Food Brings Folks Together

[elwyn]

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Elwyn had been outside all morning in the forest, not doing his job, but ordered to go and chop wood for the Royal Hunter's bed chamber. It was his turn after all. Everyone hated this job since it wasn't what they were hired to do, but Elwyn didn't really care. It gave him a chance to do a mindless job and organize his thoughts all the while enjoying the green lushness of the forests skirting Camelot.

Entering the kitchens, Elwyn picked up a drying cloth from a pile of them and before entering the main section where all of the food was he blotted his neck and forehead as he caught his stomach begin to grumble yet again. He was very good at staying out of people's way as both cooks and servants alike rushed here and there preparing to bring accept the dirty dishes that the Nobles would have eaten on at Lunch.

Laying the cloth his shoulder, Elwyn rolled his sleeves up past his elbows and drenched his face in water from a fresh wash bucket. Eyes shut tight he began to dry his face with the cloth letting a heavy breath escape his mouth with out a sound. That afternoon would be the time for hunting and he knew just where to look on a warm day like this, in the shadows. No animal in it's right mind would be caught in the heat of the sun.

Patting his face a couple times more, he could only hear shouts and scurrying around.

[Brynn Reade]

Brynn hated days like these. It was not only warm, it was humid, which made the clothes stick damply to the sweating body and every step was one too many. Even the wind seemed too lazy on a day such as this, he didn’t want to come out and show his playful nature to her like he usually did. And to top it all off, her geese had been the height of moody today, which they always were on humid days, but Brynn actually thought she had never seen them so cranky. There was no use being out with them all day, watching them breaking into wild feuds and battles every ten minutes and having to separate them again. She even could present a nasty bite on her right lower arm where Martin, the gander had taken her completely by surprise. Oh great, that would get her a purple bruise in the least!
So she had called it quits even before lunch, shooing them back towards the city and back into their stall, which was cooler than outside, gladly, as it was inside a stone building. Hopefully that would cool their moodiness off as well.

On the bright side, she could not share lunch with her family, what didn’t happen often, and after that she could spend a day either watching over her siblings or helping out her mother. That was not as nice as spending the day outside under an open sky, but it was better than feeling bad about what supposedly was just not her day.
Entering the kitchen, she took in the hustling and bustling with a knowing eye, seeing the pattern behind it all with the mind of someone who had spent all his life in this kitchen. Lunch for the nobles and better people of the castle apparently was over and one by one, servants brought dirty dishes, stacking them high. After a quick lunch for themselves – nothing compared with the food they had prepared of course – there would follow the big washup. Brynn liked that part actually, and she often enough helped out after dinner.

Between all the people scurrying around, Brynn’s eyes fell on some familiar back of a head that made her smile. Elwyn. Now he was one of those rare people who could raise her spirit by simply being there. No question where he had been in the morning, out in the forest, where at least the sun didn’t burn down so mercilessly.
Sneaking up behind him, Brynn now raised on her tiptoes and tousled his hair with a little giggle. She knew he didn’t like that much as it made him feel like a child. But she always did it, he was something close to her elder brother she never had had after all.
“Fancy seeing you here, huntsman! What are the tidings from the bosk?”