In which Cheese Waxing is an ...art? and palm oil wax put to good use

[noleepackrat]

Cheese Waxing Event!

Fayre, Jazra, V'lano, Ziedeno, Nolee
The bowl's been taken over by equipment belonging to Ista's cheesemakers, and several tables are set up around vats of steaming yellowy-brown-palm (carnauba) wax made from the oil of Ista's own palm trees. The tables contain aprons, stacks and stacks of cheese rounds in various hues of white and yellow, and strings of twine, ready to wrap each round before dipping. Vials of coloring agents are at the ready to color-code the rounds as they're wrapped and tied off, and wooden dipping assemblies and drying tables wait near each small-mouthed vat. Drying tables are complete with brushes and smaller cups for the melty palm wax, waiting to brush over any faults in the dipping to keep the coating thick and impermeable.

Assistants to the cheesemakers are the ones supervising this process, particularly a reedy brunette named Nagilla, who stands at the ready to answer questions; a few folks have already filed over toward one table and are tying off a small set of very yellowy rounds.

"Come on," the Weyrleader's telling a pair of young riders, newly tapped from the latest class into the bottom ranks of Riptide. Boys both, they follow their wingleader along through the gathering of people willing to help with cheese rinding, one of them using his fingers to look at interesting things as they pass by. "I want to dip some of the red ones. They're the best tasting." V'lano winds through the tables looking for red wax, while the less handy of his entourage tells his fellow in an undervoiced mutter, "That's got to be because the red ones are the wine cheeses." Snorf.

Jazra is looking over this whole scene with some amount of dismay. The poor greenrider doesn't seem to have a clue as to what to do or how all of this works. She /stares/ at the wax, the brushes and nets. The aprons are obvious, but why is twine involved.

"Rinding the cheese," Nagilla explains to a lost-looking bluerider and his two stablehand companions, ushering them to a station, "is necessary for storage, so the vtols don't get into it and lay eggs. It also prevents 'bad mold' from settling in as quickly. We tie a few strings of twine around them, dip them several times in the wax to form a coating, then tie the twine off and brush over any weak spots in the wax. Then the cheeses are ready to hang from the twine ties in the cave for aging, away from the rodents and pests."

This particular work must be light enough labor for Nolee to manage, for the usually shirking weyrwoman's already donned an apron and is tying four pieces of twine around a 'raw' but pressed and formed round of cheese, making a triangle of it at the top, and tying it off before transferring it to the wooden dipping tray for its next step. Rather than actually do any dipping, she merrily continues tying, leaving the next step for someone else. "Anyone wanna dip these?" she complacently offers, preferring to avoid the steamy step.

Dragon> Liaoth bespoke Ista dragons with << Even I understand that... I think... Mine never had to do that... >>

Jazra moves into line next to Nolee. She starts tying in a clumsy mimickry of Nolee and fumbling the whole way. But when the call goes out for dippers she calls out. "I'll dip Nolee, hand them off." She offers, holding out a hand for the first.

"Look," says the brownrider of the pair trailing V'lano, R'shin by name. He tips a hopefully-subtle nod to Jazra as the trio happens by her, the weyrleader headed for the vats which have rims spattered with drying droplets of red wax. H'nen, the young bluerider, glances at the greenrider and then carefully keeps his eyes ahead of himself, but the brownrider snickers audibly. Seemingly oblivious to the mischief of younger men, V'lano cheerfully greets the people handling the purpotedly wine-flavored cheeses and rolls up his sleeves, grinning into the vat of melted wax with obvious relish.

"I think we've got a sharp cheese, or what's destined to be one, by the stink it's leaving on my hands," Nolee cheerily greets Jazra, passing her a round of the tied-up cheese, her humor improving as a volunteer appears. "The wooden thing goes into the palm wax, up down up down, or something? And the cheese gets wax all around it." Nolee's understanding of the process is dim, but she delightedly starts a stack near Jazra of tied-up cheeses. "Since it's gonna be sharp, like strong? Put in some of that vial of color into the wax melt before you dip? Then we can tell them apart later."

"If we're helpful enough they might let us have one to take and eat," V'lano tells his new riders, not that either of them is listening - in fact the lads have taken up housekeeping at the end of the table where the weyrleader's beginning his first cheese-dipping round, arms crossed, leaning hips. They watch the junior weyrwoman and the greenrider too, clearly thoughtful and very likely up to no good - at least in their heads. "I don't know if I hope to be so lucky, considering they're sending so much of the last batch up to Sudee for hog slop. Worried it might have gotten a bad mold, what with everyone sick." Hands busy and eyes on the hot wax so he doesn't get dripped and burned, the fact that his intended audience is inattentive and that his words are instead listened to mostly by the cheesemakers and caverns workers preparing more wax and coloring for the vat.

