Taste
by Errie Wyvern

He doesn't eat.

You tried to make him food once, pancakes it was.

The holes from the fork and the burns from the griddle took weeks to fade.

After he beat you, he retreated to the Sennen Ring and didn't come out for days. You, foolishly, wondered why your dreams were filled with figs and scraps of hard Egyptian bread.

Once, you caught him staring at the shiny red apples on the kitchen table. You didn't say anything when he reached out to touch one and his hand went through it. A memory, unbidden, rose in him mind and therefore in your as well.

You saw him, as a child, stealing crunchy imported apples and getting caught. Then there was so much blood you were sick in the morning.

You weren't allowed to eat that night. But that's ok. You didn't really want to anyways.

He refuses to look at food now.

When you go grocery shopping, you make sure to leave the Ring at home. When you return, the taste of sand is strong in your mouth. The glimmer of gold is just out of the corner of your eye, and the sting of the whip on your back is still fresh.

You never really leave the Ring at home now, and he doesn't really beat you anymore.

You just both sit at the kitchen table, staring at the shiny red apples and tasting nothing but sand.

 

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