My powers come from feeding, you know. I like to eat, and I can eat a lot because I’m rather large. I eat anything! Some creatures are picky eaters, they’ll just eat one type of cricket, or they hate onions, but me, I’ll eat anything that comes around. Today, my dinner is these people gathered awkwardly around a fire. Humans are a personal favorite.
I like the taste of people for a number of reasons. They are filled with a variety of flavors, like rage, melancholy, and guilt. A little bit of guilt goes a long way though, and if there’s too much, the flavor is overwhelming and bitter. Some people are too spicy, like those with a lot of anxiety or grief, but I’ll eat them nonetheless. I try to avoid grief, which gives me heartburn.
Perhaps my favorite human flavor is passion. Not arousal! Arousal is too sweet, and the flavor quickly turns sour. Passion lasts much longer, and tastes like a blend of tart and sweet. When a human is filled with passion, the flavor lingers for days. It’s wonderful.
The worst flavor, aside from grief, which I would like much more if not for the heartburn, is loathing. It is not the flavor of loathing alone, but also the texture. It is bumpy and grinds awkwardly against the tongue. It gets caught in your throat. And days, sometimes weeks will go by and you’ll still taste it in your mouth. It’s a most unfortunate flavor, and I wish humans would be better at showing it so I could avoid eating them.
I don’t think any of these humans standing oddly by the fire are showing signs of loathing. I might as well eat them and see.
Oh! Two are mostly passion with a tiny bit of lust, what luck! One has some grief, but mostly anxiety.
I can’t decide if I should eat this last human, they’re looking at me a bit oddly. Oh what the heck, you only live once!
Oh my! That’s a surprise, schadenfreude! I saved the best one for last. A complex flavor, schadenfreude is uncommon, and like a mystical truffle, it only comes about at the end of a meal. A wonderfully bitter flavor, it has shimmers of tart and sour, but goes down as smoothly as a good passion or anger. What luck I’ve had today!
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