Bedside Monster (House Beasts #1)

At Dinner

Oliver batted Wovyn's hand away from the carrot peels.

"For the last time, don't eat that," he told the imp. "You are going to make yourself full before the end, and there is going to be a lot of food."

"But I am so hungry. I haven't eaten in days."

"Just a little longer. You are not going to die, you just need to wait. Why don't you go and have a nap or something?"

Wovyn shook his head and sunk down, sitting on his ankles with just his eyes observing.

To be honest, Oliver was hoping for him to leave and to finally be left alone. Wovyn was... interesting to have around, to say the least. He constantly switched between standing and walking on all fours, which he managed easier than what a human did because of the strange way his back leg folder. (Hw Oliver described it in his head was that his heel that he walked on his toes, his heel were higher up and his calf shorter.) That allowed him to go around the table with only his horns poking out over the edge, making him quite stealthy when it came to stealing.

And he stole. Relentlessly. Oliver had to bat his hands away from the raw chicken but didn't keep him away from the onion peel until he had to force him to spit them in the garbage (which Wovyn did gladly when he discovered that it was uneatable.) Thankfully the onion itself had been spared even after the imp had picked it up: one sniff had told him that it would be a quite spicy thing to shove into one's mouth, especially whole. Oliver had finally tolerated him picking on the carrot peels... more or less. They had been washed, but he couldn't imagine how someone could enjoy raw carrot peels until he considered something.

"Wovyn... have you ever eaten before?"

"A bit. Cookies mostly, although I used to eat the veggies of a child that didn't want them. Those were a bit weird. Oh, and I love bread! And chips. But candies are too much."

"That's not a lot. Never ate a cake? Or a pasty?"

"Cakes I sometimes could eat crumbs on birthdays."

"Kids didn't share those with you?"

"Nah... but I didn't mind. Dreams taste nice too. And you, what did you eat in your life?"

Olive snorted at the questions. He didn't mean that in a mean way, it was just that... well... Cooking was quite literally his entire life. It wasn't a passion great enough to make him open a restaurant, or so he thought (being depressed most of the time didn't help either). Cooking had, without a doubt, saved his life. It cleared his mind, made him busy enough not to focus on things he didn't want to focus on, and those things might or might not have included suicidal thoughts. Feeling that he could be useful and not some useless drag for society had also played a part in it. Asking how many different foods he had eaten was like asking him how many numbers he had calculated for his job.

"A lot," he eventually answered. "Probably every single food you can ever think of."

"Fried grasshoppers?"

"What? Er... that too," lied Oliver.

"Oh wow. How did they taste?"

"Like... erm... they were crunchy and tasted like salad. But grilled salad." Bugs ate grass, right? Wouldn't it be normal for them to taste like what they ate?

"Someday, I'll eat some too."

"You got to catch a lot of them first. That only happens in the countryside, in the fields. We are in a city, grasshoppers aren't available around here."

"Aw. Sucks."

"Yeah!" Oliver laughed nervously. He was a really bad liar and it was good that Wovyn was so gullible. "It's just too bad."