***********
"I smell food."
Val looked up. They'd been traveling for days. Their supplies and most of their money had given out, and both bottomless pits (I mean stomachs) were growling. Like demented lions. Grr.
Lina stepped forward. "I'm following the scent." Val entertained himself as they walked by picturing her as a bloodhound on the trail.
They walked for quite sometime. The tantalizing scent of food was always there, and slowly (so slowly) getting stronger, but was always just out of their reach.
"Maybe our noses are smelling things," Val suggested.
"Of course they are! That's how we know something's there."
"I mean, maybe our noses just think they smell something delicious. Maybe they're lying to us." Lina glared over her shoulder at him.
"My nose would never lie to me about food!" she snapped. "The consequences would be too great! My poor tummy would be angry!"
"And we all know we mustn't anger Tummy-sama," Val replied sarcastically.
"Right!" Lina hadn't caught the sarcasm. Good thing for Val.
*****
"Look! I was right!" Lina pointed triumphantly at the small inn up the road. The smell of their future dinner was stronger. "Dinner, here we come!"
******
"Lina! I challenge you!"
Lina looked around, expecting to see some obnoxious young mage intent on earning a name for himself by defeating her. She and Valteira had just sat down to dinner, and were ready to order (everything on the menu, in at least double portions, mostly triples). They were the only ones there, however.
"Was that you, Val?" she asked him.
"Yes. I challenge you."
"Are you crazy? You don't know magic!"
"Not a magic challenge. An eating challenge!" She raised her eyebrows. So. The boy wanted to play…She smiled cruelly.
"Are you sure?" He nodded. "Very well. Shall we begin? WAITOR!"
*****
A crowd assembled to watch the gruesome sight. Noone had ever seen two people consume so much food in one sitting. Val and Lina were tied all the way through dinner. Eventually they started to slow down.
'Maybe I was wrong,' Val thought as his stomach approached capacity. 'Maybe she CAN beat me in this.' He was thinking of the day, now months past, when she had shown up at the pottery shop and claimed that he couldn't compare to her.
He sopped up some gravy with a slice of bread. Lina chewed. She looked just about done.
"Well," he started. "We're tied. Should we call it a draw?"
"If you want."
"I'm going to take a bath."
"Don't take too long." He nodded and stood up. As he started up the stairs, he heard Lina speak.
"Hey, waiter. Could I have…a cake?"
Val tripped.
"A…a whole cake, miss?"
"Mmmm…why not?"
Val slid down the stairs.
"Don't mess with Tummy-sama, kid," Lina told him seriously. And winked.
*******
Lina sat on a chair in her room, reading an old, beat-up book. It was dry reading, but it had some lovely information on shamanist spells. Val was still in the bath. He was the cleanest kid she'd met, constantly bathing or preening his wings, but Lina really wanted to get in the bath herself…
There was a knock at her door. "Hai, hai. I'm coming," she called. It was the innkeeper.
"A letter arrived for you, Miss. The messenger said it was very important, or I would have waited until morning."
"Hey Lina," Val called, appearing from the bath-room in his pajama bottoms. With his huge, black, feathery wings showing. "Would you do me a huge favor and scratch between my wings…Oops" He stopped and blinked. The innkeeper blinked back. He put the letter in Lina's hands, turned, and left, very calmly.
"'Oops'?" Lina said acidly. Val blushed from wing-tip to the roots of his hair.
"I had a really bad itch."
She slapped her forehead.
*****
Outside the room, the innkeeper leaned against the wall. "Wings? I should've known they weren't human from the way they ate…"
**********
Special thanks to Sophie, for the original Tummy-sama.
