An unruly thing, taste is. Taste is often associated with desire, and this can be considered even the definition of it. Thing is, as with desire, taste can be frowned upon. My taste --- my desire --- is something that is frowned upon by society and law. My taste is something an outsider of my brain would consider insanity. But if I think that my taste is simply a desire one could easily comply to, who is right?
I paced back and forth in the Imperial cell. I thought these thoughts with many more waiting to be thought. There’s not a single part of the cell where I have not stepped or hit my head on repeatedly while thinking these thoughts. I cannot remember a time where I sat to think my thoughts, or possibly lay to think my thoughts. If there was no movement, there could be no thoughts to think. Everything moved but that that cannot taste true taste.
As the days grew longer, more thoughts were thought. The taste for confinement could never be adapted, as my real taste seemed farther and farther from my reach. I knew somewhere that that I had taste for was waiting for me in this war-cursed wasteland. There always was something that could call to me, and my taste would be fulfilled once more.
But the taste never truly ended. Only simmered down, and then gradually grew. My taste moved me and threw me at the walls now. Taste must be fed.
Sometimes I would stand on the bed, and the other prisoners --- often Stormcloaks --- would yell “Down, cat!” laughing away the sorrow I knew they stored. I knew they were being kept from what they tasted. Everyone here had to have a taste to get here. Only true taste was kept from the tasteless fools. I never noticed the insults. I just kept thinking thoughts.
My thoughts followed me to my sleep. It’s funny your mind can only take you places when you sleep. I wasn’t here when I slept. Instead I was out, looking to quench my taste. Sometimes, I found what I had taste for. But always I was back in my cell before the unresting taste could rest once more.
I noticed things in the prison, though. Had my thoughts led me to this, I may never know. But the stains left from my head on the walls disappeared. I knew the guards couldn’t have cleaned it. They made it a point to stay away from me and my thoughts. And there weren’t many guards either. Several disappeared faster than they could be resupplied, and they were important in such an isolated place. But they did not disrupt my thoughts, so I disregarded them.
One night my mind took me away again. I felt I could taste again, but much to my surprise, I was correct. It was not until my taste finally rested again that I traveled back to the prison. I came back, but no one was there. Only the remains. I explored a bit, and found what made me happier than my taste. More of who I was.
I approached them, but they did not seem to acknowledge my existence. I waited until they finished doing what they were doing to ask them my thoughts. We spoke for longer than I could count, but it seemed only a second. I finished our discussion with a question that I had only just thought.
“How is it, with so many that taste, that only I survive?”
“They do not taste,” they replied. “It takes only strength to kill a man. It takes true taste to eat one.”
There’s only one question that lingered in my mind until death, but it would be foolish to ask them. No one knows the definition of insanity.
#amost2
Comments