Little Alice doesn’t understand what it means to speak for herself.

It has been two months and two days since the old man picked her up from the streets of the City of Feasts, and she hasn’t spoken a single word to him. Granted, he doesn’t seem to know her tongue, but she has already learned his and everyone else’s by simple manner of observation. The word ‘Sharaji’ is tossed around a lot, so she calls it the Sharaji Tongue—lots of rolling words, lots of drawn-out sounds, really irritating to pronounce. She learned it anyways to hear what the patrons in the old man’s restaurant liked to gossip about her.

“Her eyes are pooled with blood. How can she see out of those?”

“The shadows are drawn to her. Have you ever taken a proper look at her? You can’t, right? It’s like she doesn’t even have a face.”

“I tried giving her a piece of candy once, but she just stared at it like it was a bug. What kind of girl doesn’t like candy?”

“Why did Safi even pick her up?”

“What does he see in her?”

… The old man’s name is ‘Safi’. She knows that much. Whenever a patron gossips about her while she’s washing dishes in the basin or scrubbing the floors with a mop, he’d send her to the back of the kitchen while he tells the patron gently off—as if she needs someone to defend her. Words don’t kill people. Bugs do. The people here simply have so much peace that they don’t know how to protect it.

All of them are right about her, though. She doesn’t know how to cook. She doesn’t know how to wait a table properly. It has been two months and two days since she was unofficially hired to be the old man’s restaurant assistant, and she still feels she is a poor fit for the duties of the position. Why must she apprentice under a peaceful man like him? Does he hope his easy-going spirit will rub off on her? That would imply she has a spirit to begin with, and she knows better than anyone else that her heart is utterly devoid of what the patrons call a ‘personality’. She has a hollow heart.

On the second day of the second month, she decides to leave Safi’s restaurant in the middle of the night. Her little bedroom is on the second floor, right above the kitchen, and while the old man is busy preparing the stockpot for tomorrow’s servings, she sneaks out through the window without a single silver in her pockets. She’d been getting generous allowances from the old man, but she doesn’t want the money.

She’ll get her food and water from the flesh and blood of giant bugs.

Carefree, she hops across the tall roofs of the City of Feasts, searching the shadowy alleys for any suspiciously large bugs to squash. Her antennae isn’t very well developed, so she relies on her instinct and listens—she goes east for twenty minutes before she hears a commotion underneath.

She looks down and sees a young girl trying to fend off a giant scorpion from reaching a group of younger children, all of them cornered in a moldy dead end.

“Blood,’ little Alice whispers, “to me.”

Five blood threads fire out her right upper nails, twirling into a greatspear as she plummets at breakneck speed. She crashes into the scorpion’s head and brings it down to its knees, but it survives the impact, quite surprisingly. It’s more tenacious than she thought. Just as she prepares to rip her greatspear out and stab it again, its stinger flies at her from behind–

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The young girl with the chain-whip snags the stinger, stopping it from reaching her.

Later, as little Alice feasts on the raw scorpion flesh and all the children flee from the dead end corner, it is only the young girl who stays with her.

“... You’re strong!” the girl breathes, clinging to the scorpion’s head as little Alice picks out the toughest parts of its exposed flesh. “I’m Tashia! What’s your name? Where did you learn how to fight? How did you make that spear out of thin air? Is that an insect ability?”

“...”

Little Alice refuses to break eye contact with Tashia as she eats. If she just keeps staring, Tashia will eventually be unnerved by her bloody eyes and run off shuddering. Nobody likes her eyes—much less when they’re aglow and her lips are dribbling with the blood of giant bugs, her frame hunched over like a ghoul feasting on human flesh in the dead of night.

But Tashia doesn’t seem unnerved. On the contrary, she climbs onto the giant scorpion’s carcass and sits next to little Alice.

“Do you know who the Tamera are?” Tashia asks, wrapping her chain-whip around her forearms. “They’re beast tamers from the Mori Masif Front! They speak to the bugs and bring them to their knees, just like you did, and my papa’s one of them! He told me to go outside at night and practise with my chains until I bring home a giant’s head, but you killed the scorpion for me instead!”

Little Alice continues eating, unperturbed. No human has more ‘right’ over another when it comes to killing bugs. She killed the scorpion first, so Tashia cannot be angry–

“Teach me how to fight like you do!”

“...”

Little Alice flinches when Tashia grabs one of her hands, pleading with wide, watery emerald eyes. She really is from the far eastern Mori Masif Front. The Tamera… she’d heard about those people back when she was studying in the Hasharana Academy, too. If she remembers correctly, they’re a group of vagrants and wanderers who offer their ‘pets’ to anyone with the silvers to pay. The Worm God doesn’t classify them as enemies of humanity—they do work with Hasharana sometimes—but, more often than not, they ruin entire ecosystems by introducing invasive bugs their owners have little true control over.

The Tamera all use chain-whips as their signature weapons, and, in truth, little Alice found Tashia’s manipulation of her weapon quite interesting to behold. Currently, little Alice only knows how to weave and wield four different weapons: shortswords, greatspears, round shields, and thin wire threads. They’re good enough for the rabble that come out at night in the City of Feasts, but if she wants to kill bigger and stronger bugs, she’ll need to gather more weapons.

Maybe something will come out of spending time with Tashia.

“... Alice,” she mutters. It is her first word in an entire year. “My name is… Alice.”

As the sun rises on the far horizon, Tashia shakes her hand and beams at her. The young girl’s face is blurry in little Alice’s eyes. It’s only natural for her, of course. Most people’s faces are like scribbles of ink to her, so she recognises most of Safi’s patrons by their most distinct features. Tashia will not be any different. In an instant, little Alice marks down the young girl’s identifiers in her mind—long white hair, crimson moth-wing cloak, and a bright and cheery smile to go along with the obnoxiously loud personality.

‘Good enough’, she thinks. ‘I don’t need to know any more about her.’

All she has to do is stick with Tashia, and she’s sure she’d be able to ‘copy’ Tashia’s weapon and fighting style in no time.

- Scene from City of Feasts past