Winter, Day 60, 513AV
He dropped a handful of uncooked beans onto the kid's plate. They clinked against the metal wear, jumping over one another before settling down in a pitiful, tiny heap.
"Eat it."
Little Thomas looked up at him with an expression cold enough to freeze fire. "Oi'm nawt eatin' that."
"Well then," Nov growled, bringing his face mere inches from the boy's. Thomas gulped. "Stop bothering me...so I can cook your petching dinner!"
Then he took a step back into the kitchen, shouted, "Get back to work you runts!" and slammed the door shut. Sounds of scrambling ensued--mops being sloshed into buckets, plates being set, chairs scraping into place. Though, it was more likely due to the fact that the Isurian Proprietress and Mistress of Sunset Orphanage herself had just walked it at that very moment, and not so much because her surly eyed cook had yelled at the hooligans for the umpteenth time this season. They never listened to him anyway. Probably one too many leniences with fighting lessons and piggyback rides.
Jillian said nothing, merely entering to make a silent inspection before heading back out to do whatever it was that she did. Once she was gone, the childish banter and chatter slowly returned, until it was all Noven could do not to storm out there again and fruitlessly demand some peace and quiet.
Instead, he focused on the task before him. An entire sack of potatoes--peeled, courtesy of a couple of unruly boys who had gotten into a tussle this morning--some onions, carrots, a bit of deer meat, and smattering of other things. The vegetables would need to be cut. The meat as well, though it would go in later. With a resigned sigh, he lined up the potatoes like fat, pasty soldiers along the table and began cutting them into haphazard cubes.
When he had been younger, preparing meals with Nona were something of an art. Though they were limited in both time and ingredients, they made up for either with love and attention to detail. It somehow always made the food taste twice as good and the memories stay twice as long. "Hard, honest work," she'd say every time, "no ingredient quite like it."
This horse shyke, however, was not remotely the same. Making enough vats of soup to feed dozens of hungry, demanding runts who spent most of their day doing chores or sitting still enough for a lesson or two was an entirely different sort of process. It was more a task of sums to the cook than anything else. This many potatoes plus that many onions and carrots equals how many children without empty bellies? Jillian was not unkind as a mistress, but neither was she the pampering type ether. The orphans got just enough to survive, no more, no less. Sometimes, he would use his own wages to add a pinch of herbs or whip up a bit of dessert, but these were tough times, and the Isur an even tougher business woman.
Nov hacked away at his sixth or seventh potato, so utterly used to the motions that he never even bothered to look at his fingers. Once he filled up his cutting board, he lifted the giant mound of cubed taters, muscles straining as he did, and dumped them into an enormous, empty pot.
