Work Text:
noisome; disagreeable; unpleasant.
Lulusa had been in the past for a long while now, and she had gotten used to random people calling her “The Warrior of Light”. At first she had protested and told them all her Da was the real Warrior of Light, not her, but she’d given up by now. Somehow the adults had all gotten confused and thought she meant her Da was one of the Warriors of Light from before the last Calamity, and she was the Warrior of Light now. After a while, she’d decided it had to be another trick by Hydaelyn to keep holding her Da captive, and just let everyone call her whatever they wanted to.
Now, the girl had always dreamed of being the Warrior of Light, like her Da, but she was beginning to see that being Eorzea’s great protector wasn’t exactly the same as when she’d played make-believe with the other kids back home. For starters, they kept putting her through awful things, like “meetings” and “politics” where she had to be quiet and sit still for far too long. Today, though, was starting to seem like her toughest battle yet.
The dining table in front of her had been laid out wonderfully, like a painting. There was delicious-looking roast and popotoes, even a platter of sweets, but it was all an illusion, meant to distract her from the enemy hiding in plain sight.
Vegetables.
Lulu didn’t recognize what they were called, but it was something green and lumpy, and looked like lichen scraped off of a building, and she didn’t trust it one bit. It HAD to be a vegetable. Even worse, the servant who had set the banquet in front of her insisted on filling up Lulu’s plate for her, dumping a heap of the green stuff the size of mountains directly in the center. The girl tried not to recoil in disgust.
“Is everything alright?” Ser Aymeric asked with a concerned look from across the table.
Lulu pursed her lips and shook her head. Ma always said she had to be polite and eat the food given to her by other people, and that it was rude to refuse, even if it wasn’t something she liked.
“You don’t have to like it; you just have to eat it!” Her Ma would scold, making sure her daughter swallowed enough to appear thankful for the meal. Thankfully, most of the people who cooked for her small family had an idea of what Lulu’s tastes were, so this wasn’t a fight she needed to have that often.
Here though, as the Warrior of Light, in front of the fancy Ser Aymeric who dressed like a fairytale prince and always said such nice things about her (even though he sometimes used big words Lulu didn’t fully know the meaning of), she just had to make sure not to offend!
“It looks…great!” Lulu forced a smile on her face, already wondering how much of the mystery green substance she’d need to eat before Ser Aymeric found it acceptable. Determined to tackle this challenge head-on, like she did everything, Lulu scooped up some of the green onto a fork and took a large bite.
It was horrendous.
The food was bitter and stringy, and worst of all it was terribly soggy . Surely this had to be what eating underwater plants was like. Every crunch of her teeth made the mush ooze more bitter liquid, and when she swallowed it felt like her chewing hadn’t affected the size of the bite at all.
Unable to hide the disgusted look on her face, Lulu coughed a little, trying to not think too hard on the taste, and took a giant sip of her juice to wash it down, only to discover she could feel BITS of the mushy abomination STUCK IN HER TEETH! Despite looking like ripped up, wet leaves, the texture was stringy!!
Aymeric watched as the poor girl finished off a whole glass of juice, shaking her head like a dog as if she could make the flavor go away. After she finally finished, she heaved a deep sigh and attempted to hesitantly dig her fork in once more. A small smile of amusement sprung to his lips as he recalled another young boy, so long ago, having been invited to his first fancy dinner and being forced to put all manner of things he found disgusting into his mouth under the guise of “etiquette”.
Lulusa might be the Warrior of Light, but she truly was just a child, wasn’t she? A child who seemed to detest kale more than any other food on the planet. Turning the chuckle threatening to erupt from his lips into a clear of his throat, he decided to come to her rescue.
“Lulu, it’s alright if you don’t like it. We can have something else instead.” He suggested.
“Really?!” Lulusa’s face immediately lit up, almost looking like she might cry out of relief. “Can we?! Please?!”
This time, Aymeric did laugh. “Of course.” A few words to his cooks later, Lulu was happily munching away on some fruit and what he’d heard was called a “dodo tender” (Some sort of dodo breast that had been breaded in crumbs and fried that he’d seen children seemed to enjoy).
The Lord Commander smiled, glad to see the girl enjoying herself as they began to discuss what she’d seen on her journey to visit Hraesvelgr. In a world that wanted her to grow up so quickly, Aymeric was glad he could give her a bit of time to just be a child.