiny woman with round cheeks and cheerful eyes. “Muscaria is just so formal!”

Bert was glad to call her Aria, he just couldn’t associate this nice lady with the famous poisonous toadstool of the fairy tales.

“You may address my husband as Rick.”

“Sir,” said Bert, calling Agaric as Rick seemed a bit too frivolous, seeing as the man was holding a long knife in hand, ready for chopping wood most probably, but Bert had seen the Walking Death and the characters in that movie favoured such long knives for chopping necks.

And yes, Roberta once had him dressed up as one of the main characters with a stupidly long knife for a prop. They had been stopped by the security before they could even make it to the main entrance. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, Roberta worked her magic, and they were allowed to go to the comic con as long as allow the guards to keep their ‘weapons’ at the security booth.

“Poppy, poppy, Old Yeller brought us a duck!” Fly was still yelling at the top of her voice and dancing around like she had been given too much sugar by an irresponsible adult.

Agaric grunted wordlessly in acknowledgement.

“Yes, dear, we can see that.” Muscaria had a gentle voice that was pleasing to the ear. “Shall we pluck the feathers together?” she smiled at Bert. “Newcomers get to have one pillow made from the duck feathers we get around here.”

“Oh, that sounds nice.” He never had a duck feathered pillow before, or goose down pillow. The pillows in his house all contained 100% memory foam, created for maximum support and comfort. Tall people have back and neck problems from bending down to look at their energetic friends. Oh, and stupidly low counter tops. And tables.

Since the office tables in his workplace were at a standard height, Bert had to set his stool at the lowest possible degree, but still had to stoop in order not to give himself back problems in the future. He compromised by putting a sturdy box under his table and sitting on that whenever he could. It had the added advantage of making him the same height as every other office drone whenever higher management decided to come visit with a chip on his shoulder.

Anyway, it seemed like Agaric was the strong silent type. He nodded along to whatever Muscaria and Fly said and was super efficient at getting things done. Need water, he will appear next to you with two buckets full. Need a fire, a set of flint sparked and in a couple of minutes a cheerful fire appeared.

The duck was quickly plucked and gutted. The blood was gathered into a basin and vinegar added so that it would not clump together. Bert took out a small knife from his boot, another prop added for authenticity. This Erik Moonblood have a thing for…things, if he had been born into the 21st century he would definitely be one of those people who buys the latest technological products and be on the line for the latest Apple stuff.

Bert quickly split the duck into pieces, carcass, meat, skin and organs. He placed the carcass into a pot with clean water to be boiled. He then rendered the skin into oil, and set the crispy skin aside as snack. The oil was put away into a jar, the pan he had used to render down the oil was used to stir fry sliced duck mean and wild greens.

Since the Amanitas have wine, he chopped up the organs and put the lot into a jar with the wine. The smell of cooking duck soon draw people over to the Amanita’s kitchen camp. The moment Bert open the lid and released the steam, the smell of the duck soup actually made their audience go ‘ooooh’.

Bert quickly chopped up some dried fruits and dropped it into the pot. The duck carcass was fished out out, and he set Fly to work picking the meat off. There were a lot of volunteers for that job. A lot of the meat actually went into various children’s mouths, but he did managed to salvage a small bowl of it to be returned into the soup later.

The Amanitas, or more specifically, Aria, seeing that Bert had the duck under control just let Fly ‘supervise’ him while she prepared the rest of the evening meal.

Meal times at the camp was a communal affair, everyone come together for brunch and dinner. Bert had arrived just as the Amanitas were going to prepare the evening meal anyway.

In addition to the standard camp meal of wild vegetable soup with thickly cut salted pork added to it. There were corn bread to go with the soup as well. The duck eggs collected by Old Yeller were boiled and covered in some kind of salty sauce. However, most of the campers’ attention was on the pot of duck soup and the bowl of stir fried sliced duck topped with bits of duck skin.

The soup was a deep burgundy colour, normally when the Amanitas made duck soup, it’s basically just water with chopped up duck and root vegetables with a sheen of oil on top. Sometimes they will add milk to reduce the strong ducky stink, but the soup today was completely different, not just in terms of colour.

The duck soup today tasted sweet, with a hint of vinegar, thickened with potato flour.

It was, in short, different and divine. Full bodied and go very well with the corn bread. The sliced duck was fragrant from being fried directly on the surface of an iron pot. Bert had to stir fry the duck in three batches to make sure the meat was done properly, the bits sticking onto the pot was made into a sauce by means of cold water and a little fruit wine.

Bert, by virtue of being the cook, had first taste. Fly, being his helper snagged more than a couple of pieces and almost wanted to stick her head into the pot to lick out the sauce. He had to give Fly a piece of bread to sop up the duck sauce before she was willing to let go of the pot for Rick to clean.