A little huff of amusement left Aethril's nose and she dipped her head with a "thank you," but she made the mental note of making a point of asking Obieth in the future if she could come near the Valkhound's bed, if just for the sake of reminding her of those boundaries.

"We'll get to a balcony," she said-- already picking through the various balconies around the Palace. Obieth would like one with a view over the gardens, Aethril wagered-- one where she could see visitors coming and going and the ivory deer at work, weaving through rows of hedges. All from a height, too.

Aethril liked these, too. Sometimes she'd simply watch, or she'd take a nap on one of the sun loungers. Doing very little was one of her more favoured pastimes.

The Hand stood up and started to pad out of her room-- barefoot, no less --when Obieth mentioned being eaten. She paused, twirled around in an unnecessarily fluid movement, and looked down between Obieth's face and her gut.

Oh. Right.

"You're hungry," she said. "Nothing is eating you-- you want to be eating. Shall we pay a visit to Nedies first and get you some food?"

@Obieth

Ahh--where were her manners?

"You are... welcome," Obieth concluded. Yes; that sounded right. "Balcony" was left undefined, and so she accepted this; they would get to a "balcony," and right now, Obieth guessed this was some form of bed. Perhaps a big one, and from the way her mistress described it, one that was perched quite high up. Obieth's mental image, then, of "balcony" became Aethril's bed attached to a high exterior wall, and although she failed to link an internal door to this bed in her picture of it, it was surprisingly accurate. Aside, that is, from being a bed, and not actually a balcony at all.

When Aethril moved, she did too--the Hand began to speak as black muscles pushed up in fluid unison. She paused at Aethril's words, teal eyes peering up at her, studying her own smooth movement and her face as she spoke, hollowed ears taking in her explanation. Hungry, she thought, and savored the word, taste it in her mind. "Yes... I am hungry. I wish to eat," she agreed, pushing more elegantly upright. Her flexible spine slunk this way and that as she curled along behind Aethril, and for the door.

"What," she went on, curving into the hallway with a glance up at the cerulean face, "is a Nedies?"

It was a word she would hear later, more than once. And she would return to the cook, undoubtedly, requesting other foods once she had been told of them--but for now, all her stomach wished was meat. Teal eyes flashed down the hallway, searching every corner, and the Valkcat began her swaying stalk. She reached for the shadows, intending to draw them close about her like a cloak--to hide her as she sought anyone else who might, in turn, be hiding. The darkness did not come, and so she was left clinging to the corners as she crept along, her nose and mundane senses doing all the work.

The distant sounds of birds and insects, far outside the palace, tickled her hearing. The scents of food rumbled her stomach further, warm, stale from earlier in the day, but taunting nontheless to a creature as famished as she. And the eyes; ahh, but the whole palace was a treat for sight. Soft blushes of rose and violet bloomed along the white marble, so that Obieth half-forgot her task, luxuriating instead in the columns and arches that she prowled through.

@Aethril

Aethril offered a little smile, and Obieth's manners earned her a little ruffle behind her head. As the Hand paced out of the room and crossed the barrier, she twisted out of the residential wing and towards the kitchen, where Nedies was likely-- he always seemed to be --cooking.

"Nedies is a person," she explained to the Valkhound. Nedies wasn't someone she particularly liked-- not after an incident wherein Nedies burnt her supper --but Aethril knew better than to quite literally bite the hand that feeds. "He makes food for everyone in the Palace. If you're hungry, you should ask him for something to eat, or go hunting."

Obieth would prefer hunting, Aethril imagined-- but she didn't have the time to teach her that. Vargas's Overseer would, presumably. "You'd like venison, from the deer," she suggested absent-mindedly, thinking of the cave deer and the Valkhound carefully stalking after them. "Or maybe rabbit. They're smaller."

She turned and pushed open the door to the kitchen, leaning in so that just her head was visible inside as she took a look around, calling out, "Nedies?"

