#[ I envision his UM to be a type of water manipulation

[troisfleur]

11. A memory that may or may not have happened

(cw: talk of rotting food / accidentally eating rotten food and maliciously tricking someone into eating something against their will.)

“—PEOPLE FORGET WHEN YOU MAKE IT LOOK SO EASY.”

Trey’s missed all of Cater’s words except the last fragment. It barely registers as the platitudes or even a proper sentence, just background noise, static that only became untangled from the ambient dormitory noises because of the words spoken.

Cater means well. Out of the corner of his eye, he’s perched, chin in hand, elbow on counter, blurry but smiling. Trey thinks, at least. He can imagine the uneasy corners because Cater folds when conflict’s on the wind.

Trey doesn’t look at his roommate. Knife work requires careful precision. Trey is brandishing a knife and the last thing the day needs is losing a finger. The static is ringing in his ears. The strawberries underneath his hands are an off-ripe red, enough to conjure angry faces and an endless stretch of time. The knife goes cleanly through.

Housewarden Rosmas is a character, impeccably-dressed and not nearly as deft a liar as he thinks himself to be. His right hand is ineffective at leadership but his left hand is usually brandishing his magic pen, crafted by leadership into a scepter befitting a queen, around with a reckless abandon for someone who owns every single second of the dorm’s time. It’s his to wield and waste as he pleases, meant to impose upon his will only to cut students short where his own reputation might be tarnished. The Queen’s Rules mean little; his rules supersede all. Trey doesn’t consider himself a stickler—even nearing the end of his freshman year, he can only recall 80, wracking his brain—

Now 81, burned into his mind with the clattering of a table nearly overturned by a tidal wave. Housewarden Rosmas’s face scarlet, teeth flashing with every enunciated word and then bared into a malicious grin at the soaked freshmen caught in his wake: run to the sea, little oysters, and maybe you’ll dry off sometime this evening, in time to clean the mess you’ve made!

All over a menu choice he didn’t like, a simple change from their usual fare to match the coming of spring and fresh buddies flowers. Candied by Trey’s own hand, a handful of his peers eager to learn under his instruction to prepare a veritable feast for the coming of spring.

Something new—something unapproved, a deviation from the Housewarden’s rule. Trey bowed his head and taken the brunt of the blame, but their entire group felt the sting of an unbirthday party ruined, every liquid wielded against them in a brewed tidal wave of malice, stained and soaked through and lectured with the bellow of their Housewarden blotting out the merrymaking.

Rose duty for the rest of the year is a shockingly light sentence, but his fun had already been had.

The knife keeps coming back red as roses, dripping in the sweet juice. Trey imagines for a moment it’s his magic pen, the instructions to change from white to red now drilled into his mind like all good little card soldiers. It’s a deceptively difficult spell to master, a fine amount of control necessary to coat the flower evenly. What was once insurmountable is now second nature, like wielding the knife, like slicing through strawberries, like blotting out the noise and seeing red seeping into his vision.

He wonders, for a moment, what would happen if red roses were black; if red strawberries were rotten. A perfect strawberry tart, glazed and shining, presented before Housewarden Rosmas on a silver platter next month. Watching his eyes take in every single perfect berry in front of everyone seated, watching his fork cut into it with expected anticipation.

It would only take a flick of the wrist underneath the table to turn it rotten. Fine control needed to only strike his plate, to watch the berries blacken and rot on his fork, the moment it touches his tongue. Just when everyone else has begun to dig into their tea and pastries, looking away until their housewarden starts to gag.

The rest of the tart unharmed, so that when he sputters and spits and accuses something of being wrong, everyone stares in confusion, watching his face grow redder with anger and no culprit to be found—

—He can watch in horror as it rots before him—or would it be better to stretch the time, to keep the glistening red for hours but have every bite just taste as though the strawberries have molded the second his rotten personality so stained them—

Knife hits the wooden cutting board with enough force to make a sound. The kitchen is empty; Cater’s long since made himself scarce. Trey is alone.

He really shouldn’t be so careless in the kitchen.