@chaoticbard sent:
Alaara brought Shadowheart a plate of freshly cooked fish with a variety of fruits and veggies on the side. "I wasn't sure what you wanted to eat, so I got a little bit of everything before the rest of us ate it all."
She plunked herself down on the ground. "If there's something you don't want, I or one of the others will eat it. We're getting low on rations. We'll have to forage soon, and hope we can find someone selling goods."
Shadowheart was a fully-grown half-elf woman. Matured in ways beyond adolescence, and carrying all the traditional hallmarks of seasoned adulthood. The gentlest of wrinkles upon her face, the cynicism against hopeful ideals, and the stubborn crick in her neck whenever she slept at weird angles. She wasn’t a kid anymore, that much was certain.
… that didn’t really stop her from acting like one. Especially on nights like tonight.
She had elected to skip dinner. Her mood, as fickle as it was, landed on the coin flip of utterly foul. Naturally, this led to more than a few venomous arguments amongst the group, with her at the apex of them all. Shadowheart stirred shit like witch at her cauldron, the tension bubbling with heat and fit to burst. Everyone had expressed their disapproval of her character. She, of course, gave no one an apology, and stormed off to isolate herself within her own space.
Buried deep down, though, she harbored a fair bit of guilt. Why had she acted so impossibly difficult? No one really deserved the sort of treatment she doled out, and it wasn’t hard for her to realize that. Confronting it was a separate matter entirely, as she lacked any worthwhile justification for such behavior, and omitting a meal was the closest she'd come to repentance.
Her stomach had plenty to complain about. It yowled rebelliously, but she was determined. Or maybe stubborn was the better word. There was no decorum here to fancify her refusal to budge. Just hard-headed bullishness.
She’d fall back on her oldest routine. A form of coping mechanism training that helped to fortify willpower and ward off the pitfalls in her own head. Shadowheart would meditate.
Posed at the mouth of her tent, she pushed away all the senses of her own being. Pushed away the chattering of her companions by the fire, pushed away the delectable scent of freshly charred food, and especially pushed away the sweltering heat of her own gnawing contrition.
They were not her friends. She’d not spare an ounce of sympathy for snapping at them so impatiently. It was their own fault for bothering her, anyways. Yes. That mended the bitter feelings; assigning blame onto others. It’s not as if any of them honestly cared for her. They’d be better off without her, and she’d be better off without them. The only reason she tolerated them at all was their unfortunate circumstance. Soon, this would all be over, and she wouldn’t need to put up with such tiresome, tedious, entirely despicable, awful, intolerable —
“What?” she practically snarled, eyes snapping wide, met with the offering of a full plate of food. Brimming. A variety of sumptuous choices. Fish, fruit, a bit of green, even a pile of cubed potatoes. Very considerate, very earnest.
The only one capable of such a thing would be …
“Alaara.” Shadowheart locked her stare on the bard, uttering their name with contempt wholly undeserved. “Can’t you see I’m quite busy?” Busy sulking, busy looking sad and lonely, busy feeling her stomach eat itself from the inside out.
“I’m not hungry. My portion would better serve its use feeding someone else.” A bold-faced lie, but delivered quite flawlessly. Her little ruse would've found success, had she not ruined it with the next string of words.
“Besides, I don’t really deserve my share of rations. Not after everything I’ve said today.” She could feel her shoulders tense, entirely out of her control. “Just … give my plate to the owlbear, or something. Might keep him from devouring us in our sleep.”
