[PRP] All-Consuming Thoughts (Nisadee/Beelim)

[demon_pachabel]

Hungry.

It wasn't a new thought for Beelim, really, and anybody who had spent more than a few minutes with the man wouldn't have been surprised to find out that as he swept he was quietly counting down the time until dinner in his head - even though he'd just had lunch barely an hour before. While it hadn't been anything fancy, he couldn't help but obsess over the details as though it would somehow assuage that ravenous hunger that seemed to mark his everything.

His stomach rumbled quietly at him and Beelim frowned at it.

"Wonder what they're gonna make for dinner," he murmured to himself, staring intently at the end of his broom as he continued to sweep dutifully. He didn't mind the work, after all, even if his mind was completely somewhere else.

Meepfur

I'm sorry you got the perpetually hungry boy.

 

[Meepfur]

Sweeping - like most cleaning, really - was a mindless chore, and it was easy to drift off in thought in the course of it, or simply to think of nothing at all. In this particular instance, she was thinking about family matters, as the night before she'd received a letter from her aunt that she'd be coming to High Reaches to stay. Not her mother, of course - that woman was incapable of settling anywhere, let alone of putting anyone before her or her dragon. Still, it had long since stopped bothering Nisadee, and if someone from her family was going to be around, she'd rather her aunt than her parents. Not that she expected to see her much, or that there'd be a warm reunion; at least if her family had one thing in common, it was a reluctance - if not outright inability, she sometimes wondered - to show anything even resembling traditional affection.

The rumble of her chore-mate's stomach, accompanied by his speculation, interrupted her musings. Not that she minded, as it wasn't as though they were terribly important.

"Something involving tubers is generally a safe bet," she answered, not that he'd actually been asking her.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

Beelim dared to look sheepish, face flushing slightly as it seemed his perpetual hunger had caught the attention of his fellow candidate.

"Tubers are good," he relented, even if it seemed they ate them all the time. They were hardy and filling and could be cooked up several ways. Boiled, mashed, roasted, fried.......his mind had already begun to wander off with the feast of tubers before his stomach rumbled again. Beelim placed a hand over it and frowned again.

"Probably a stew too." It was a good way to make the last bits of everything that needed to be used-or-losed into a decent eat. And it was warm, which in High Reaches was a bonus.

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

Nisadee wasn't bothered by the growling of the boy's stomach; people got hungry, after all, and she knew it well enough. And given the age range of Candidacy, and the amount of physical work they did, hunger was only to be expected, especially in the interminably long period between lunch and dinner. So, while she might be faintly amused by the noise, it was hardly any kind of an affront. "As long as they're cooked and served up right," she half-agreed, "So it would depend on who they trusted with kitchen duty today."

The kitchen workers themselves were good at their jobs, but some of the Candidates who got tasked to help them...not so much. She'd had more than a few servings of soup that tasted a bit charred. "Stew doesn't sound so bad, as long as no one's burned it this time."

Nisadee wasn't the best of cooks, but she could at least not burn things.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

Admittedly, for all of his hunger even Beelim didn't have a taste for the worst of the disasters that occasionally struck the kitchens with cooks who were too distracted from their tasks to actually do it right. That was never a problem he had - he was perhaps a little too attentive to everything, begging for any excuse to taste test his work.

"I hope not. That would be a very sad supper," Beelim frowned, a look that was almost a pout on his face as he tried to focus on his sweeping again to no avail. Oh, how he now wanted to sneak off to the kitchen and see what they were up to. "Think if we swept real close to the kitchen we could find out?"

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

"Hard to find a sadder supper than a burnt one," Nisadee agreed. While she was hardly the most food-motivated of people, she needed to eat as much as the next, and bad food was just...bad. She grimaced at the thought.

At the suggestion that they should sweep their way over to the kitchens to check on the state of dinner, she laughed. "I think we'd get our hands smacked and our nosy selves told off, is what I think. I'm hungry, but I'm not that hungry."

And kitchenworkers were some of the last people Nisadee wanted upset with her.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

Beelim had at least a fair reputation with the kitchen staff - for liking food and at least doing good work when he was set to it, even if he did have a way of being slightly distractable. Like he was being right then.

"Okay," he relented anyways, even if he did pass a longing look in that direction. "I bet it's nice and warm in there, though." Less appealing in those summer months when it was already warm outside but now that it was getting cooler out? And it probably smelled like bread?

His stomach gave an involuntary rumble and he again at least had the grace to look sheepish about it.

Meepfur