Quoted By:
"Master," Bertha said "I just wanted to, like, thank you for everything you've done for me." She twirled a strand of her hair.
"It's the least I could do." You gave her another smile. "I mean, I have a duty to care for my slaves, so that means I need to love you and make sure you're happy."
"Yeah!" She smiled. "This is, like, exactly what I'm talking about! You're super good to us, Master!"
"It helps that you're into being a slave." You said. "And also since you're pretty open about wanting to do domestic stuff."
"Speaking of, remember that time when I did most of the cooking and housework for a week? I was able to figure out a way to make food that preserves for a long time without enchantments and without making it taste completely awful. Mostly my mom's bottling recipe, but with a few changes. So, I was thinking..."
"Go on." You knew that culinary stuff was something Bertha liked to do, and this just reinforced that belief.
"Well," Bertha continued "I wanna do just that: Cook up some stuff that'll last. My parents always said it's a total waste if food wasn't saved while there's an abundance of things to eat," You weren't surprised that philosophy has taken root, mostly because you knew the market in Westphalia tended to put emphasis on foodstuffs. Also, famines tended to follow wars "And now that we have tons of big squid meat-" She stopped, as if remembering something. "Maybe I could make a casserole? That sounds fun..."
"So you're the type to make casseroles out of deer your turned into trophies?" You said.
"Pretty much. I helped my dad do something like that with an owlbear. I hope they still have it." She replied. "Making a squid trophy is another first for me. Gotta say, its way more slimy and gross than any creature I've tried to deal with."
"Thanks for helping with stuffing the kraken by the way. It's been a bitch to taxidermy." You almost sigh through your smile.
You'd ended up giving the squid a 'skeleton' made of wire and special stuffing so that it wouldn't just flop around. You then gave its skin a few coats of magical see-through paint (luckily Bertha knew the recipe). Said paint then needed special enchantments to preserve the corpse into a more 'rubbery' state. A bit of Mel's invisible string was used, hardened and slackened as needed to fasten the carcass on a wooden display mount. And finally you and Herta gave the whole thing some more enchantments to hold it in place and protect it from wear and tear.
It's not like you couldn't make it into a trophy without magic, since you heard that cephalopods could be stored in air-tight glass chambers filled with water or held in block of clear glass. But magic was a good crutch for tedious shit like this. Even if you planned to properly trophy-up that kraken with Bertha's and Cattleya's help, as both women seemed to know more about the process than you did, it was a little too ambitious to follow up on. Especially when there were so many other urgent things happening.
