stargateficrec | Alchemy, by Melannen (G)

Show: Stargate SG-1

Rec Category: Moebius
Characters: Daniel Jackson
Het/Slash/Gen: Gen
Warnings: none
Author on LJ:

melannen
Author's Website: Melannen at AO3
Link: Alchemy

Why This Must Be Read: Daniel spent a long time between rebellions in Ancient Egypt. What hobby might he have chosen to stay... sane?

I love this for the layers and layers: the patience and distillation of both physical and metaphysical choices, the dogged persistence for oh-so-many reasons. Read this one lightly, and smile; then read it again more deeply, and savor.

He'd hesitated to ask for salt, because the salt they used for cooking on holidays was expensive and traded all the way from Siwa, but Katep reminded him about the cheaper sea salt they used in tanning, which was just as pure. It was also sacred to Seth, the enemy of Ra, which was why it wasn't used in cooking. Seth had been in exile for at least a hundred years, Daniel calculated, but he couldn't help feeling a sense of near-kinship at the thought, and gladly added the salt to his cache of supplies.

He'd known there was no hope of refined sugar, but Katep's nephew eventually found a hive of wild honey, which was shared among the clan. Daniel took the portion that would once have been an offering to Ra, and crystallized it dry enough to granulate, although to be honest plain honey probably would have worked well enough. The same with the wheat flour; he took the coarse stuff the women used and worked it nearly as fine as the refined flour of his homeland. Sha're had taught him to grind flour by hand, his semi-holy status excusing him from the strict gender roles on Abydos the same as it did here. He thought about her, sometimes, as his hands moved in the unchanging rhythms of bread, and Katep's sister-in-law mocked him for doing all that extra work.