Tuesday: Food For Thought
Hi, I'm still badfalcon and welcome to Tuesday. Today we're going to be playing with our food. Whether we're cooking it, eating it, or playing with it... if your prompt has anything to do with food, then this here's the place for it
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“Not far from here.” Dastan says, simply, and not meeting Tus’s eyes. Tus puts fork into his cooked meat, and cuts it into small neat pieces. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, that much is obvious - but he won’t push Dastan, yet.
“You eat as if you were starved.” Garsiv murmurs, eyeing his young brother from head to foot; he is small looking, slender as a bird. Garsiv has trained to lead the Army since his birth, he has seen starved soldiers. Dastan shrugs, his answer matter of fact.
“I was.” Everyone does, Dastan does not finish saying, for the hot fury that burns in the eyes that meet his own.
Tus puts down the diced meat on his fork. Dastan eyes the bread before him, and wonders if he will get the chance to eat it - and how to go about doing so.
“What does he mean by that, father?” Tus hisses, looking to King Sharaman.
“Exactly as he says, he has had a hard life for one so young. His birth was not a noble one, but his sprit is one I recognize as a noble king.” There is such budding fondness for Dastan in Sharaman’s voice that Tus is reassured by it.
“Where does this noble spirit come from, if not of our blood?” Garsiv tilts his head, regarding Dastan still. Dastan tries not to be bothered by that stare. It is strange, he feels pinned in by it, trapped. He has never had so much attention focused on him for so long.
“I don’t know.” Dastan tells the silverware. His chest is tight, and his words come from somewhere warm and hurting though he feels he should choke.
“I haven’t any parents to tell me. I will go now, sir. Back to the streets, it is clear I don’t belong here. Whatever lesson this was intended to be, I don’t think I have the wit to learn it.” Dastan stands hastily while they are speechless; taking up the bread from the table with his bare hands and tucking it into the pockets of the fine clothes he had been given to go along with a warm soak in the first bath he’s ever seen. He doesn’t wait to be dismissed before he runs.
He hears shouts, his name, and the clattering of a chair hitting the floor.
Then a yell that may very well doom him to death; “Guards, catch him! Don’t let him get away!”
Dastan has always had the slums around him, buildings, alleyways and allies, and places he knows he can hide. Here, in the heart of the palace, there is nothing familiar to him. It only underlines how strange his being here is. In the end, Dastan does not have a chance to get away to familiar things. He’s caught when a passageway ends in double halls which both have guards waiting for him; one of them reaches for him. Dastan thinks only of that man who wanted to cut off his hand and he screams as loud as he can.
He does not notice that guard’s eyes widen, that he hastily flinches away from Dastan. Twisting and jerking off his feet, in a effort only to get away - he hits the floor and crawls away into warm robes and a soothing voice.
“It’s all right my boy, your safe, I’m here, I won’t hurt you - I won’t ever let them harm you - Dastan, do you hear me?” Sharaman croons; he holds the too small and slender body, feeling his pulse hammering like a hunted thing. Dastan drags in a broken breath, blinking past teary eyes up at the King who claims him as his own son.
“Why won’t you let me go?” Dastan asks, weakly. He is only a boy with a noble spirit, whose body is weak, who is afraid and has had good reason to be all his lonely life.
“You are my son.” Sharaman answers in the only way he can. Everything about the meal he wanted to have with his family, when it finally felt whole, went wrong - but what he says is a wrongness that is right.
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