Give Me Some Salt, Please!
"Delicious!" exclaimed Lina as she savored the taste of gourmet food and its texture against her palate. She squealed in pleasure before taking another bite out of her food, chewing it thoroughly and pressing it between her tongue and the roof of her mouth in appreciation of its smooth texture.
Amelia tapped her mouth delicately with a napkin before sighing in contentment. "Life is wonderful," she murmured as her cheeks turned a light hue of pink. Turning to her friend, she asked, "Are you sure you don't want any, Zelgadiss-san?"
"I'll be fine," he replied as he lifted his cup of coffee to his lips, keeping cool and composed as always. "Unlike these two here, I'm satisfied after having a full meal," he added, nodding his head towards Lina and Gourry.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lina growled through a mouthful of food as she shot a glare back at him. "You can only enjoy specialty foods properly after eating a proper meal," she added, and Gourry nodded his agreement.
"Right," Zelgadiss replied apathetically as he continued to sip his coffee. He didn't feel like starting an argument with Lina at the dinner table. It was best to just leave her alone.
As Lina leaned back in her chair and patted her stomach, she popped a sudden question. "By the way, what is escargot? Apparently it's not usually cooked like this," she said as she glanced down at her plate of sautéed food.
With his eyes still closed and his coffee cup just an inch away from his lips, Zelgadiss nonchalantly replied, "Roast slug."
Her fork and knife hit the table, generating a resonating echo as they banged against it and fell to the floor. Her face first tuned a shade of blue, then purple, and finally green. Goose bumps stood out on her skin, and her hair turned to spikes that stood on end as she froze in place. "W-what was that again?"
"Roast slug," he replied again, having expected the follow-up question, and sipped his coffee.
She gasped, producing a deep and cluttered noise in her throat as her hands clutched at her own neck. Gourry and Amelia both stared at her curiously, the latter of which finally spoke up. "Lina-san?"
The sorceress then jumped up from her chair and stiffly stomped over to the restroom, barreling through all the tables and chairs in her path. The other customers watched her and commented on her reckless behavior, a commotion that was eventually calmed by the owner of the restaurant. Lina returned a few minutes later, looking like she had spared a heart and liver in the process of bringing her ingested food back up to the surface.
"Are you okay?" Amelia asked as Gourry continued to chomp away at the food in the background.
Lina turned green at the sight of Gourry eating slugs, and she suppressed the reflexive urges to puke. She sat down in her chair with her hand over her mouth, trying to calm her upset stomach. In empathy for her poor friend, Amelia said, "I'll go scold the waiter for bad food."
Zelgadiss caught her shoulder as she took a step away. "No need." he said, eyeing the sick sorceress out of the corner of his eye. Seeing that Amelia was still confused, Zelgadiss explained, "Lina hates slugs."
The girl blinked, then connected a fist to the palm of her other hand, showing that she understood. "Oh--that's right!"
"Really? Why's that?" Gourry asked as he started on another plate.
All three companions were frozen in place when a rather creepy chuckle escaped Lina's lips. They stared at her, eyes suddenly wide with apprehension, while she rose in her chair as if by unseen forces. "You want to know why?" said she, grinning lopsidedly from ear to ear.
Amelia backed away and made a scared sound. "L-Lina-san?!"
Lina took a fork and pierced the table with it. Her head dropped, hiding her eyes from view as she continued to laugh eerily. Her shoulders shook, and her hand trembled as it grasped the fork, causing a tremor to ripple through the entire table. Then she said, "I'll never forget what onee-chan did…"
"I'd always been afraid of slugs, but I never actually freaked out upon seeing one until I found one crawling on my arm one day. I screamed so loudly that I shook the entire house, and my dad came running to see what was going on. There I was, crying like a baby and trying to get the slug off my arm that stuck to me like glue. He picked it off of me and threw it away easily, but unfortunately onee-chan had followed him out to the yard and witnessed my little…outburst.
As soon as she learned that I was afraid of slugs, she started to pull pranks on me all the time. I'd find them squirming around my room, clothes, and even sometimes when I crawled into bed at night to sleep. I'd find their disgusting trail of goo on my windowsill, and streaks all over the window glass. Sometimes she'd even sneak it into my food, and I wouldn't notice until it was already in my mouth…
But luckily after a while of living hell, my sister started getting bored of these games. So I got off easy for about an entire year. I thought she had finally given it up for good, but I was tricked. On the eve of my seventh birthday, I came home to an empty house. It was dark, so I fumbled around until I got to the cabinet where we stored the candles. And when I reached in, there was a gooey slug waiting there for me.
