It looked like that silly bird had learned quite a few things during all her time away, such as using utensils and drinking soup. At mealtime, I was delighted to see that Little Crow finally no longer grabbed food directly with her hands, and she no longer dunked her head into the soup bowl with a plunk when drinking soup. Back at home, those two things alone had caused everyone no end of trouble. Whenever she ate, I practically wanted to set up a shelter beside her. By the end of a meal, she could distribute food evenly across a two-meter radius.
Things were much better now. Though she still looked a little clumsy, Little Crow could indeed imitate others by using a spoon to drink soup and chopsticks to skewer flatbread—surely that was better than using her hands?
Because we wanted to experience more local food—and, incidentally, keep a certain big-stomached Queen from eating so much in one meal that the whole city noticed—we spent two hours switching between several culinary battlegrounds. Sometimes, I really envied Sandora: her astonishing appetite and bottomless capacity for food. If you went somewhere you had never been before to sample the local cuisine, that talent was obviously a massive advantage. In one meal, you could achieve what others would need half a month to accomplish. Ordinary people would be stuffed half to death after taking a few bites of every local dish, while Sandora had nearly set off to eat another meal two hundred kilometers away after making the rounds of the entire city... Fortunately, I managed to dissuade her with desperate remonstrations.
"Whew... I feel pretty full." My foodie Queen finally patted her belly in satisfaction and gave a fairly pleased sigh. I couldn't help casting a curious glance at her slender