Chap 7 : Why Does Sustenance Require So Many Decisions?
The car ride home was quieter than the ride there.
Tangled Menace had claimed the back seat next to me again, but she wasn’t poking at her glowing rectangle this time. She was watching me. Not staring, that would have been too obvious, but watching, her gaze flicking to me every few seconds like she was waiting for me to do something interesting.
I stared out the window.
The world still rushed past too fast. Too close. Too small. But I was beginning to understand it. The rhythm of it. The way the car moved with the flow of other cars, the way the lights changed from red to green, the way Dad muttered under his breath when someone cut him off and Mum told him to “just let it go” even though she was gripping her door handle like she was preparing for impact.
They were so aware of each other. Of the space between them. Of the small, insignificant moments that made up their lives.
It was exhausting to watch.
“We should stop somewhere,” Dad announced as we left the hospital parking lot. “Get some real food. Not hospital cafeteria garbage.”
“I thought you liked hospital cafeteria garbage,” Mum said.
“I like the price of hospital cafeteria garbage. There’s a difference.”
Tangled Menace leaned forward between the front seats. “There’s that little place we always go to on fourth avenue. The one with the dumplings, which we all love”
“Dumplings,” Dad repeated, his voice going dreamy.
“You had dumplings yesterday,” Mum said.
“And I’ll have them again today. That’s the beauty of being an adult. I can make poor decisions whenever I want.”
“Daniel, your cholesterol.”
“My cholesterol and I have an understanding. It doesn’t bother me, I don’t think about it.”
Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of a small restaurant wedged between a convenience store and a laundromat. The sign was in a language I didn’t recognize but understood, how strange, the windows were steamed over, and the smell drifting from the door was..
I stopped.
The smell was something.
Not the sterile nothing of the hospital. Not the artificial pine of the car. It was warm and savoury and complicated, layers of scent that I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe but that made something in my newly mortal stomach clench with an urgency I had never experienced before.
“That,” I said, “smells acceptable.”
Tangled Menace snorted. “Yeah yeah, your majesty.”
Inside, the restaurant was small and crowded, filled with the clatter of dishes and the murmur of conversation. Red lanterns hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered in photos of dishes I couldn’t name and handwritten notes in languages I couldn’t read. An old woman behind a counter was shouting something in what might have been a warning to the universe at large; it was hard to tell.
We were led to a small table near the window. Mum and Dad sat on one side. Tangled Menace sat across from them. I sat next to Tangled Menace, because no one had told me I could choose otherwise.
The menus arrived.
I stared at mine.
It was a piece of glossy plastic paper covered in words and pictures. Dozens of words. Hundreds, maybe. Each one representing a thing that I could apparently put inside my body for the purpose of sustaining it.
I had never had to choose before. Food was food. Sustenance was sustenance. You consumed what was available and moved on.
But this…this was a menu.
“What,” I said slowly, “is all of this?”
Tangled Menace looked up from her own menu. “Food. You point at what you want, they bring it, you eat it.”
“Yes, I understand the concept. But how does one choose? There are dozens of options. Hundreds. How do you know which one is the correct one?”
“You pick whichever one looks good.”
“But they all look…” I stared at the pictures. Glossy photos of noodles and rice and meats and vegetables arranged in ways that were almost artistic. “They all look like something.”
Tangled Menace stared at me. Then her face did something complicated, and I realized with horror that she was trying not to laugh again.
“You’re doing it again,” I said.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like I’m entertainment.”
“You are entertainment. You’re the most entertainment I’ve had in weeks.”
“Sisters,” Mum said from across the table, her voice carrying a warning edge. “Behave.”
“I’m behaving perfectly,” Tangled Menace said. “I’m just enjoying my sister’s journey of culinary discovery while having brain damage.”
She reached over and tapped a picture on my menu. “Get this.. It’s noodles. In black bean sauce. You’ll like it.”
“How do you know what I’ll like?”
“Because you’ve ordered it every time we’ve come here for the last three years.”
I looked at the picture. Dark noodles. Dark sauce. Vegetables cut into small, uniform pieces.
“I don’t remember that” I said.
“I know.” Her voice was lighter now, but there was something underneath it. Something that made the laughter fade from her eyes. “That’s the point.”
The food arrived in waves.
First came the small dishes—pickled vegetables, some kind of pancake, and dumplings that Tangled Menace practically inhaled before they had fully touched the table.
I watched her eat with the same fascinated caution I once reserved for a creature called a Grivvik, a nasty little thing from one of the lower realms. Ugly-cute, absurdly fast, and notorious for biting ankles before devouring whatever had offended it.
She was remarkably similar.
Fast. Methodical. She did not pause to taste or consider. She simply consumed, as though eating were a task to be completed rather than an experience to be savoured.
“Stop staring at me,” she said around a mouthful of dumpling.
“I am observing.”
“Observe something else.”
“She’s always been like this,” Mum said to Dad, and there was something fond in her voice. “Even as a baby. You put food in front of her, it disappeared.”
“I’m a growing artist,” Tangled Menace said. “I need fuel.”
“You’re twenty-five.”
“Growing in other ways. Emotionally.”
Dad laughed. Mum shook her head. And I sat there, watching them, trying to understand the rhythm of it. The way they finished each other’s sentences. The way they knew without asking who wanted what. The way Mum reached for the tea pot and poured for Dad first, then Tangled Menace, then me, without anyone having to say a word.
This was family.
Not celestial bonds forged in the fires of divine duty. Something smaller. Something messier. Something that involved arguing about dishes and laughing at sisters who mistook random men for the Grim Reaper.
My main course arrived.
It was the noodles Tangled Menace had pointed to—a massive bowl of them, dark with sauce, topped with a tangle of vegetables and a single perfect egg. It smelled like nothing I had ever encountered. Rich. Deep. Complicated.
I picked up the spoon.
Tangled Menace froze. “What are you doing?”
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