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“Hey, you want some sweets?”
Sky jumped, rather abruptly snapping out of his own little world, his back straightening to attention. His golden eyes danced around erratically until they landed on his sorcererous companion who was looking ahead rather than at him. The two had been travelling together for nearly 20 years (20 years since Sky had successfully escaped his father, 20 years of freedom ), and yet Sky was still surprised to hear the sorcerer’s voice.
“The… what, sorry?” he asked. Or more stammered in a timid display.
The sorcerer - Seto, his name was - rolled his eyes and huffed. “Sweets. From the stall over there?” He gestured across the large village square they’d been walking through. Sky followed the movement, squinting behind dark sunglasses to see a square stall with a brightly coloured awning and an array of glass containers filled to the brims with more brightly coloured… food? It had to be food, because Sky could see a family walking away from it with a child dipping a hand into the paper bag and pop one of the coloured things into her mouth, chewing gleefully.
A nudge to his arm reminded Sky that he had yet to answer the sorcerer. “Uh- I um…”
“Do you want some or not?” Seto’s tone was exasperated and Sky couldn’t stop himself from flinching at it.
“U-Uh… Shou-Shouldn’t we keep-”
The sorcerer groaned and grabbed his sleeve, tugging him along despite Sky’s yelp of alarm. Seto may have been over half a foot shorter than Sky but that didn’t stop him from dragging the helpless demigod behind him on his determined beeline towards the stall. Between one blink and the next, Sky found himself standing before the dozens of glass containers, shouldered tensed and wide eyes roaming the bright gaudy colours.
The food… things were all different sizes and shapes and textures. Some were shaped as round spheres ranging from tiny to so big Sky’s hand wouldn’t be able to close around it. Others were shaped in long tubes while others were flat strips, some had speckles of colour while their neighbours sported two different colours and others still displayed the entire rainbow. Some were rough, others were flat and smooth, and many were a rather alarming shade of brown in rather questionable shapes. In fact, Sky didn’t even have a word for their shape, much less their name.
Seto was not phased by the assortment of stimulus that was assaulting Sky’s eyes and senses (there was a smell too, a… a sweet smell Sky could hardly describe but it was somehow making his mouth water). The demigod only phased into the conversation Seto was having with the storekeep when it was nearly over.
“... bubblegum balls, some of those sour balls and the tubes, and the chocolate honeycomb. Sky, you want anything?”
Sky looked helplessly at the overwhelming array of foodstuffs before him, then turned that helpless gaze to Seto. He couldn’t even begin to process which one he’d want, or what he’d like (or process that he was even allowed to have a choice). The silence stretched on for the seconds their eyes stayed connected. It broke when Seto gave a sigh of exasperation and rolled his eyes again. “Fine, give us a few sour snakes as well.”
Currency exchanged hands and a strong hand dragged Sky away just as fast as it had dragged him there, continuing their route through the village. The brightly striped paper bag swung from Seto’s hand as they walked, each shush of the contents causing more and more questions to bubble on the tip of Sky’s tongue, his thinning self-control straining to hold them all back.
“S-So- So Seto,” he finally stammed, pausing until he heard Seto’s neutral hum. “What, um… What did you… buy?”
The look Seto gave him was one he often wore when Sky asked silly questions. “ Sweets , Sky. I bought sweets- were you paying any attention?!”
Sky flinched even though he wasn’t guilty. “N-No no I-I was I swear! I-I just, I…”
Seto locked those swirling purple-rune eyes on him, cool and hard and waiting for an explanation. The two had stopped in the middle of the street, letting the village folk move around them as Sky fiddled with his fingers and stared at the ground.
“I… I just don’t… I don’t know what a sweet… is ,” Sky tried to explain, quickly looking up to gauge Seto’s reaction.
He got to see how the sorcerer drew back a little with eyebrows raised in surprise, then lean in with them furrowed and then schooled into a more shocked… maybe hostile expression. “Hold on, let me get this straight. You’re nearly three hundred years old and you’ve never even heard of a sweet? Never even had one?” He paused when Sky hesitated and gave a shy not. The sorcerer huffed a laugh-like, only it sounded more shocked than amused. “You- I… I mean I knew my parents were strict but shit Sky… your father never let you have a lolly or anything? Some chocolate, nothing?”
Sky swallowed. “I don’t know what either of those two things are either…” he whispered. Something was telling him that Seto really wasn’t angry at Sky . The look in those eyes as they met his again looked far too soft for anger. Maybe… pity? Sympathy. Maybe he… was angry at someone else instead.
“I wish you’d told me before, I would have gotten a bigger variety,” Seto muttered. He grabbed Sky’s arm again, but far more gently this time, holding it rather than dragging it. “Come on, we’ll set up camp somewhere for the night and then I’ll get you addicted to sugar.”
