Chapter Text
Food folk filled the streets with life and laughter.
Nothing on this good earth quite compared to Comida's edible edifices, mushroom mansions, beetroot buildings, zucchini ziggurats, leafy cathedrals, plentiful horns, and food pyramids. It's been the dream of every milk-man, waffle-woman, and cheese-child to make the special journey to the great city at least once in their short shelf life. Pilgrims and natives alike marvel at the scale, the beauty, the poetry of it all. Everything caught in a glorious haze of comestible glitter, golden and silvery.
Cabbage carriages, pulled by scallion-stallions and potato-horses, pushed through the crowded, cobbled thoroughfare as fireworks made of popping candy set off high in the sky. Mutton-musicians sang with their flutes and lutes and kazoos, emboldening a town peopled by lovers of the arts. Several sets of stalls shouldered the shiny streets, selling stuff that smelled of something sweet and sour. Its romantic, aromatic, tear-jerking, nostril-flaring scent reached the inside of a prisoner wagon that parted the sea of people.
"'Tis my first Eggamere Festival," Eggsy lamented. "And yet I can do naught but watch from the wayside, jailed."
Eggsy was a small hard-boiled egg in his youth, and he was not alone in his morose imprisonment, for he was accompanied by his six dashing boon companions: a chocolate-monk with tall ears and an oversized ribbon of violet wrapped backwards around his neck going by the name of Brer Bunny, a pumpkin-madame in a rural jacket and a straw hat known as Jackie O'Lantern, a little marshmallow-man garbed in black leather with half of his face burnt off aptly named Marsh the Mellow, a pointy-nosed radish-boy in a woodland rain cape referred to as Radical Randy, an anxious garlic-person in a scarf and apron ironically called Wild Buck Ramson, and Poppy the lithe lollypop-lady of Candian descent.
Their sort were childhood friends, together forming the Pantry Party. A cute nickname they've coined when they were running amok as children in the orphanage. All their lives, fancying themselves paladins, monks, wizards, fighters, warlocks, clerics, bards. They had to laugh at the damned notion. There was little venturing to do, with sword and staff and spear confiscated.
Poppy sighed in deep resignation. "Thou needn't have struck that banana-knight, Eggsy."
Eggsy prodded his blackened eye, and winced. "Needn’t? With him acting untoward towards the innkeep? Au contraire, my Candian companion, wont like that begets reprisal."
"So," said Radical Randy, "the implication is thou didst what thou didst because of honor and not because you simply found the innkeep comely?"
"Verily." Eggsy grinned. "Never got his christened name, did I? Hope to meet His Handsomeness again someday."
"Unlikely." Marsh the Mellow was gripping metal bars with his tiny, fluffy hands, and tried to rip them off.
"Sacre Bulb," said Jackie O'Lantern in her uvular Fructeran accent. "That shan't work."
Marsh let go of his hold and snarled through clenched teeth. "Fie! I'm starvin'! Ain't bothered to feed us the whole journey, they didn’t!"
"Perchance they plan to execute us," Brer Bunny said dryly in his velvety voice.
Wild Buck Ramson whimpered at the thought. "By the Bulb, surely self-defense isn't a punishable offense? Certainly not by death!"
Eggsy patted his anxiety-addled friend on the shoulder. "Worry not, my allium companion. No longer can noblemen hurt the common folk as they see fit and fain. Justice is on the side of the peasantry class! 'Twas writ in law by the late, great Concordant Empress Primsy Coldbottle herself, and honored by her successor Emperor Eggsquire Boule."
Marsh, ever the mellow sort, scoffed at the remark. "Legalities aside, O egghead, thou sayest that as if the chiefs and senators and the like of the six nations have been paying respect to Primsy’s wishes."
Eggsy ignored the blunt marshmallow and urged Ramson to gaze outside, at the Candian circus performers juggling balls and bowling pins whilst spitting out cones of red flame from the inside of a marquee, prompting cheers and claps. The egg-boy could tell they were of the Ruby Red Circus, which specialized in training acrobats and trapeze artists. The company was established by a famed princess many a generation ago. The energy of the performers was worthy of Saint Eggamere's Festival, and certainly worthy of a Melange Metropolis a thousand years old.
The outskirts of the Wealthy, Healthy City used to just be rolling melon hills and cherry orchards, and was considered territory of Fructera. Now it's an independent region all to itself called New Cornucopia, and the influx of migrants further diversified the flora and fauna. Candians planted candy cane trees and terraformed a portion of the land into muffin meadows, carrying over caramel chickens and cocoa cows as cattle. The Beef Clan, the Pork Clan, the Fish Clan, the Venison Clan, the Chevon Clan, the Mutton Clan, and the Poultry Clan had brought forth great beasts from Carn's coliseum like the meatball mammoth, the bone bear, and the ham hound. Vegetanian yeomen flooded the open velds with irrigated farmlands, making the rich greenery of the soil pronounced. Ceresian architects built a length of aqueducts that stretched alongside the Glucian Road, reminiscent of expert engineering works from Pangranos.
Comida was, indeed, a consummate admixture of the variegated cultures and customs from all across the continent: Vegetania, Fructera, Candia, Ceresia, the Meat Lands, and the Dairy Islands. The city has had a life complete with comedies, tragedies, and histories. It was the very site where the founder of the church and the namesake of the festival lived, was overcooked, and died. A tale every Caloran kid knows, one where the fair saint sacrificed himself for his followers and for the big Bulb above.
Eggsy said, "Before she had moved on, my mum used to tell me bedtime stories about ol' Eggamere when I was yet toddling, how he was a hard-boiled egg just like I. One of my earliest memories."
Radical Randy said, "Hate to break it to thee, Eggsy, but I heard Eggamere was a soft-boiled egg."
Poppy said, "Wasn't the man fried?"
Brer Bunny said, "I conster he was scrambled."
Marsh the Mellow said, "Mayhap the man was a deviled egg."
He didn't mean it as a jape, but it got a strong chuckle out of Jackie O'Lantern. "The irony of a deviled egg earning sainthood would be astounding."
Eggsy nodded humorously. "Just because you're a deviled egg doesn't mean you're a devil of a man."
"But soft," said Wild Buck Ramson, aghast, "none of you read the Book of Leaves bar me?"
Three loud bangs from the roof of the wagon cut the conversation short. "Oi! Shut your pie holes!"
Marsh closed his fist and responded with a bang of his own. "The Hungry One take you, villain!"
Poppy diplomatically said, "Oh, we'll shut our pie holes, alright, provided you tell us where we're going."
The driver bellowed at the prisoners in naughty, haughty laughter. "Can't you tell by now? You're being taken to answer for your crimes! Whatever they are. I haven't the foggiest what's so special about all ye, but orders are you're to be taken and judged by the imperial court itself. You've seriously pissed someone off, so cease your blabbering about or I'll have the lot of ye flogged!"
The prisoner passengers passed looks of bewilderment on to each other, confounded by how punching an errant robber knight square in the jaw led to this.
For Eggsy, the obvious earned utterance. "They're taking us to the Cornucopian Hall."