“Are you all men?” Takashito asked as he looked out over the group of fighters. Agalon had announced that they could break for lunch, and Xaxac was amazed that Takashito had performed each of the exercises alongside the fighters.

“All the cage fighters are male,” Agalon explained, “You can’t enter a female.”

“Why?” Takashito asked as if that was one of the most ridiculous things he had ever heard.

“Humans breed too easy,” Agalon explained, “You can’t never tell when one might be pregnant. And we try not to lose the little’ins.”

“Ah,” Takashito nodded, “Yes, I… I understand that. Urillians speak quite a bit about the sacredness of life. It is strange you produce so many warriors.”

“...Right,” Agalon said as if he didn’t understand what Takashi had just told him. “Come on, Honey Bunny, lunch!”

Xaxac turned from where he had been standing with the other fighters, trying in vain to get the dirt off his outfit and wishing with all his might he had a mirror to see what a sorry state his makeup had to be in, but he ran to Agalon’s side.

“I’m tired, Aggie,” He said, not as a complaint, but as a fact, “I ain’t been this tired, like real tired, in a long time.”

“You are tired?” Takashito asked, “Already?” He turned to Ara and asked, “How much time do I have?”

“The finals ain’t till the spring equinox,” she said, “The Eishtar festival. You got time.”

“Good,” Takashi let out a sigh of relief, “We need to work on your stamina. You should not grow so tired so quickly.”

“I got to where I never did nothin,’ Xaxac explained as he sat on the blanket and took the salad Agalon offered him. He was starving, and he would go through it quickly.

“Are you on a diet?” Takashito asked as he watched the elves unwrap their much more substantial meals of chicken, cornbread, and fried potatoes. “Why are you eating differently?”

“He’s a vegetarian,” Agalon explained, and Takashito nodded.

“On account a’ he’s a shifter,” Agalon continued, though Takashito seemed as if he had accepted this information at face value, unlike anyone else Xaxac had ever met, and did not need further clarification, “He’s gotta eat rabbit food. He eats meat or eggs or anything like that he gets real sick.”

“Do you eat fish?” Takashito asked.

“No,” Xac huffed, “Fish is meat.”

“Some people eat no meat except fish,” Takashito said, “That is fairly common, where I am from. They are called pescatarians. They do this because fish feel less pain than other animals,” he shrugged, “apparently. I do not know that that is true.”

“I ain’t a vegetarian on account of animals hurt when they die,” Xac said, because he had never considered such a thing, did not know it was a possible consideration to take, “that’s just how life is. Everybody hurts an’ everybody dies. I just get sick.”

Ara stared at him as if she was trying to figure something out about him.

“Either way,” Takashito said, “You should probably work on your diet. You may be getting tired so easily because you are not getting enough food to make it through the day. Your body will begin to eat itself. Some food is more dense than others. If you are going to become a fighter, you will need to eat dense food, like rice or bread.”

“He loves cornbread,” Agalon said as he handed Xac a slice, “Don’tcha, darlin?”

“I do!” Xac agreed, bit into it and thought he had liked it more before it changed. Where was his mother?

“This is better than the bread we had back at the prison,” Takashito praised, and Ara watched him. Xaxac didn’t think he liked her very much. She never really spoke, and she carried herself in such a way that he thought she wanted people to be afraid of her. She just sat, silently judging everyone, including him, and it made him uncomfortable.

Usually, mages wore the crystals they were casting from, and Ara had a staff similar to the one kept in the curio case upstairs, except not as nice. Xaxac suspected Takashito probably couldn’t cast from the crystal he wore. The way he wore it made it seem as if it was for someone else to use, not for him.

Someone like Ara.

“There are three major nutrients,” Takashito explained, “Fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. I do not think you are getting enough of any of them to be a fighter. You need to eat more.”

“Them water elves say that kinda thing all the time,” Ara explained, “They got somethin’ to bitch about no matter what you give um to eat.”

“Nobody needs fat,” Agalon scoffed, “That don’t do nothin.”

“It creates a cushion,” Takashito argued, “for things like bones and organs, and it provides a storage system for energy, for the body. It is necessary. Fish oil is very good for you.”

“I can’t eat fish,” Xaxac said.

“It does not have to be… that was an example,” Takashito was getting frustrated, but he was obviously trying to hide it. Xaxac suspected he had had a lot of practice hiding his emotions. “It can be anything; nuts, olives, tofu-”

“What the hell’s tofu?” Agalon asked.

“Some water-continent food,” Ara explained, “That’s the only place you can get it. You’d have to order it in and it ain’t in the budget.”

“It is a type of vegetable protein made from edamame-” Takashito explained but Agalon cut him off again.

“What’s edamame?” He scoffed as if he thought it may not exist at all.

“He means soybeans,” Ara explained, “It took a while to get that out of um. I don’t know why they don’t just say what they mean.”

“Yes,” Takashito sighed, “Soybeans. But you can make it into a paste and use it in place of meat, in stir fries and such. It would be good for him.”

“I like beans,” Xac said, “Except sometimes rich folk or… I dunno, folk who wanna waste pork, put pork fat in um and then I get sick so I can’t trust um.”

“Do Urillians eat a lot of meat?” Takashi asked as if the concept confused him, “We do not, at the prison. Perhaps they use it to flavor things. It seems that they are very concerned with saving money. Any time you ask for anything they say it is not in the budget. Which is strange. I thought an empire would be rich.”

“Even in the prison it’s gotta be better than raw fish and rice,” Agalon huffed, “That’s what they were eatin before we taught um to cook their food. I don’t know how they all wouldn’t dead. You can’t eat meat raw.”

“That… is not all we ate,” Takashi said as if Agalon had made him angry, then realized what he was doing, took a deep breath to calm himself and spoke again, “We ate a lot of seafood, but we… frequently cooked. Wait- how did you think we made the rice if you thought we did not cook? If you ate rice from Mizunohitobito you would not have eaten it raw.”

Xaxac saw a look come over Agalon’s face he was not used to seeing without Lorsan present: embarrassment.

“I reckon anybody can fry rice,” Agalon said, eventually.

“We also frequently boiled it,” Takashito explained, “The fried rice they make in the prison is not the same as we had on Mizunohitobito, it is more like they made in Kaihiwai. I mean, before it was underwater. I do not know what the food is like now.”

“I got a buddy what runs down there all the time,” Agalon said, “He’d know. I know he eats when he goes. He loves that weird foreign shit.”

“Alex’s master?” Xac asked, “Alex is my friend! He loves the water continent! He talks about it all the time!”

“I love it, as well,” Takashito said. “Even if it has changed, I am sure I will still love it. Everything changes.”

Agalon handed Xaxac his flask, and Xac drank from it greedily.

“Should we be gettin back to work?” Ara asked.