when legends get hungry by thomas thomas

When Legends Get Hungry…

A short story by Thomas Thomas

                It was a dark night in a suburb that knows how to keep its secrets, and as the icy northern winds of Marin shook the trees, and the howls of wolves and shrieks of wild raptors cut through the night, I sat alone in my basement, painting down a massive pile of unpainted Space Marines, when I realized I had not had dinner yet, and was desperately hungry. I wandered through the deserted streets and found a single, forlorn, hole-in-the-wall resteraunt at the edge of the market square. After a quick debate, I took the steak'n bacon combo over the velociraptor breast. The steak was beef, like from cows, which are rare this far north, with only a few in the south, as they had come from the Old World to the New World, and were not native. The crispy boar bacon was a different story. Pigs had also come from the old  world to the new, but in such great numbers that prices dropped and it became cheaper to set them free than try to sell them. The wild boar population boomed, and became a staple for the north where nothing lived but mammoths, sandworms, and raptors.

                Despite the general deliciousness of these two entrees, I found my meal  lacking in grain, or in anything non-protein,  so I summoned a bandit technical from the catch-a-ride and head up to the northern military outpost. It was a 3 hour drive there and back, but only if you stay on the roads and under the speed limit, which would be more enticing if the roads weren't dirt and covered with snow. At the outpost I nabbed some quinoa from the farm and chocolate from a drunk leutenant's backpack, and headed home.

                 It turned out that quinoa tastes awful, which explains why the Spanish banned its cultivation as soon as they found it in the Andes. That, and it was considered "Indian food" and was present in many Inca religious ceremonies. Everything else was delicious! I could taste the New World cacoa and Old World, cow-based, milk in every bite. And that is how legends eat.