Jazra smiles at Nolee. "Sure." The smile is faint as Liaoth tries to get close to the group. She gets up onto her hind legs to peer at the scene curiously. "I'm just glad I'm not sick with that thing... that's been going around." Her nose wrinkles in disgust. "This dye?" She asks, holding up one of the containers /before/ she dumps it into the wax.

Dragon> Liaoth bespoke Ista dragons with << I will help her if she gets sick with 'that thing.' Um... what 'thing' does she speak of? >>

Nolee nods, peering at it. "That looks good," she absently assures Jazra. "Jays, I am too. Only been getting a little chilly, but none of the other things I've heard people having." The blonde spares a glance back at Lioath, laughing. "Is she going to help, or is she just curious?" Another cheese round is tied up and stacked in Jazra's pile. "Jays, I sure like cheese. Too bad we had to toss out all the old stuff. I'm sure it wasn't all bad." Hmph.

Nalaieth> I bespoke Liaoth with << It seems to be, >> a muted, mist-coated voice scented of smoke and amber, lightly touches and settles in, << a cold? But only the humans are getting it. They cannot determine how it spreads. I think, >> she haughtily adds, << it is from their coughing on each other so much. >>

Jazra absently dumps the vial of dye into the wax, scoops up a cheese round and starts dipping the pieces in. She snorts. "Liaaaaooooth!" She grumbles. "Innocent just how she is, pure just how she remains." She snorts, commenting on her dragon's behavior. "That was from a book I found in my Weyr. But in this case it applies."

V'lano's first batch of cheeses, four little cylinders in a wooden tray, comes up from its last wax-dip. He sets it aside so the brushers can pluck the cheeses out and brush wax over the spots where cheese contacted the holder itself, while from the next person over the weyrleader recieves more cheeses to be dipped. The riders loitering by the end of the table do no good at all - one leans over to the other and says, "Look at 'em in a whole different light, don't you, now?" And though he's not so bold as to say anything, the bluerider grins and shakes his head, clearly in agreement despite the gesture. The brownrider splits off after a moment and starts over toward the table where the goldrider and greenrider are at work. "What kind of cheese is it you're doing over here?"

Jazra waves a hand in front of her nose. "Something sharp and stinky I think." Jazra peers over the tables of cheese to be dipped. "I heard there was some with hot peppers in it. Does any of it?" She asks hopefully. Liaoth bugles a greeting to some of the dragons and riders coming down from above to join in.

"Jays," Nolee replies, "Didn't your weyr have all those scrolls in it? I forget if you picked that one. What a mess! Amazing you got any wisdom out of that pile at all." Not that she understands the quote; instead, she watches the dipping with fascination, intrigued. "Hunh?" Nolee wrinkles her nose at V'lano's question, then looks again at their cheese. "A sharp one, like she said. That means it has heaps of flavor later, not that it has pokey things in it. Oooh, jays, I bet the peppers kind has speckles. We could probably find it, do that next. Mmm, bet it'd be good."

"Wasn't wwhat we had over there," shrugs R'shin, looking Jazra over before stepping up to the vat for a look inside. "Maybe we could find the pepper kind by smell, too. That what you like? Peppers?" He turns a grin from Jazra to the weyrwoman. V'lano, at the table with the wine cheese still, works on another dipping and on trying to talk one of the helpers into letting him make off with one of the cheeses once it's finished. "It's not aged yet," she explains, repeatedly.

Jazra grins. "It /is/ good!" She avows. "And I constructed the shelves to hold the scrolls myself. I made a bunch of hexagon shaped alcoves, attached them together and stacked them. They're just like the ones that hold wineskins in a cellar. Only they hold scrolls."

"Jays, that sounds handy. Got any ideas for how to make cheese holding shelves that the tunnelsnakes can't get to and the vtols leave alone? Some of those cheeses in the cave were pretty--" Nolee's rambling is interrupted by a splash as one of the vats is nearly overturned, and some efforts from Nagilla prevent a disaster. "Gently dip the rounds," she instructs. "And you, keep your fingers out of there - it's hot!" Nolee giggles, then abandons the sharp cheese to look through the piles on other tables for the sought-after cheese with pepper-pieces, sniffing this one and that one. "Not it. Not it. Nope, still not it."

