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He scooped up his crutch and took the seat that had been indicated to him.
The woman dropped a carving knife on the tabletop before him, as well as sliding a burlap sack of potatoes to his side, and shouted an order to him, her command obvious. She crossed her arms as she watched him, as though she didn’t trust him to understand her body language and the task bestowed upon him.
And she would be right to mistrust him.
Salas hesitated, wishing he could simply run from the room, all the way back to Suscon. The other kitchen hands stared at him quietly, from the corners of their eyes, to watch the spectacle: the mouthy foreigner disobeying the head cook.
He didn’t understand his own defiance. He was used to following orders, and following them well, but rebellion lit his core and made picking up the knife seem like an act that went against his entire being.
He picked up the carving knife. Just as he was about to reach for a potato, the woman tutted and grabbed his hands. She turned them over with her worn fingers, like a mother inspecting the hands of her children before supper and disappointed by her findings. Humphing, the woman gestured for him to stand and he did so.
She began walking to a door that, judging by the crisp air that leaked through it, led to the outside, making a hand motion for him to follow.
Salas hobbled with his crutch and hesitated at the threshold, glancing around worriedly.
“Where?” He asked softly in Diagorian, unsure of how to translate the subject of his question.
Yet the woman seemed to understand him and turned back, seeming satisfied by his lame attempt at the language. She responded with a phrase that contained ‘wash hands in the well,’ and he felt his stomach drop. ‘Well’ appeared to be the same in Susconian as it was in Diagorian.
Standing before the open door, he began to shake his head emphatically. “No,” he said sternly, attempting to maintain the rhythm of his breath but finding it slipping.
The woman rounded upon him, her expression quickly hardening to stone and reddening at the insubordination towards her authority, ready to put the staff under her charge in line.
She began to yell at him with a quick, bellowing rage that Salas didn’t even try to translate.
He dropped his head, trembling, as she shook him more than once and, seeming to grow more and more impatient with his disobedience, pulled him out the door. It was not a rough pull, but still he stumbled.
Now though the threshold, he could see down a dim hallway that led to the white snow-light of the outside, where he could just glimpse the wall of the well that he knew intimately.
The cook was speaking again, but he pushed her advances away in a frenzy, a deer trying to move a mountain, and began shrieking his defiance.
The cook’s voice grew louder as well, though her tone had changed, replaced with hesitance, perhaps concern.
And Salas fell apart. Tears began to stream down his face and he crumbled to the ground, his vision clouding over with thoughts of being buried under water, snow, and ice, forever entombed with his pain.
“Please,” he begged in Diagorian, shaking, “I be good. No well. No well.”
The woman began saying something else to him, but for fear that she was demanding him to get back to his feet so she could escort him to the hated place, he stayed silent. If she truly wanted him to abide by her command, he knew that she could overpower him an instant, and hoped dearly that it would not come to that.
Beyond, he could hear a bustle of movement from the kitchen, but he did not look over to see what was happening or why people were moving about.
A moment later, he felt hands around him as he was lifted up and carried back into the kitchen by the woman.
He began crying in earnest: thick, wracking sobs that made his whole body shake. When he could concentrate on blinking enough to see beyond the tears gathered at his lids, he saw that the kitchen had been emptied of its occupants.
The cook set him upon a counter, cooing in her low, rumbly voice as she pushed his hair from his face. When his sobs had slowed enough in their fierceness, she grabbed a kitchen rag and wiped his face, shushing him as she patted down his wet face. No longer was she the stern, uncompromising commander but instead a sympathetic, motherly woman here to help.
And Salas took it. He let himself be calmed until his breathing was even.
“Sorry,” he exhaled finally.
She petted him and asked a question, obviously wanting to know what had happened.
Salas considered his small vocabulary before answering. “Hate…well. Salas hate well.”
The cook considered him thoughtfully before leaving the kitchen through the door that led outside. She returned moments later with a bucket of water, which she heated over the coals for a considerable few moments before bringing the bucket to him.
“No well,” she promised with sincerity, and gestured to the bucket.
