Kedri looks around to check how the locals are going about eating it (lifting the bowl to your mouth and drinking from it like a cup? some type of scooping utensil or other? something more complicated?), then mimics them.

Mmm.

(It feels a little weird, eating enchanted food when there are all those folktales regarding the importance of not doing that.

But then, not all enchantments are hostile. It would be more precise to say that you shouldn't accept enchanted food from someone you wouldn't trust with your soul, and she's already accepted a technique and a set of foundation draughts and multiple oath-bindings from them.

She doesn't regret any of that. It's been worth it.)

Soup is consumed with the aid of simple ceramic spoons, elegantly shaped so that the end will hook onto the edge of the bowl rather than fall into your soup if you let go of it. There are also chopsticks, for things which are not soup. 

Jasmine is starting to see why dukes and kings go to war over the services of immortal chefs. This soup is really good. 

As the soup course is winding down, the woman with the ship icon will, having finished both her soup and her conversation with the person on her other side, politely turn to introduce herself to Kedri. 

"Greetings, allow me to introduce myself. I am Wrathbrave Crane, granddaughter of the sixth Count Wrathbrave. Who are you?" 

This sounds like a job for a full name.

"I'm Kedri yet Naipa bren Teludi. Kedri's my personal name; the other bits mean that my mother's name is Naipa and my father's is Teludi.

It's good to meet you."

"Are you one of the locals? My parents have always spoken very highly of the Bank-orphans as a class, they've often times been some of our family's most dependable customers." 

"My host is. I...reincarnated here from another world, is I think how you say it.

It's not something where one can control the destination, but I think I've been very fortunate in where I've ended up." She smiles.

"Customers? What is it that you do?"

"How interesting. You've certainly had a fortunate opportunity, then, to be able to study here, both in the empire and at this sect." 

"My family is highly involved with the Silver Sea Shipyard Sect, who run all the best shipyards on the Silver Sea. The sect runs many missions and mercantile endeavours through its own members and companies but the majority of what we make is sold to other cultivators, and the Bank is naturally one of our most honoured customers." 

"I'm looking forward to it."

(Kedri refrains from enthusing about the textbook-reading she's already done, since it seems like that would be covered by technique taboos.)

"I worked at a fishery in my previous life, so while my experience with ships is not as deep as a shipmaker, I've certainly acquired an appreciation for them."

She looks thoughtful.

"...all of ours were mundane: there wasn't much qi on my world. Are yours enchanted?"

"Obviously." She is too polite to show offence, but.

"Even the mundane shipwrights we work with produce only the highest quality." 

...did she say something to imply that they were not of high quality? Is she getting a bad grade at social interaction again?

...that phrasing kind of sounds like only shitty boats remain unenchanted.

"I'm still getting my bearings in this world: I didn't know for sure that ships could be enchanted, though I'd have guessed so.

What sorts of things do ship enchantments do, if I may ask?"

(She wonders if she should try leaning a little less hard on the kinesthetic impressions of how to pronounce Imperial, and speak with a noticeable Tashayan accent. Maybe people would be more forgiving of her noobishness if she were blatantly foreign.

Well, mid-conversation wouldn't be the time for that, in any case. She'll consider the matter more carefully later.)

Crane allows a little enthusiasm to leak into her voice. "We do all sorts of things! Simple structural integrity and harmony with the winds, of course, and high quality integration for techniques - which really needs to be done custom to get it properly right, and speed and automation, and one of my uncles makes cannons capable of being used by 5th realms." 

"And then there are the real projects! Our founder's ship, the Brave, can with a suitable captain run at near peak combat efficiency without other crew, function effectively in the heart of a volcano, and sink entire fleets - it's the toughest ship on the Silver Sea, the first to ever brave the Fireheart Isles and survive intact." 

(Okay, apparently that was a good question, phew.)

"Wow!

Sailing in the heart of a volcano sounds like quite the story."

"The Fireheart Isles are a major stain - at least sixth realm - and at their core, the sea just flows straight into the lava chamber. The Brave could sail right in - even today, the expeditions are very profitable for our clan." She laughs lightly. "I grew up on tales of the wonders and terrors they found down there." 

"May I ask what your favourite tale was? Or your favourite non-classified one, anyway."

"Ah, how could I have a favourite, there are so many - how she outsmarted Bitterness, how she slew the ancient lava wyrm, how she warred and made peace with the people of the hidden inner islands. Our founder was very impressive! She left us many wonders to use and puzzles to solve." 

"This world is so vast," she says, "so many kinds of...people and things and places in it. I wonder what it would be like, to grow up on an island in the middle of a volcano."

"Who's Bitterness?"

"I have never really heard good things about little communities isolated in seas, literal or metaphorical, of danger. They get clannish, ruled by petty elders, breaking every generation in order to stay strong enough to survive. Like a forbidden* technique but on the scale of a society." 

"Bitterness - I don't think anyone ever really figured out where he came from, but he was very old and very inhuman when my ancestor met him, and he liked to poison ideals, talk people into becoming worse versions of themselves." 

*lit: 'a technique so dangerous or self-destructive that reasonable people would never learn it, centrally the sort of technique that burns your long term potential for short term strength.' This is a two syllable adjective for technique.