Summary: Tonight's feast is rich.
AN: kuna_yashmaa wanted a Wraith snippet (and it's really just a snippet, sorry). It's a missing scene to the episode Condemned - hope you'll like it. :)
Appetite
Tonight's feast is rich.
There are juicy, slightly overripe fruits and baked goods full of sugar on the table; food he is supposed to like, and indeed he has developed quite the taste for sweet things. He has been known to devour two whole plates of plums on one evening, taking delight in the fleshy squelch they made between his fingers, the way his long nails broke the skin. That does not mean he will not enjoy the roasted meat of the small beast the humans call tefnak, or the dish the new cook has prepared especially for him – pieces of a different meat, with a rather interesting dark sauce and accompanied by pale, soft vegetables. After all these years, human food has not ceased to intrigue him with its variety. Sometimes, he thinks that they enjoy the process of eating even more than his kind does.
And then the wine. Deep red, the colour of blood, and the thought amuses him enough to ignore the stench of alcohol, the underlying tang of fruity decay. It is rather cold, as always an interesting contrast to the warmth of whatever it is on his plate. The humans prefer their dishes steaming hot, but he does not take pleasure in a burnt tongue. The cooks have learned that by now.
Not that it really matters. In a few more hours, his body will have absorbed whatever he chooses to ingest now, and this array of food and drink will only be a fading memory.
And the only one to remember it will be him.
He looks across the table, at the fat, sweating human, with its racing pulse and its poorly concealed fear. He looks at the creature that thinks it could betray him, deny him his sustenance; like a Wraith could ever be betrayed by cattle. And he thinks of how he only ever took the prisoners from their island, allowing the rest of this world to flourish, and to… procreate.
He smiles.
Yes. Tonight's feast is rich.