#nostrada

Every time Esredes went out to eat, or any kind of food was involved with friends, he often wondered the same question. Some of his friends were bottomless pits to an alarming degree. He had witnessed all manners of ungodly things over the course of his existence. Once he was at a seafood place in Limsa Lominsa with an acquaintance- another, albeit much older falsely accused Ishgardian military man who ended up with a dragon and briefly considered joining the camp- and Esredes watched as he just. Kept ordering dish after dish and shoving it into his mouth. Esredes was no expert in the capacity of a Spoken stomach, but he watched in complete and silent, slightly nauseous awe as he was fairly sure he consumed past maximum capacity and half of his body weight.

He'd witnessed one of his friendly Inquisitor acquaintances unhinge their jaw and consume an entire burger in one fell swoop. Another Dragoon friend of his who, unsurprisingly, hit it off immediately and incredibly well with the Inquisitor, also kept consuming and consuming every time they went out. And that was just the friends made in civilization. His own allies also loved to do this. Dione and Rusty alone he was convinced could devour an entire Behemoth in the course of half an hour.

So the question Esredes wondered, of course, was how. No matter how much he witnessed these acts of gluttony, he understood nothing more about it. Rusty was not exactly normal, nor was Dione, that made sense. The older acquaintance was just a normal Elezen, for all he knew. And Adel and Nostrada were... he was not sure. Was it because they both grew up baseborn and lowborn? Was it because he was convinced something inhuman was going on with Adel?

In contrast to all of these people, Esredes was highborn. Food scarcity wasn't a problem. His mother loved to cook, and he'd always enjoyed full meals growing up. He'd never thought much about it, not until he enlisted, and experienced mess hall proportions for the first time. Then came rations, and then came even worse rationing as a harrier. Come to think of it, he was pretty sure he used to eat a lot more, before all that happened. But ever since, he'd always had a small capacity. He got full quickly, and for it, he was frequently trying to battle his weight being too low. Since coming back into civilization, he was quite sure it had slowly recovered back to normal- but then he was bedbound in Garlemald and subject to periods of being unable to keep anything down, and when he examined himself closely again- there it was, again. Gods damn it. He could try and eat desserts, which he had limited desire for, or fattening meat dishes all he wanted. Still it was difficult at times to keep it from going down.

One would think a dragon wouldn't have a problem with this. There was, however, a problem with this: stomach capacity did not change between forms. This made long trips very awkward. Flying made him hunger quickly, meaning he had to stop and hunt down the nearest animal, tear into it for meat- and if it was of any reasonable size, leave the rest of it for others. He couldn't eat any more or he'd explode.

No matter how long Esredes spent back in a situation where he could eat freely, where nothing stopped him from buying all the food he wanted, and having so many friends who loved cooking meant he was never needing to put much effort, his capacity stayed the same. This lead Esredes' running theory to be that it worked in opposition. If someone grew up with all the food they needed, being exposed to smaller proportions shrunk their appetite permanently. But if one grew up without it, they gained almost inhuman capacity to eat. It was the only theory that made sense to him. The only thing all of his friends who ate too much had in common was not being highborn. Maybe all the others he knew who hadn't demonstrated such a large appetite were hiding or managing it better? Esredes was not good at this field of people, and it showed. But ultimately, he'd long decided he was happier being who he was than being like them. It must be so incredibly expensive to live that like, and for the most part, he really did not envy it.