Feed the Dragon Something New or Be Dinner novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Only Thing

Riko opened the cottage door herself.

Cold air rolled in.

Kagiro stood on the doorstep with snow melting on his lashes and did not come one step closer.

"May I come in?" he said.

"No," said Riko. "Talk first."

Teruko took her shawl from the peg, her basket from the table and her bad knees out of the room.

"I'll be at the henhouse," she announced to nobody. "Counting hens. It takes till noon."

The door shut behind her.

Kagiro stayed where he was.

"The first rice ball," he said. "The one you made on the first night."

"What about it?"

"It tasted of salt."

Riko folded her arms.

"It was a rice ball. Of course it tasted of salt."

"It did not taste of rice. It did not taste of the sauce, or the fire, or the grain."

"Then what..."

"Salt and warmth and something I had no word for. It came from your hands."

He looked at her palms, which hung open at her sides.

"I had not tasted anything in three hundred years, Riko. I thought I had forgotten how."

"And then?"

"Then it came back, a little at a time, and always near your hands. The persimmon was the last of it."

She remembered the juice on her fingers and his mouth on her knuckles, and her face went hot.

"The persimmon was the persimmon."

"The persimmon was nothing, on my tongue. The juice on your skin was sweet."

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