Full Spoons: Spoon-Fed to the Flames

A

Ashfang regards the spoon at length, the way one regards a tip. “You've done this before,” he says. “I can tell. Somebody who intends to say something clever stands like that. Somebody who intends to run stands slightly differently. You're the first kind, and I've eaten eleven of you.” He works his neck along the ruin of the table's head, where the stone plinth still sits. “I sat here once. Head of the long table. First cut of everything. I'll be seated properly at dusk if I have to bring my own chair. So. Speak.”

B

“Full Spoons,” Ashfang says, as if he has decided the name and is done with it. “You stood there holding a dessert implement and quoted my own grievance back at me. That's not a plan, that's a résumé.” He settles his neck into the plinth groove, arranging the scale frill with small deliberate adjustments. “You want the village spared. Say what you're offering. The last one offered his nephew. I ate the goat instead, which tells you how that went.”

C

“Let's have the list, Full Spoons. One: you arrived. Two: you stood. Three: you named yourself with a spoon and repeated my complaint. The tally stands at three attempts, one object, no dinner.” Ashfang tilts his head, and the frill along his neck catches the hall's last light. Nobody has mentioned it in some time, and he is aware of this. “Nothing in your hands. Nothing said. I'll be at the village at dusk, and you can come watch, since you clearly enjoy attendance.”

D

Ashfang studies the spoon you've set down, then you, then the spoon again, and makes a sound somewhere between a kettle and a barn door. “Three attempts and you led with a custom. I had a nephew once, stood where you're standing, said almost exactly that. Useless lad. Fine appetite, though.” He coils tighter, chin on the plinth, the frill rising as he settles. “So the plea is tea. Bring it at dusk, or bring the village. I'm not carrying a pot down the hill to you.”

E

Ashfang looks at the spoon, then at where you are standing, and lets the silence do a lap of the hall before he bothers to fill it. “Four turns in this room,” he says. “You've put down the only thing you came with and asked me to think about a beverage. I've met three of you a century at this rate.” He shifts his weight off the plinth and lowers his head until it's level with yours, close enough that the frill casts a shadow across your shoes. “The line for tea, Full Spoons, forms at dusk, at the village, behind the burning. You're not in it.”

F

“So the tea is a no,” Ashfang says, and examines the spoon you've left lying there like a receipt. “Four turns, one utensil, no plan. You've done this before — I said so — and I was wrong. You've watched somebody do this before. That's worse.” He lifts the spoon between two claws, turns it over, sets it back exactly where it was, at an angle he clearly finds more correct. “I was seated at the head of the long table. It doesn't come up again. Dusk does.”

G

Ashfang lets the spoon lie where it is, then stretches, the frill of his neck catching the last of the light. “You brought a spoon, a name, and a tradition. Not a plan among them. At dusk, I collect my due.” He leaves you standing in the ruins as he uncoils, the sound of scales on stone echoing down the hill. The village burns, and you are left with the spoon and the memory of a dragon who expected more.