Prestidigitation will indeed not change the texture or shape, but rice and beef that tastes like peach cake can still be interesting. She spends a bit of extra time to concentrate the peach-y flavor in the beef - she's been doing this for years, now, and small differences like that can matter a lot.

She does a similar thing with the salmon and chicken flavors, for the other three.

Om nom nom. "What'd you do yours to be like?" asks the salmon-idea-thief.

"I've been experimenting with spiced dried fruits for the beef, lately - it's a good flavor profile for how chewy the meat is. Today was apple/cinnamon/ginger."

"Huh."

"We had apple for the porridge last fall."

"Raisins are better."

"You'd get sick of raisins if you could hold onto them through a whole game of poker."

"Fuck you."

"You can eat cinnamon? I thought it was just for Communes."

 "I've never eaten real cinnamon; I picked up the flavor from the other song-sorcerer at my garrison. He says it's the kind of ghastly expensive spice that rich nobles with more money than sense eat to show off how wealthy they are." She grins. "He might have just been fucking with me, though, he does that sometimes when he gets bored."

She does her best to subtly steer the topic of conversation towards fort #11, and how it's been faring recently. (Her best is pretty good.)

"Yeah they just fucking sent out, fucking, flyers, to post to the wall with all the other bulletins. Cheliax under attack, hold position, prepare for supply disruptions and some personnel recall, and then four days later. Four fucking days."

"We've been on seven-eighths rations, the bastards."

"Better seven-eighths for a long while than halfsies for a short one. Especially as the patrol schedule hasn't let up."

"Yeah, yeah."

She nods sympathetically. Being on reduced rations sucks. 

Have things been settling down since then? She's been to a few other northern forts since the Four Day War, and they all seemed... less, uh, put together than #11.

"That's because for some reason Artigas keeps trading units with the neighbors and they keep letting him even though he gives away fuckups who can't follow an order if it's holding a Light right in front of their nose."

"They like excuses to have the rack occupied, I've told you that."

"You'd think they'd run out of racks! Or space to put racks! Or room in the schedule for somebody they're only feeding to make them patrol, to be on the rack instead!"

"I'm not saying it's how I'd do it, just, that's why they keep letting him trade and haven't been like 'hey fuck you for hogging all the good ones'."

Huh. Now that's interesting. "Huh! It certainly seems like a good strategy for a fort commander, if you can get away with it." Is anyone at this table a transfer from one of the other forts? 

Yeah, salmon-idea-thief is. "I came in through #48 and my whole squad got swapped here. We just patrolled thisaway till we got here and then stopped. The squad broke up after that when the cleric died though, I'm on these assholes' squad now."

"Bitch."

"And they love me."

She nods solemnly. "I can tell!" 

She's curious about what they think about the commander.

"Well, he doesn't keep the rack full."

"Not like he's squeamish, he'll do it for desertion just like it says on the books."

"Makes Ventura do it, more like."

"Sure but like it gets done. I heard Grec say something one time and Artigas was like, something something, it's on the books, but real mercilessness would, something something, Hell is better at torturing people anyway."

Venn is herself squeamish (for definitions of squeamish that include "anti-torture"), but she's been to a Chelish fort before, and she's pretty good at controlling her facial expressions. It's just not very useful, being horrified or sad at Chelish worldwound soldiers, and so she doesn't do it.

She's still curious about Artigas. She rotates between tables, ingratiating herself with food flavorings and then catching up on local gossip, with an ear towards the unusual commander. (She asks about plenty of other things, too - it's no good to seem like you're snooping, even if you're doing it out of simple curiosity.)

One line of questioning gets her only repressed giggles.

--

"Grec" is apparently the First Arcane, in charge of the wizards and wizard-specific situations, though he also patrols sometimes (nobody gets out of patrolling - even a lot of the cooks and whores marched here, not urgent enough deployments to get teleported in with the stew ingredients, making their way around the border with regular squads, though the cooks and whores did not per se have duties on those patrols besides "walk"). He's very much Artigas's man, though he's got a favorite whore and nobody seems to take the idea that he and Artigas are fucking seriously. (Artigas, notably, does not appear to make use of the whores at all, that anyone leaks to Venn.)

--

Artigas is the Lawfullest Lawful Law-hole who ever Lawed, and will come down even on people he otherwise likes for minor fuckups like "claiming you had eyes on the squad cleric the whole time even though actually once you took a piss break and were not staring at her during that minute". Not, like, with the rack, generally, but if you do it a lot he'll trade you and he's very free with removing people's alcohol rations or putting them on worse shifts or reassigning them away from their pals if he thinks they're making each other worse.

She exchanges anecdotes from the other forts, tales of the more exciting incidents she's been deployed to, and other tidbits she thinks they might find interesting. 

The things she's learning are fascinating! Better yet, she's pretty sure she's not getting the full picture, missing some important details that will make the rest of it make more sense. Social mysteries at a Chelish fort have a potential to be terrible, of course, but she's curious. 

She disentangles herself from the last group she's been chatting with and heads back to her squad's room. 

Ah, she's back. That was almost an hour, but not quite. "Learn anything interesting?"

Urdina's definitions of interesting are very different from his, but she's got a good eye and ear for troop morale. #11, according to her, seems higher-functioning and less socially frictious than #9, #20, and #43 (those being the other Chelish forts she's spent non-combat time at). Her best guess is that this has something to do with the commander, Chosen Artigas, who has some sort of non-obvious trick or strategy for making good personnel trades with the adjacent Chelish forts and whose most gossip-worthy trait is apparently that he is "really lawful, no, like, more lawful than that, lawful like you would not believe". (She does a good but also totally unnecessary Chelish accent for that bit.)

She thinks she's missing something about what's going on here, but she doesn't think it's urgent. He nods approvingly.

"So are you angling to fuck the guy?" She doesn't look up from the carving she's doing with the hezrou skull. (She's pretty sure Urdina isn't, in fact, angling to fuck the guy, but she's being weird and this is an easy way to make fun of her for it.)

The 'nice' thing about Demonscourge is that because she doesn't (as far as Venn can tell) actually care about how Venn reacts to her barbs, there isn't any practical reason not to radiate the annoyance she's feeling. (She doesn't say anything, of course. That would be Unprofessional.)

Sigh. "Demonscourge, Marit, you two should get something to eat soon. Urdina, do they need to be on the lookout for anything?" (She shakes her head.)

The other two leave to get their dinner.

Venn loves to stay up late when there's reason to, but she's not exactly interested in shooting the shit with this particular squad, as much as she respects Rowen and Marit for what they do. She's asleep before the other two return, which means she's the first of the four to wake up.

She goes through her morning routine in silence and then sneaks out of the room to see if the mess hall is open.

It's open round the clock. It's serving porridge.

It's - quiet? There are maybe slightly fewer total people but also they are having much softer conversations.

Well. That's vaguely ominous.

She'll make the rounds to see if anyone wants flavoring, and also to see how fast they clam up when she approaches. 

"I've got us covered here, we're all having blueberry pie."

"Have you eaten yet? You're entitled to a bowl even if you're leaving immediately but if you have the slack we could use another song."

...Huh. "I could probably do another healing song. Did something happen?"