Sky honestly wasn’t fully sure what an addiction was either, but he chose not to question it and didn’t bring up the topic again for the next few hours. He honestly thought Seto had forgotten all about it as the two made their small camp for the night a ways out of town. Sky set up the two tents, Seto collected firewood, Sky tended to the fire as Seto made dinner, and the two perched on large logs while they ate under the millions of constellations above.
However Seto forgot nothing, and no sooner had Sky put his empty dinner plate aside did Seto once again bring out the paper sweet bag.
“Right so you’ve never had a sweet before?” he double checked, eyes flicking up to Sky as he rummaged in the bag.
Sky mutely shook his head, fingers nervously drumming on the log and leg anxiously tapping against the ground. His father hated it when he fidgeted and he did his best not to annoy Seto with it, but the nerves over this whole ‘sweets’ thing had been eating at him all day. If he could, Sky would have melted into a pile of anxious demigod when Seto had fixed him with that gaze. He was honestly lucky that the gaze shifted downwards before he could try.
“Can’t believe it,” the sorcerer murmured to himself, pulling out his prize. “Well I guess you’ve got to start somewhere. Here, try this. Not my favourite but it’s better than starting you with a super sour apple bomb.”
Sky didn’t understand what those last four words were supposed to mean, but he leaned over to take the treat that was held out to him. It was tiny, kind of egg-like in shape, with a white half and a red half. It felt sleek, not at all bumpy, but not exactly something that would be appetising. But Seto was watching him expectantly, and so with a deep breath, Sky popped the sweet into his mouth. And…
Woah .
He didn’t know how to describe it. It was… smooth? Light? Like chewing a half-solid cloud, and it was… sweet , Sky supposed, and he could instantly understand why people liked it. It filled his mouth with juice bursting with flavour that danced on his tongue, instantly making it water for more. The texture was gooey and yet it didn’t make Sky want to spit it out and- What was this?!
Seto watched with a small smirk and Sky’s eyes went wide and staring at the fire, jaw slowly chewing. “Never had a sweet, can’t believe it,” he repeated softly to himself, grabbing himself a sour ball and popping it into his mouth, scrunching up his nose at the familiar stabbing taste. Worth it though, even if he had to shake his head violently to get over the sting.
When his eyes had stopped watering, Seto looked up and saw that Sky had shuffled tentatively closer, trying to hide how eager he was but his eyes locked on the bag said everything. “Want to try another one?” the sorcerer asked.
Sky nodded quickly, jittering with excitement like a kid at Christmas. And to think that Sky hadn’t know what that was either- Seto kicked himself out of that train of thought and reached back into the bag, tugging out a long multicoloured snake. “Here, try this. Similar flavour- Geez Sky!”
The demigod had neatly snatched the snake out of Seto’s hand and bit off the head, giggling to himself. Seto hardly had time to fetch himself another sweet before Sky was leaning back into his space, the lolly snake gone.
“Holy Nether, did you just scarf that down or what?” the sorcerer asked, looking at the demigod with mild concern.
Sky chuckled with a tone of embarrassment. “Sorry, it- I- It tastes really nice,” he weakly defended. Any remorse he did show was ruined by him practically poking his head into the bag. “Can I have something else?”
“Calm down death boy,” Seto lightly scolded, giving Sky a shove with his shoulder that was apparently taken as playful by the way Sky giggled. If Seto had known that all he needed was a bag of sweets to make Sky relax, he would have done this a lot earlier. “Here, have this. It’s a different flavour,” he said, holding up another long snake.
This one was covered in little bumpy powder granules, which made it rough to the tough as Sky took a big bite and eagerly chewed. His mouth watered more as flavour prickled at his tongue, not at all smooth like the first one but far more sharp and biting. It was almost like the food was fighting back, only that didn’t explain how Sky craved more. He found that if he took bigger bites, the stabbing became far stronger with far more flavour , and all too soon the snake was gone.
“Is there another one of those?!” he asked eagerly. Gone were his fears in light of this new best thing in his life.
“So you’re a sour kind of guy then,” Seto presumed, handing off another sour snake. “Glad I got those sour tubes. Leaves more of the sweet stuff for me.”
Seto would have to introduce Sky to chocolate soon, you couldn’t have the full sweets experience with it. But as he watched Sky gleefully devour sour treats and develop a sugar high later that night, he thought that the chocolate could wait until another day.
And Sky did love chocolate when he tried it, just like he loved nearly every sweet thing that was put before him. But nothing hit quite the same as the sour treats, and those long sour pythons would forever remain Sky’s all-time comfort and favourite sweet.