Among some of the more unobtrusive helpers in this grand, epic adventure in the finer art of cheese-dipping would be Ziedeno and his usual group of buddies. While the bulk of the 'brats are doing as little as they can get away with, Zeno's moving from table to table to offer help as people need it. He's got a fair bit of coloured wax spattered up his arms and on his clothes, thanks to his own clumsiness and the clumsiness of a few others he's helped. It'd be the wax on his arms that he's picking at with a grimace, his feet carrying him blindly on to the next table.

Jazra snorts. "I don't think so. Not without coating them in glass." Liaoth pads over to Nalaieth and rumbles softly in polite greeting, seating herself next to the gold and keeping her eyes on the scene. Jazra looks at the rack she's just done, "is this... too much?" She indicates the wax. "Oh, I got the first firelizard from a relative outside the Weyr in a /long/ time. My cousin Isora? The Starcrafter a few turns ago that visited for a meteorshower? He not only got a mastery three turns ago, he's proposed to a girl he's fancied. Rianna." She snorts. "I have less than a sevenday to find either a tux or a dress. That's not enough /time/ to get a really good one! What am I supposed to do? Dust off a proddy hakama and look like an old crone?" This is said wryly. "Looks like I did /too/ good a job keeping out of sight and out of mind. I was probably last on the invite list." She smirks, utterly smug.

"Well, I could put it up for a while and eat it later," V'lano tells the cheesemaker who's trying so gently and politely to discourage him from taking a freshly-waxed cheese for his own. What's she to do? The last of the wine-flavored cheeses is going into the red wax now; the weyrleader's stepped aside to clean his hands and wait for the pepper cheeses, being unpacked from paper and crates, to be put up onto the table. "Get some of the black dye from over there and bring it here. We'll want a darker color for these," the woman informs the bluerider who'd been following V'lano earlier, gesturing first at him and then at unlucky Ziedeno on his way by. "You there, you can mix the color in, won't matter if you get splattered."

Nagilla's still shaking her finger at some of the clumsy boys (possibly cohorts of the wax-dipped Ziedeno) for their near-disastrous efforts to overturn one of the wax vats, and once she's finished that, she's helping to uncrate and unwrap the cheesecloth from around the next batches and varieties to be dipped, poking her nose in here and there, helping with technique where needed, and demonstrating the fine art of brushing wax over the thin spots to thicken them.

Nalaieth stretches, disinterested in the cheesemaking process as it has little to do with her other than to buy her some relaxation time. "Ask a weaver? Could work if you've a heap of marks. Otherwise, stitch some new fabric to some old, call it fashion. Ohh, that looks beautiful! Just like when the official crafters do it," Nolee praises. "Besides, I don't think you can get it too thick. We can always cut through it later." Singsonging her way over to the freshly unpacked pepper-cheeses, she ooohs, scooting past Ziedeno to admire it. "This smells like the stuff!"

"Uh- yes'm." Ziedeno blinks once or twice at the cheesemaker, then gives his arms a quick rub-down -- ooh, yeah, that's going to be unpleasant when he has to strip all those flecks and streaks off -- before he heads over to wherever he's needed for the mixing of dye and wax. His nose wrinkles sharply, dark eyes flicking yonder to watch the bluerider who's been designated to get the dye in the first place. Hurry up and wait, already! He catches just a smidgen of movement from the corner of his eye and turns a little bit more to identify it as Nolee and greet her with a mildly distracted, "H'lo."

Fayre ambles up and down the rows of cheesemakers, her arms and hands decidely free of wax. "I was just cleaning the bathing pools the other day, see. Don't want to get any mould or hair into this fresh stuff, nope!" She explains loudly to a couple of nearby, disinterested brownriders who simply ignore her. Tum te tum, Fayre continues to wander throughout the crowd, trying to make herself look busy without actually getting her hands dirty.

Jazra sniffs delicately with a carefully discerning nose. "Oh yeah. That's the stuff!" She says with brisk satisfaction. Liaoth looks disgusted, glaring at her rider. "Yeaaaah, I forgot to mention. Liaoth doesn't like my breath after I've eaten that stuff. Can I have a round once its done?"