A pause, and then a clarification-- "I just need some raw meat from you. Anything will do."

@Obieth

Obieth kept one ear perked toward Aethril as they walked, her paws near-silent as they scuffed the palace floor.

"Hunting," she repeated, in a quiet murmur. The word tickled her instincts, prodded something dark and lurking, a spark of excitement flaring like a star igniting. "I will have to try... hunting," she decided, her voice a half-murmur mostly lost in thought.

She came up alongside Aethril, paws tucked in beneath her straight, prim and proper, and listened to the Valkhand request "raw meat." This perked up her ears, the meaning of these words also stirring something in her mind--and in her stomach, which hissed and rumbled at her. Tongue dipped out to lap at whiskers, and wide eyes stared up in wait.

The reaction could not have been clearer if Obieth were a hundred and ninety pounds lighter, with Aethril going to town with a can opener.

@Aethril

A good chef was always on duty—particularly with all the people bustling about the Palace these days. Nedies's response was nearly immediate. He glanced up from where he'd been working dutifully at some rather elegant-looking patisserie. Far more refined than anything else you'd find in the caves, he would assure you—ah, but he was getting ahead of himself already. Pushing his bifocals further up his nose, he dipped his head shortly. "Oh, you must be Miss Aethril!"

Oh, yes, Nedies'd heard the news through the grapevine (which was named "Eggbert," of course) and been spared no amount of excitement about the Hand's awakening. "I trust that you've been enjoying what Isra has had sent up for you... ?" No expense spared... none! Whatever exotic ingredient he could imagine, he would seek out and provide. (Mind you, he'd rather not have to go do the dirty work of hunting and field gutting himself, but...)

Ah, but of course, the crepes could wait. The centaur-esque creature dipped his head again. "Right away, though, of course." He half-galloped toward the dark doorway at the back of the kitchen, and trotted down the stairs.

After just a few minutes, Nedies reemerged with a piece of dark, crimson meat about as long as his own forearm held between two hands, and a bloody scythe in the third (which he set down on a countertop.) "Meadow hindquarter," he nodded toward it, laying it on a plate—briefly washing off his hands in a basin—and holding it for the Hand to inspect, "does a lot of work for the animal, so there is little fat and a great deal of flavor."

@Aethril

"You'll learn through Vargas's Overseer," Aethril told Obieth. "But chances are, you'll have the instinct to figure it out. I imagine you'll find it enjoyable." She'd like to see it, admittedly-- Obieth was streamlined to absolute perfection. She'd glide through the air like nothing the Hand had ever seen before.

Her smile turned a little wistful before she turned her attention on Nedies. "Oh, yes," Aethril said-- she recalled Isra sending in a plate of spiced meat and vegetables, cut into very thin slices and drizzled in a sweet-smelling sauce. She had enjoyed it-- and she also realised, in that moment, that she might be hungry, too.

Obieth first. Aethril stepped forward with a click of her heel and looked over the meat for a moment. The sight of blood had her wrinkling her nose, but she was looking towards the Valkhound instead. "This is my new guard," she told Nedies, beckoning her over. "It's a good cut. Do you want to try it, Obieth?"

@Obieth

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

For a Valkhound perpetually lost in her own senses, in bathing and basking in every aspect of the world around her, the presentation of her first meal was bound to be a pivotal moment.

Nedies--his rich voice, the glint of his glasses, the strange stripes and scent of his fur--was eclipsed utterly the moment the red meat was offered. The metallic tang of blood on the air swept through her nostrils and rivetted her mind, as though a nail had been driven through her consciousness and affixed her to the haunch. The sight of gleaming meat, of the light glinting off each curve of ruby muscle, tensed her own body so that she near-froze--as though her instincts insisted this meat still needed to be stalked, to be hunted. That somehow, she might frighten this inanimate slab of flesh away.

Aethril's words were dim in the backdrop of her mind.

