Chapter Text
"Hello, Eggsy. Eggsy, hello."
Sluggishly did he open his lids, not unlike a dazed and confused newborn. Dusk or dawn, the young egg couldn't tell. It was inadequately alit.
"Good morrow," a distinctive gravel of a voice answered for him.
"Where … am … I?"
"Still in Comida, I'm afeared, in case you thought what happened ere now was the byproduct of some maladaptive fever dream."
Eggsy had awoken to a silhouette at the foot of the iron bedstead, outlined by two large ears and a giant ribbon. "Brer Bunny?" said the young egg, eyesight in adjustment and astonishment.
"In the chocolatey flesh, egghead."
"I was attacked," groaned a groggy Eggsy.
"That much I found unaided, egghead."
"Stop saying that."
Cross-legged, Brer Bunny smiled a wry smile. "What do we say to the expiration date once again?"
The egg-boy mustered an unenthused chuckle. "Not this day."
"Good man. I'd have pegged you for a rotter if I were to proffer plain. 'Twas a murderous night last e'en, and it would've ended in your murder had Marsh and that bagel individual, the name of whom escapes me, not intervene."
"Bailey," Eggsy said weakly, unwilling to forget anyone who saved him. "His name … is Bailey."
"I'm sure it is; let me recuse myself for but a moment." The tall-eared lagomorph gently touched the hardwood floor with his soles, ambling over to a seated garlic-person napping at the kitchen counter to deliver a wakefulness-inducing kick. "He's up, Ramson. Telling you like you asked,"
"Oh…? Oh! Eggsy, here, I made soup." The aproned garlic moved for the stove top and cupped a bowl with mittens.
The young egg asked, "Where are we?"
"In our living quarters. Oh, how lavish it is, Eggsy, we even have our own kitchenette, see?"
A blurred figure of a giant garlic-shaped head, then Eggsy picked up a scent of that which was richly earthly as his dear friend Ramson came forward, bone broth in hand. Eggsy favored them with a pout. "Thou art a Bulbsend."
As the egg-boy consumed and drank of it, Wild Buck Ramson probed and pried and prodded for anything amiss in their friend's vitality.
An observing Brer Bunny laughed at an embarrassed Eggsy getting mothered.
Having had his fill, the hard-boiled boy said, "Where's my father?"
"The egg-emperor hath left the Pyramid of Food betimes by my reckoning," said the chocolate monk. "Along with the inexorable Kat Max and that Sir Tamar."
"Wherefore?"
"Wherefore ask wherefore? Matters of the court, no doubt."
Severely disappointed was Eggsy. A part of him had hoped for Eggsquire to be there by his side when he awoke. As one imagines after nigh death, psychic disposition shifted from anxiety to frustration at his imperial sire. Just the position he put his own flesh and blood in. Eggsy felt for the area where he thought he was hurt. "What of my wound? And my black eye?"
"Healed to full health," said Brer Bunny. "Gratitude owed to one Wild Buck Ramson and the miracle of the art-magic."
The scarfed garlic-person curtsied and blushed pride, only for their attention to revert to the stove top fires they had mistakenly left. Now growing in size, the worried Ramson tripped whilst trying to turn off the flames.
Eggsy continued, "And what of my poisoned condition?"
"Lifted," assured Brer Bunny. "Mercifully. I can scant envision what thou hadst to endure."
Eggsy shuddered. "I'd rather not either, lest the painful sensation returneth in however small an imagination."
The chocolatey rabbit crossed his arms. "Contaminants, be they fungal or bacterial, are a true terror. I've seen too many soggy sods taken by it in the monastery. A horrid way to go, writhing in unrelenting pain, cruelty exacted by an absence of hurry in the corporeal form, whose erstwhile healthy host be degrading into detritus, indiscernible from the inanimate they once factored into their diet in life. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be unwished."
The tale spun was making Wild Buck Ramson gag. "Can't we just go a day without having death alluded to?"
Suddenly serious, Brer Bunny said, "Death be something we all have to face. Spoilers. And to think its premature variant wasn't uncommon a fate during past foodways. Food beings then hadn't the magic or technology or magical technology to resuscitate the afflicted. No, all they really relied upon was prevention in taste."
"Taste?"
"Taste is ultimately a poison detection system, as the monks oft remind. A built-in defense mechanism: bitter taste forewarns thee a bitter end. And so to cook was a means of protecting us and ours, through inactivating potential harmful elements by the boiling of water or the soaking of seeds. Small wonder why the whole of our culture is made devotee to cuisine. In order to keep on surviving, survival was made to taste good."
"I'd love to keep surviving." Eggsy threw away his bed sheets. "Delicious though it may be, mine stomach craves for more than just broth."
Brer Bunny fixed his gigantic bowtie. "To thine own stomach be true."
Eggsy experienced an unexpected weakness in the leg muscles when he tried to stand, nearly rolled over had Brer Bunny not catch him, feeling more noodles than limbs. He held on to the bed frame and took note of his missing coat and boots and gloves, replaced by a bland white gown that plopped to the floor. "Where's my bloody clothes?"
"Filled with blood," said Brer Bunny, grimacing.
"Oh, they provided a new set of clothes methinks. I'll acquire," said Wild Buck Ramson, removing their apron and taking leave.
Eggsy realized the spot he'd been sleeping on was a bunk bed. He heard yawning from the raised bunk. It was Jackie O'Lantern sneaking a peek, hanging upside down from the loft bed, gazing at Eggsy with restful eyes as her straw hat fell down. "Bonjour, Eggsy."
"Bonjour yourself, pumpion," said Eggsy, struggling a smile.
"Jackie," called Brer Bunny, retrieving her hat. "Can you take a look? His muscles don't seem to function."
She rubbed her eyes. "But soft, I might have something."
The pumpkin-lady climbed down the ladder and put on her pointy hat. She opened the cupboards of the kitchenette, revealing the special apparatuses and potions and material components that were the accoutrements of Jackie O'Lantern's arcane inventory. It seemed to Eggsy the lantern girl had made herself at home fairly quick. She took out a Bunsen burner and a tonic filled herbs, as well as a peculiar piece of darkened wood. With oven gloves, Jackie uncorked and heated the bottom of the glass till its contents burned and emitted innocuous fumes of smoke. She wrapped it in cloth and presented it to the egg-boy with a knowing look.
"Smoke medicine," said Eggsy, letting his lungs be filled with them.
"The smoke preserves us food beings," said Jackie O'Lantern. "In ways physiological and alchemical."
Brer Bunny blew air. "Remember how the nuns used to abuse the usage of this anytime we fell ill?"
Eggsy said, "How can one discard the memory?"
Brer Bunny said, "I was seven when I told them my eye stung, so they filled it with smoke to heal it. Madness."
"I vividly remember Marsh the Mellow pissed laughter."
"Hardy har har," said a monotone Brer Bunny, his voice still as hot as chocolate.
The more Eggsy breathed in, the more his motor function came back under his control. The pumpion companion allowed Eggsy to grip the tonic when he felt able. Jackie moved over to the kitchenette, roasting and grinding and boiling something for herself. Things felt like they were coming back to normal, until they weren't.
Against his own wishes, Eggsy started to remember his dreams.
The chocolate rabbit asked Jackie O'Lantern what she was making, to which Jackie O'Lantern replied, "Coffee."
Eggs don't really have hair, or a neck for that matter, but if they did, then the hairs on Eggsy's neck would be standing up at the sight of that ceramic cup.