The MoonQuest

Yhoshi said little at first and ate less. He picked guardedly at the strange stew that filled his bowl, wrinkling his nose at the curls of aromatic steam that rose lazily from it. I devoured mine greedily. Served only on rare occasions, the lustrous orange-yellow concoction was one of my favorites, its naturally sweet broth an ideal base for the red bela nuts, green zanga fruit and elegantly thin strips of purple gela’aa that floated within.

“Aren’t you hungry, young man?” Myrrym asked. “After all your travels?”

Yhoshi’s gaze shifted nervously from Bold’ar, cleaning his second bowl of stew with a long black tongue, to the two massive cooking fires that danced at the far end of the hall. Loud crackling pops exploded from one, where a sapphire oval of oil-brushed p’yan root sizzled. A man-size cauldron bubbled into the second.

“H-hungry? No, I mean yes. But I can’t.” He shuddered as Bold’ar held his bowl up for a refill. “How can you?” he asked Myrrym. “You know. The bones.”

“It isn’t true, you know,” O’ric interjected, his first words since the start of the meal. Until that moment, he had stared silently into the middle distance, eating nothing. Now, he dipped a spoon into his bowl and ate distractedly.

“What isn’t?” Yhoshi asked.

“The bones.”

Gwill’m bugged his eyes, bared his teeth and lunged.