A more obedient creature might have answered "yes," and awaited further permission; but Obieth took the question as an invitation. "Yes," she answered, her voice hoarse and distant, and then she was pushing up, on hind legs, reaching for it--trying to nip it off the plate, to sink long dark teeth into that thing that screamed to her stomach, eat me.

@Aethril (maybe nedies too?)

Aethril had not expected any particular patience when it came to Obieth and eating-- and she sure as hell didn't receive any. She only just managed to nudge the plate closer to the Valkhound to grab the thick slab of muscle with her jaws and eat it.

She waited no further.

"Thank you, Nedies," she smiled a little thinly, fingers wiping against themselves despite touching no meat or blood. "Come on, Obieth."

And then she was turning and walking out, heels clicking. She glided around the door and made it out a ways into the hallway before she paused to briefly check if Obieth was still follow-- which she was, albeit while trying to choke down the entire muscle without, it seemed, chewing.

She was forced to slow to a stop, not too far from the kitchen door. "Try not to choke," she warned Obieth a little warily. "When you hunt, you'll have better time to sit and savour what you're eating."

Aethril's head idly turned down the hall, quiet, waiting for her to finish.

@Obieth

She hardly noticed the plate nudged toward her, so utterly fixated were all her senses on the haunch. As she touched it, the glorious iron scent filled her nostrils, and the first taste--ah!-Ecstasy! Obieth was lost in it at once; nothing else mattered past this, this immediate imperative, every cell in her body screaming for her to consume. This was sustenence; this was life. This was what she hadn't known she needed, but now that she was presented it--meat, on her tongue; blood, sliding down her throat, it was perfection.

She was fulfilled.

-And Aethril was telling her to walk.

Obieth obeyed, albeit poorly: a few steps as she struggled to both eat and walk, trying to bite away and swallow chunks when she had no hands to hold the thing. She left a smear of red as she went, having to repeatedly set the haunch down--even if for a brief instant--to tear a chunk fully away, to gulp it down her desperate throat. She didn't savor this--she tried, but the need in her stomach overwhelmed any sense of aesthetics or even queenly propriety. In this instant, she was only predator.

Or, in reality, a clumsy new-hatched cat-beast struggling to walk and eat at the same time, and failing a little at both.

Aethril's pause was greeted with gratitude--a shift of her eyes upward to the Hand, a flick of her tail behind her in acknowledgement. But she didn't speak, at first, just eating, and eating... and eating.

The whole thing was gone in moments, and then Obieth was left sniffing at the floor where she'd eaten, tongue lashing over her whiskers in a hopeful attempt to get at the last drips of flavor. When at last she was satisfied it was all gone (which, in fairness, hadn't taken long) she looked up at Aethril--and hiccuped. Then flinched at her hiccup; then hiccupped again, and glanced behind her with another flinch, as if wondering what was making her do this. Thirst struck, then, close on the heels of hunger--she needed water, too, to stop this (hic!) hiccuping. "Than-YHK--you. I need... drink," she suggested, and her look, up to her mistress, was pleading.

Then, she hiccuped again.

Thus far, she was not proving a paragon of witty or wise conversation.

@Aethril

The trail of blood was quietly eyed with distaste, and Aethril was turning her attention to one of the cleaning-Lessers not too far away. Her brow furrowed and soon enough, with little hesitation, the stout creature was toddling quickly over.

It was unclear if it'd just detected the mess in that moment or if Aethril had alerted it to such, but it began mopping up the streak quickly, leaving the floor alabaster again. She watched while Obieth ate and then, consequently, began hiccuping.

Aethril blinked, looked down, and restrained some gentle laughter. "If you eat a little slower, you'll stop that from happening," she said-- and then she was sweeping back into the kitchen, slipping past Nedies and collecting a bowl and filling it with water. In no time at all, she was setting it down next to Obieth.

"I can carry the bowl to the balcony once your hiccups are gone, if you want to keep drinking it there," she offered absently, folding her arms across her chest.

@Obieth