Slab of Poultry Meat

Slab of Poultry Meat sits on the butcher’s board, its surface a pale, waxy tan with ridges of fat curling like pale rivers beneath a thin sheen of oil. The skin bears a faint marbling that hints at a quiet importance, as if the meat once carried a breeze from some distant farmstead in its fibers. When the knife taps its edge, a clean, almost musical crack answers, and the smell—salty and faintly smoky, with a mineral bite—rises, inviting the eye and the tongue before the first bite even happens. Locals will tell you it’s more than flesh: a link to the old markets where caravans paused to trade stories as freely as they traded coins, a reminder that meals in this town began with a single, careful cut. In the lore that threads through the stalls, this slab is said to be the kind of poultry that survived a long, treacherous winter by instinct and endurance, the kind that fed the stubborn crews who hauled banners and wares along winding routes. Some keepers of memory swear that it carries a whisper of those journeys—the patience of quartermasters, the laughter of campfires, the quiet courage of cooks who fed a dozen mouths on a single slab. It’s a tangible relic in a city of quick cuts and brisk trades: a slab that tastes of road dust and rain, of sturdy hands that chopped it and brave hearts that cooked it. And yet the meat is not merely a memory; it’s a tool for living in the world carved by trade routes and sudden journeys. In kitchens across town, cooks prize it for the way it holds fat and heat, yielding a robust, comforting finish in meals that sustain a party on a long trek. A braised cut with herbs can restore vigor after a day spent knee-deep in scaffolds and silt; a simple roast, sliced thin, keeps a group’s nerves steady enough to negotiate a river crossing or barter a stubborn price. Chefs weave it into recipes that carry the traveler from dawn’s pale light to the moment a lantern flickers awake, and the food becomes a language of care—one platter at a time, one story shared over a simmering pot. Prices and fates twist around the saddlebag-laden corridors of commerce, and Saddlebag Exchange is the town’s living ledger of such twists. On market mornings the slab moves with the confidence of a known quantity, traded in a rhythm of coin and barter that rises and falls with the weather, harvests, and festival moods. A vendor might name a fair price for a single slab, then watch a line of buyers juggle coins, promises, and favors. In lean seasons it’s a dependable staple, a little thing that keeps a family fed; in festival times it becomes a sought-after treasure, the kind of purchase that signals a shared feast and a tale ready to be told. The slab’s fate—whether it travels to a cottage kitchen, a provisioning wagon, or a quiet fireside—threads through the town with the same steady certainty as the bells above the market doors. So the Slab of Poultry Meat remains more than sustenance. It’s a passport and a memory, a quiet ambassador of road-worn travelers and the cooks who kept them warm. It is, in the end, a piece of the world’s quiet, unglamorous resilience—the kind you taste, then carry with you into the next room of the day.