It Slices! It Dices!

“You did him a disservice, Fiona, love,” my brother Brand caught my arm with a gesture which bespoke of his gentlemanly upbringing. “He was, indeed, fit for serving…if not to your royal majesty, perhaps to your hounds and hawks.”

“In bite-sized pieces with sufficient gravy to mask the taste of idiocy,” my other brother, Bleys, retorted, leaving me only to smile in response.

“Does idiocy have a taste?” Brand asked, speculatively.

“That of the bottom of one’s sole, you might say,” Bleys suggested, miming eating his foot.

“A soul without depth is one without taste?” I asked. Bleys and Brand laughed.

“A flat soul? I thought it was at least measured in three dimensions,” Brand pondered.

“When you find mine, hold it up to a ruler,” Bleys recommended.

“When I find the poor fool who bought the devalued currency, I shall endeavor to do so. And of course, sister, I shall make bargain to that same jester for your heart.” Brand bowed, expansively to me. I mimed kicking him in the shins.

“And what of the lion’s share of courage?” Bleys asked Brand, circling around him with a smile. He was avoiding my foot, I think.

“We leave that to the hunt,” Brand said, thinking of it as a curiosity. “And here we have the source of our quest. Lessons, anyone?” he held open the door to the wizard Dworkin’s suite with magnanimous grace.