“I have a request,” she said. “I would like to see if you could go down to
the waters there, preferably to a spot far from seaweed, and fetch me a pail of
seawater.” She grinned so wide the corners of her mouth almost touched her
ears. “I’m tasting the city, you see. The region. The seas.”

I scratched my eyebrow with a thumbnail, awaiting the rest of it. “Are
you, ma’am.”

“Oh, yes. The oysters absorb what’s about them as they grow, you know. I
can taste where they’re from.”

“I did not think your appetite for oysters was so tremendous, ma’am.”

“Oh, I’m not actually hungry, Din. Really, it’s that each oyster is different.
You can taste in each one which reef they came from, which side they grew
upon, which waters they flourished within. They are like melodies of the
ocean itself rendered in flesh.”

- A Drop of Corruption, Chapter 7 pgs. 53-54