Young Writers Society

Shit.

He supposed he should have seen this one coming. Maybe it was an innocuous question. Or, maybe he was starting to doubt Derik's cover. Which, would make sense, given that he'd been rather careless about maintaining it. There were some things that were better left confusing than having to admit you didn't know and ask. And he'd asked about a lot.

Still, Kaz seemed distractable. So, maybe he wouldn't push the matter.

"Ah, you know," Derik said, leading into his non-answer. "He's pissed a lot of people off. I'm sure you know how that is?"

Kazimir continued to stare at Derik, feeling two pulls within him.

On the one hand, Derik was cool, and proved his trust by helping them both escape jail and sitting with him when he was tripping for a long time.

On the other hand, even Kazimir could tell he was avoiding the question. He didn’t think Derik was lying about trying to capture the bald guy, so he couldn’t be working with him... so what did he have to lie about, really?

“Are you a werewolf or something?” he asked.

Derik snorted loudly but it broke into a laugh. "Ah, man, you figured me out... how 'bout you?"

“Wait, are you fuckin’ serious?” Kazimir asked, eyes wide. He sat up straight, staring at Derik with full attention. “You are?”

"What?" Derik gaped at him. "You have were--?"

It almost felt like he was baiting Derik. To make Derik admit to not being from this realm and ask about werewolves to trap him. But, Kazimir seemed genuine. And not particularly bright enough have thought up that plan on his own.

"No," Derik said, shaking his head, still staring at Kazimir. "I was joking... weren't you?"

Kazimir blinked.

“Oh,” he said with a little nervous laugh. “Sorry. Yeah. Of course I was joking. Obviously... yes.”

"... were you though?"

Kazimir stared back at Derik blankly, and he let out a small, nervous laugh.

"Of course I was, you idiot," Kazimir said with more aggression than was necessary.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Kazimir hurried to his feet and rushed to the door to get it. As he flung the door open, he saw a young harpy woman with an apron holding a tray with two big steaming bowls of soup. Beside the bows were two rolls of bread.

"Your warm meal, sir," the woman said.

"Thanks!" Kazimir chirped too-cheerily as he took the tray out of her hands, backed away into the room, and kicked the door shut with his foot.

He carefully spun around over to Derik and then laid the tray on the end of Derik's bed. The moment he set it down he snatched up a bread roll and stuck it in his mouth, ripping off a piece.

"Now be eap," he said through a mouthful of bread.

Derik eyed him as Kaz acted very suspiciously. Apparently, there were werewolves in this realm. Great. Just what he needed.

Still, he was grateful for the food. He shoveled copious amounts of soup into mouth, swallowing it nearly as fast. It felt good on his rumbling stomach. Before he knew it, his bowl was over half empty. "... wonder if there's free refills?"

Kazimir sat down on Derik's bed on the opposite side of the tray and picked up his own bowl, slurping down the soup at record speed while taking bites of bread in-between. He only paused to answer Derik's question.

"Probably not," Kazimir said, taking another bite of bread. "Awpees awe shtingy."

"Ah, yeah..." Derik made an active effort to slow down. If this was all the food there was, he wanted to stretch it out. Make it feel like more. He tore off a piece of bread and sopped up some soup and then threw it in his mouth. "Well, this was nice, anyway. Tastes good."

Kazimir did not slow down his pace and continued to quickly eat the bread and soup. He paused to take a breath after almost choking on a piece of not-chewed-enough-bread and looked over to Derik.

"Okay, so what the plan again?" he asked. "We sleep, we leave, and we go the way I think he's going. Or hope he's going."

"We'll ask around," Derik answered. Well, he would ask around. And hopefully puppy boy wouldn't get into too much trouble. "Baldy's been heading in the same general direction for the past few weeks. Hopefully, he keeps it up."

"Yeah," Kazimir muttered, lifting his bowl to his lips and tilting it like a large cup as he slurped down the last of his soup's broth. He then set the bowl back in his lap.

"Hopefully."

Kazimir got to his feet and dumped the bowl and spoon atop the dresser between their beds, and then flopped back onto his bed, lying on his back.

Derik kept nursing his food. Rationally, he knew that it was the same amount of food, no matter how long it took him to eat it. And yet, making it last longer made it feel like there was more. "We need to get supplies... we won't be able to keep up like this."