Dragon> Ista dragons sense that Liaoth groans. << Does she have to eat it? Does she have to? >> There's an annoyed twitch of red in her mind. A sharp upturn of the same shade, and it deepens with the green's mounting disgust. << Her breath smells like firestone and mint after she eats it! >>

Nolee leans over to get a better sniff of the strongly-scented cheese, delighted at their find. Fortunately, another duo take up where she and Jazra left off, making short work of the remainder of the sharp cheese and leaving Nolee and the greenrider free to help with the other varieties. "Hallo," Nolee greets back, peering at his waxy arms. "That looks like it stings. Does it sting? Or only when you tug on a piece?" Fayre's words draw a concerned face and a stern examination. "Hopefully you've washed since then! Jays, imagine opening a cheese at dinner and finding hair inside." Jazra's examined too; one can never be too careful. "Brush your teeth? I have some wonderful breath fresheners, like citrus drops. They work wonders."

The bluerider's a little slower about getting the dye than he should be - he has a friend, a brownrider, over by the table where Nolee and Jazra are working, and the dyes aren't far from there, and the guys have to pause and socialize... but after a few minutes the bottle of black (well, very dark browny-blue) food dye does come over and get given up to Ziedeno under the cheesemaker's assistant's glare. "Don't be shy with it," says the assistant, handing Zeno a stirring stick. "We'll get this batch modified and - stop that!" Instantly she wears an expression of regret and adds, belatedly and mildly, to the weyrleader whose attempt to prematurely dip some of the pepper cheese into the still-bright-red-wax earned the scolding, "Sir."

V'lano grins gamely and retracts the twine-wrapped round of pepper-cheese from near-immersion in red wax. "Sorry," he assures the woman, his grin twisted and eyes briefly mischevious; he gives Ziedeno a nod, making it clear he'll wait, while another helper waiting to dip cheese rolls her eyes. Riders, almost more hindrance than assistance.

Dragon> Ista dragons sense that Liaoth whistles in irritation. << Nalaieth! Tell yours to tell mine that I'm not taking her back to her weyr /without/ those drops if she takes home a wheel of that... sharp-rot-block-food. >> Real articulate.

"Yes'm." Pause. "Er, only when I tug on it, I mean." Ziedeno replies to Nolee, with any further comments cut off as the bluerider returns with the dye. With a nod and a shuffle of his feet as he takes the stirring stick, the young man takes the bottle and, after a quick grin at V'lano, dumps the contents of the bottle into the wax. "Pity it's got to be done like this," he remarks as he stirs away, the red marbling rather nicely with the black at first. "It'd be pretty neat to have some cheeses with red and black wax on it, wouldn't it?"

Fayre sniffs at her underarms experimentally. "Nope, pretty sure I've bathed since then. Well, once they got the place refilled and all. I couldn't very well take a dip right after, since they were drained at the time, eh?" The young woman makes a face and an audible gagging sound. "Euch! That'd be disgusting. And I'd be personally offended, if any hair managed to make it into food." She pokes at her knot. "Or at least, I'd probably hear some complaints."

Nolee glances over to Nalaieth, then laughs Jazra's direction, the delay in 'working' not a bother to her. "I'll give you some, or you may have to beg a ride to your ledge from somewhere else, by the sound of it." Zeno's comment is considered, then a nod. "It would be! Maybe you could paint stripes on it, with the brush? Except, the red just went away." The darkening dye is eyed mournfully, then Nolee ties up some of the cheeses efficiently and preps them on the dipping trays, flaking off dry wax with her fingernail. "I'd complain," she encouragingly tells Fayre, as if that makes things better. "Who's up for the dipping? These are all ready."

"It is kind of prettier this way," V'lano agrees, with a glance up at the woman who's overseeing the operation. She frowns, but apparently feels obliged by the bronzerider's knot to keep her opinion more or less her own, and finds something else to busy herself with at a nearby table where a dipping-crate of a marbled, fragrant cheese has just come apart from wet and heat and a cheese is rolling across a bench, free! It's a good moment for the weyrleader to lower the round of cheese hanging from the twines gathered in his hands into the swirly wax below. "Stir slowly, there, fellow," he grins across the vat, while on a wild hair the girl also waiting to dip does so.

Ziedeno dutifully slows his stirring with an equally dutiful, "Yessir," being directed to V'lano. The red might be diminishing, but it's not gone quite yet -- it's just a particularly dark marbling of colour at the moment. And, yes, there'd be a goofily boyish grin on his face at this minor bit of ... defiance in the face of cheese-dipping tradition? Something like that, anyway. "So, is that kind of cheese any good?" he wonders aloud, head cocked to a side inquisitively.

Jazra takes up the rack of peppered cheeses. "S'okay Liaoth. I'll eat them elsewhere. Can I take one to Isora's wedding? I want to breathe pepper breath in my parent's faces." She asks sharkily. "I could use some of those drops. She's raising a stink to anybody in the bowl who can hear."

