Altairian Food
There are many myths and legends surrounding faery food. Specifically, what happens if one decides to indulge in it. While some aspects of the myths are true, others are very much not.
Common Myths
- Indulging in faery food will lead one to becoming trapped in Altairus, unable to leave.
- Faery food grants its consumer strange magical powers which can be used even outside of Altairus.
- Faery food afflicts its consumer with magical curses that persist outside of Altairus.
- Once one consumes faery food, Earth food will cease to satisfy, and perhaps cease to nourish the body, leading to malnourishment and death.
The Reality
While these myths are all false, all have some basis in reality.
- While faery food does not trap its consumer in Altairus against their will, it does make it more likely that the one who consumed it will want to stay in Altairus for an extended period of time. This period of time often translates to a much longer period of time back on Earth.
- Certain foodstuffs in Altairus definitely have magical properties and can grant imbibers special powers and abilities. However, since these are connected to Anima, they cannot be used where Anima is not as present. This includes Earth, where Anima is very limited when compared to Altairus.
- Altairian food can indeed carry curses, but these curses generally do not persist outside of Altairus for the same reason that magical powers from food cannot be carried over to Earth. In addition, one is most likely to suffer a nasty curse when one takes food that does not belong to them.
- The consumption of faery food does not render one unable to gain nourishment from Earth food once consumed. However, eating faery food is an experience one never forgets, and once it is done, the consumer may find that Earth food just falls flat when compared to faery food.
Appeal of Altairian Cuisine
Altairian food is a lot like Earth food in many ways. However, it has a few key differences that distinguish it from Earth food and make it particularly appealing.
The first and most obvious difference is that Altairian food is Anima-enhanced. Since Anima flows through everything in Altairus, every meal is bathed in the very essence of life itself. As a result, it functions much like a healing potion in addition to providing nourishment. "Let food be thy medicine" is a common refrain in Altairian medicine for this reason. The majority of Altairian medicine is basically food.
In a similar vein, Altairian food is much more flavorful than Earth food. This is both because of the aforementioned Anima-enhancement and the fact that ultra-processed foods and machine-produced food are not really a thing in Altairus. Anywhere you go, you can count on meals being prepared from scratch, or at least having been prepared from scratch at some point before being magically preserved. Magical preservation methods do a much better job of preserving flavor and nutrition than many methods used on Earth, such as freezing.
Lastly, many dishes are made from ingredients that simply do not exist on Earth. Meat from semi-magical creatures is most thought of, but Altairus possesses a menagerie of exotic fruits, vegetables, and grains that simply do not exist on Earth. Once the consumer has made their way back to Earth, they will not be able to eat these things again unless they manage to make their way back to Altairus.
All of these factors make it so that when a traveler returns to Earth, they will not be satisfied with the foods on Earth they once enjoyed. Their dissatisfaction with Earth food has not so much to do with magic as it does with the fact that they have now seen Paree and are loathe to go back to the farm.
Altairian Celebrations and "Disappearances" of Missing Humans
Many times when visiting humans consumed faery food in the past, it was as part of a big celebration. After the party was over, the faeries would try to convince the visiting human to stay a few more days. Exhausted from the party and often willing to spend more time in the magical world they found themselves in, they would often say yes.
This wouldn't be a problem if time spent in Altairus was equal to or even shorter than the time spent on Earth. However, since time flows much more slowly in Altairus than it does on Earth, those two days could translate to months, years, or even centuries on Earth with no one knowing what happened to the visiting human. Earth dwellers began to think that the visiting humans had become trapped on the other side, and they issued warnings to each other about consuming any food while in the faery world of Altairus, falsely believing that it was the link between the visitations and the disappearances.
The Curse
The magical effects of each dish depend on the specific ingredients, techniques, and enchantments used to make them, but one in particular is commonplace enough to be noted here.
In Altairus, there is a strong taboo against taking food that doesn't belong to you. This may be because doing so has the nasty tendency to lay a curse down on the consumer. These curses tend to be of the distressing, embarassing sort and are not acutely dangerous. Turning the consumer into an animal is the most common curse to come from this action, though there are others. These curses are temporary and easily broken, but the acute embarassment of getting cursed like this in the first place ensures that people who are cursed learn their lesson very quickly.
It is important to note that eating food that is available at a party does not trigger the curse, as that food is laid out for everyone. So there is no need to worry if the extra few dumplings you took at that Summer Solstice festival could potentially turn you into a reindeer. It is only when the food is explicitly for someone else that the curse can be triggered.
Furthermore, if food is offered to you personally, it might be bad luck not to eat it. When a faery offers food to you, it is a gesture of trust and fellowship. As such, this food will confer certain blessings when consumed. These boons can last for a few hours to the entire span of time one is in Altairus.
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