Book One – Chapter 19

Well, if feeding himself made no difference, then perhaps feeding the others would. He had no choice. He had to do it.

Yu returned to the hearth and took his emptied bowl from the stool. He set it on the workbench and replaced it with a clean one. Two might have fit, but he feared knocking them over the edge. One at a time was fine.

He climbed the second stool. The steam pressed heat into his feathers. The pot breathed into his face; fat and smoke and sour sweetness. Yu bent forward, gripped the ladle with trembling talons, and dipped. He spilled half before it reached the bowl, cursed under his breath, and scooped again, and again, and then a fourth time, because he had fed so much to the floor each time that three were not enough. Then he set the ladle aside, climbed down, stepped straight into the spills on the floor, of course, tried to scrape it off, failed and gave up, pressed his wings around the bowl and carried it to the tray.

Then he went back again, placed the second bowl on the stool turned table, and got up the suicidal stool once more. He grabbed the ladle, again, filled the bowl with three shaky half-scoops and the floor with more spills, again, put the ladle back down, again, got down himself, again, and brought the bowl back to the workbench, again exchanging it for an empty one.

That was the ritual. He did the same with a third and fourth bowl. Climb, grab, dip spill pour, dib spill pour, dip spill pour. Look at the mess. Climb down, step into shit and curse. Grab the bowl, lift, carry, place, exchange, return. The rhythm swallowed him whole. There was no sense of progress, only the circling persistence of motion performed to fend off thought. It went on and on, slow and stupid, like everything else that should have taken ten seconds if you were a normal person and not a cripple parodying a cook. But then, at last, at long last, the tray stood ready, with four bowls filled.