Fayre throws her arms up in a distinctive 'no thank you' motion. "No, no, no dipping here. I just got clean from the pools, I don't want to get clinging wax all over me. I figure it'll hurt like heck when y'all try to pull it off yer skin. Even if it is all very pretty." Instead, she simply begins to sniff the nearby cheese--taking extra care that her long braid goes nowhere near the foodstuffs. "It certainly smells very interesting. Though some of it smells like old dirty socks." Either or, really.

Nagilla's comerade-in-arms rescues the cheese, frowning at the Weyrleader as though it might be his fault that it's liberated at that particular moment, and then the two converse, pointing at this area or that where the workers have either been at it for a few hours or where the slovenly nature of the help begs a break of some sort. "We'll swap out some teams now. We usually celebrate with a few of the older rounds shared with our helpers," Nagilla explains, moving from group to group and tapping those on the shoulder who could be 'relieved' if they so choose - "But this turn it'll have to be owed you, and the weyr'll throw in a glass of wine for each of you at our cheese unveiling in the spring, right, Weyrleader?" Who could resist Nagilla's charming - or is that imposing - smile?

Nolee shakes her head Jazra's way. "I think they said they hafta age first," she whispers behind her hand, then winks to Zeno. "It's the best. Ista's spices are unmatched, and we grow the peppers right here - I think." Her brow furrows, then she smiles as she's one of the tapped. "Guess it's break time!" The juice table is her goal, a cup made short work. "All the steam makes me thirsty." She falls silent, then, to see if the Weyrleader agrees to the drinks-on-the-house, then ohse. "I should get those drops. Might have some in my weyr. Jays, thanks for helping, everyone." And with no further fanfare, Nolee's shirking successfully again.

Jazra is both shouldertapped and presented with two rounds of aged cheese. Both pepperjack. "Thank you so much. And yes, thank you for the drops. I'm eternally gratefull." She hefts the second round. "Isora will be thankful for cheese mixed with Weyr grown Istan Spices."

After a few dips, the cheese the weyrleader's dipping is a lovely (...) conglomerate of swirls, brownish black and reddish brown, definitely easy to tell apart from other cheeses being dipped here today. The cheese the girl a few steps over is dipping likewise turns out marbled-dark. But V'lano's interrupted a bit by Nagilla's sudden speech, so he sets aside the cheese in a hurry. "Exactly right," he tells Nagilla for all to hear, his grin characteristically crooked. "We'll make a good time of it." A grin at Ziedeno for his efforts in making the swirly-wax endeavor work out, and V'lano's on his way away from work for now.

Fayre bustles over to the drink table, ignoring the lack of shoulder tap and the fact that she hasn't actually done any of the work. Hey, at least she's not trying to claim any of the cheese she hasn't earned. "We Istans sure know how to reward work, eh?" Or lack of it. She takes a few pitchers of fruit juices, mixing them together in one cup for herself. Apparently her bartending habits haven't left her quite yet.

"I might try some, then," he comments to Nolee, only to realize ... oh, she's gone. There's a respectful nod to V'lano, Zeno's own grin squarely in place. Of course, as soon as the Weyrleader's gone, the poor boy ends up getting a particularly dark look from Nagilla's assistant and he quickly sets to work to make the wax a single, solid colour -- much to the other cheese-dipping lass' chagrin. After a mumbled apology to her, he feels a tap on his shoulder and happily relinquishes his wax-stirring duties in pursuit of something to drink.

Dragon> Liaoth bespoke Ista dragons with << This is bad. >> Illustrates a kid like drawing of a scenario for the rest of the dragons in the bowl, depicting herself and dragons in the area as little with smiley faces and the humans are all kitties and doggies. << First she gets the cheese and stores it someplace safe, then when I least suspect she eats her portion and loses the drops. Then I have to sit in there /aaaallll/ night with her /stinky/ breath and its still stinky when she goes out on dawnsweeps with me in the morning. >> A second set of drawings. << Then she'll leave the drops behind at the wedding and her cousin will offer her some of the cheese to taste with him as a family bonding thingy and Jazra will have wine and smell of both wine and cheese and cake when she heads home and that's how I'll spend two nasty nights in a smelly weyr. >> The mental drawings cease in a flurry of hurried breezes. >>

Nolee stays long enough to laugh at Fayre's mingling of the juices before she's up the steps to her ledge, fetching the drops for breath improvement and dispersing them wherever requested, then shirking off once more.