So naturally, I shrieked and ran away. But onee-chan was one step ahead of me. I ran into my room to hide, but as soon as I stepped inside, the door slammed behind me. It was completely dark. I reached to turn on the light, but as soon as I did I wished I hadn't." With that comment, Lina turned a shade of blue that could have been comparable to Zelgadiss's skin.
"So what happened?" Amelia asked, curious yet afraid all the same.
Tears began to well up in Lina's eyes as she slammed her fist down into the table. She shivered and sniffed a bit, raising concern in her friends' eyes, before she raised her head and shakily answered, "My entire room was flooded with them! And what's worse, I was small enough at the time to be swallowed up by the large one." She paused to draw out the shape of one in the air, gesturing with her hands to show how big it was in comparison. "I'll never forget the smell or the feeling of having slug intestines being pressed up against my face. And when I tried to scream I would get slug goo in my mouth." She opened her mouth and clawed at her tongue, recalling what it felt like to have the disgusting mass in her mouth.
Amelia shuddered at the thought while Gourry turned a sickly shade of green, covering his mouth with a hand as he made gagging noises. Zelgadiss scoffed a bit to the side and commented, "Ridiculous."
Lina caught his little mutter and scooted over to him in a number of rapid steps. He made a perturbed face when he heard her low, evil laughter, but the horrified, contorted face that she showed him blew them all over the top. "You don't understand what she's like," Lina cried in exasperation as she grasped at the air, trying to pull images out of it like some sort of insane schizophrenic maniac.
He spilled a little bit of his coffee as a look of shock overtook his face, as well as Amelia's and Gourry's. "O-okay I get it," he quickly added, hoping to dampen the sorceress's creepy mannerisms. He succeeded, and she quickly scurried off to a corner to cry to herself about pleading mercy and forgiveness from her sister.
"Lina-san?"
"Leave it alone," Zelgadiss interjected, stopping Amelia from going over to check on her friend. But both of their eyes widened in curiosity as a waiter scooted on past them, heading toward the sorceress in the corner.
She turned around with tears dripping from her chin, still taken over by the mentality of a five-year-old, but when he held out a package to her she instantly came back to her usual senses. "What's this?" she wondered aloud as she unraveled the contents, slipping the cover of the box off and poking her nose in.
Her companions waited for her response, but when they realized that time had frozen for the sorceress, the young Saillune princess carefully called out her name, "L-Lina-san?"
There was no initial reaction. But then the color suddenly disappeared from her face and her hair stood stiffly on end; shivers ran across the entire surface of her skin and her mouth opened to utter a completely inaudible scream that soon transposed itself into an extremely high-pitched full-lung-capacity shriek that took off with her as she darted away in a mad frenzy. Gravity had only just begun to exert its force on that small box when she was already far beyond reach, and all the windows shattered in unison after a three-second delay.
All three companions stared after her, completely befuddled.
"What just happened?" Amelia began.
"I'm not quite sure…" Gourry added.
Zelgadiss approached the harmless box with caution and picked it up. As he shook the contents loose, a small slug fell out and landed with a small plop on the ground.
At first there was a pause, then a simultaneous change to an expression that represented understanding. Immediately following that was concern.
"Who would send this sort of thing to Lina-san?" Amelia wondered aloud as she eyed the small creature writhing on the ground. She flipped the box over to see if there was a name or something of the sort, but there was only the addressee listed on the lid.
"Obviously someone who knew her well enough," Zelgadiss answered, crossing his arms and sitting down in his chair.
"Then do you think we should bring her back?" Gourry asked, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked off in the direction Lina disappeared in.
"She'll make it back around the world in less time than it'd take to catch up to her," Zelgadiss said as he cued the waiter for the bill.
Amelia nodded. "I suppose you're right."
ooo
In the background, if one were to glance through the window, one would be able to catch a glance of a certain purple-haired priest laughing his ass off atop a chimney stack of a nearby building. He laughed so hard that he lost his balance and fell off, rolling down the rooftop until he fell out of view.
On the other hand, if Amelia had bothered to flip the lid of the box and check the underside, she would have caught his little signature: From the Trickster Priest.
A/N: Well this was just a little idea I had a while back that I never wrote out until now. Hope it was at least a little bit entertaining to you!