Open [Communal Kitchens] Beggars will be choosers

[Ainyi]

27 Winter 513 AV

Ainyi sat at a table with aching relief. Her neck was crooked from drying and salting meat all day. Her hands still had some dried blood on them, despite all efforts to wash them. In the cold winter air, her fingers felt like pieces of ice attached to her body, and her face stung. The heat from the kitchens felt like dozens of kisses over her face and neck.

However, people's minds were hardly as warm at this time. First, the winds blow too strong for any Eagle Riders to leave or enter the city, making food that much scarcer. Then, an Avora hunter is found dead with his apprentice. With two less bows catching meat...food is that much scarcer. Looking down at her meager meal, she found herself with them.

Everyone deals with starvation and winter in different ways. She heard one table behind her discussing various conspiracy theories around the truth of the Despised, as if they were to march off in a matter of minutes and bring him back like some children's fairy tale. Another table of some more veteraned Inartans just seemed to reminisce on the last winter they went through like this, trading survival stories like the stories alone will save them. The group of Yasi across from them seemed to eavesdrop on them, believing those stories would save them too.

Ainyi sighed heavily, and shook her head as she sat alone at the table. She would be surprised if even half the people in this room survived this winter. Perhaps even herself. Rummaging in her pack, she pulled out one of the rations of salted meat she kept to herself. It would augment the meal in front of her enough so that may, just maybe, she would almost feel satisfied. She couldn't do it often, knowing the road ahead. But perhaps now, this would be alright.

But after the rest of her food, first. She set the ration next to the meal given to her with her token, and ate silently, eyes out for familiar faces. If there's anything the cold can do, is drive loneliness to an extreme. She had no intentions of that happening. Of all the things to kill her this winter, it wouldn't be that. So she put on a smile, and didn't pay mind when her lip cracked lightly.