 ““It’s just sausage,” Tristan explained, sounding a little surprised as the girl held the offering out for Hodain. Did she not know what sausage was? The prince glanced back down at Grimbaud taking in the stains on her dress again. He found it made him a little sad.
“Have you not tried any before?” Tristan asked her, taking another piece out of the pouch on his belt with the hand he hadn’t used to feed Cafall. He held it out for Grim to take.
“Try it,” urged the prince with an encouraging smile, “it’s nice.” It wasn’t a food that was served regularly at high table, and when it was it was usually freshly made venison sausage. Tristan knew however that it was common place amongst the kitchen staff and the guards. One of the older cook who had been in the kitchens when he was a little boy used to give him whole ones to munch on whenever he toddled down to watch them working. She had been nice, unlike the current cook who ruled the kitchen like a tyrant. She had no qualms about hitting the future king of shaman over the head with her remarkably large wooden spoon when she caught him stealing iced buns. He hoped Grimbaud wouldn’t run into her, especially not when she was wearing a saucepan. The cook would probably see it as sacrilege or something. The thought broadened his smile mischievously.
The expression didn’t last very long. Tristan didn’t let his smile dropped entirely but it drooped a little sadly at the edges when Grimbaud asked her innocent question. He hoped the little girl wouldn’t notice, and if she hadn’t caught him by surprise he was sure he would have been able to hide it a little better. “No,” the prince confessed honestly, “I haven’t had a mother for a very long time.” He reached out and began to scratch Cafall behind the ear. He missed being able to talk to his dogs, and sometimes he could see them looking at him as if they wondered why they no longer understood him. Cafall, apparently sensing his master’s shift in mood, was giving him such a look as he whined sympathetically. “This was either made by the master tailor or my Grandmother, I’m not sure which.” He smiled down at Grim again, “you should meet my Grandmother; she’d adore you.”
Celidon licked his fairy’s hand, cleaning the sausage grease off his fingers as he lingered nervously in his rather inefficient hiding place. The smell coming from Grim’s fingers however was steadily becoming too much to resist. Leaving his large green body behind Tristan the cu-sith stretched out his neck, sniffed at the little girl’s tray armour and then, reassured by her kind voice, licked gently at her fingers. Tristan smiled; you just had to leave Cel to do things in his own time.
“He does talk,” the prince promised, more to Gisli than to Grim, “just not usually in company.” He elbowed Cel gently between the ribs in an attempt to trigger some kind of reaction. Unsurprisingly, his familiar ignored him and having finished licking up the sausage scraps withdrew his head again. The prince sighed and took a step to one side, fixed Celidon with a look and then gestured in Grim’s direction. The cu-sith steeled himself and then took a step closer to the girl taking himself in range of her eager fingers.
“Who looks after you, Grimbaud?” Tristan enquired in the lull, “other than Gisli, of course.”
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