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It remembered the first time it learned (as much as a thing that should have been mindless was able to learn) what taste meant.
It had learned this after its arm rotted away, but before its mask cracked, when the will it did not deserve failed it.
She was there. She was always there. It had felt death at her wings countless times by this point, was aware of the futility of all but silent resistance. It did not fight the burning, blazing heat that permeated it, scouring it’s mind and body.
But this time, She did something new.
Gripping the chin of its mask tightly, She yanked it up, forcing it to look Her in the eyes as it quivered.
For a moment, the burning abated.
And then it tasted.
Sickly-sweet rot, horrifically smooth, spilled from its mouth. It gagged, and She let it fall to the floor, settling down to watch it shake and spit.
It could not clear the Infection from its mouth. Its shakes and gasps grew more desperate as it felt a pressure building.
Fear rushed through it, the burning sweetness clouding its mind.
The pressure increased, and infection began to seep out of its eyes.
It shuddered, giving a final, desperate heave before its throat was closed by infection.
It could not remember what had happened next.
It only remembered waking up damaged, a crack through its eye, and a taste permanently settled in its mouth.
*
The second experience it had of taste was different .
It was immobile, being cared for by its siblings. A soft nest it could not leave, bandages wound tightly around nearly every part of its broken body.
The burning had left, She was gone, but the sickening sweetness remained.
It would take whatever punishment its siblings deemed necessary for its failure to contain Her, for how it doomed Hallownest with its weakness, truly, it would, but please, do not make it taste.
An abhorrent thing, that. Having some kind of desire, some kind of want. Worse, a want for something it did not deserve : mercy.
Still, when its sister asked if it could eat, it shivered.
Eating meant taste, and it could not take any more taste.
But still, it knew better than to hide, to lie. It deserved this. A punishment for its failing, at last.
It confirmed that it could, in fact, eat.
Its sister tilted her head at it, and it could only hope it had answered quickly enough, that she would give it the mercy it was not worth.
“All right. Good. I’ll help you eat when dinner is ready, okay?”
Okay. That was okay. Everything that happened to it was okay. It was made for this, made to suffer.
(No matter how it wished, in its flawed, corrupted way, that it were not made for this, that it could be allowed rest and painlessness and sleep without dreams of Her.)
It waited, gut twisting horribly as it heard her in the kitchen, slicing and chopping and preparing.
It was always worse when She prepared, and its sister was cleverer yet.
Its mouth, usually indistinguishable from its dark neck pulsed. It held itself back from gagging, from spitting.
Please, it did not want to taste.
But mercy was not for it, and soon enough, its sister was settling in front of it. It could feel a slight heat rising from whatever she held.
It would be burned now.
She lifted its mask, and for a brief moment, it hoped that its fear had been punishment enough and she would simply snap its neck here and now.
But mercy was not for it, and soon enough it felt something be lightly pressed to the underside of its mask.
Obediently, unable to fully suppress its trembling, it opened its mouth and let her make it taste.
And. It did not hurt.
There was no burn, no sickening sweetness, no rot.
No pressure, threatening to close its throat and spill out its eyes and push against its mind and burn until it broke for its sister as it had broken for Her.
A little… salty, it supposed this taste was. Painless, and nothing like sweet.
A clink, the sound of a utensil settling against the side of a bowl. A familiar sound from the dinners it had watched when it was still whole and pure.
Its sister shifted, and leaned closer. “Are you okay? You do know you need to swallow, right?”
Ah. That’s right - eating involved swallowing. If the taste was not the punishment, then its suffering would come now, as it consumed this taste.
Its throat would close, its stomach melt away, slowly as writhed in agony until it died.
At least here it could only die once, and then it would be in pain no longer. It could bear this, it had borne worse before and would, time and time again.
It swallowed, shuddered, and went limp.
No pain.
Nothing but a gentle heaviness, lightly soothing an ache it didn’t even know it had.
Why? Why make it taste without pain? Was not the point of it being able to taste to make it feel more pain? Was it not built to suffer?
“Hollow?”
It raised its head slightly, and felt her rest her hand on its cheek.
“You don’t have to eat, if you don’t want to,” she scratched it, gently, barely letting it feel the tips of her sharp claws.
It fought the urge to purr, as it always did when it was touched without pain. It was not to make noise, no voice to cry suffering, no voice to cry anything.
“I only thought that you must have been hungry , ” she told it.
It was.
It was twistingly hungry. It wanted nothing more than to eat. It did not care for pain, it did not care for the punishment that was sure to come.
It was starving.
It allowed its head to flop backward slightly, exposing its mouth even as it leaned into her hand.
Please.
Let it eat.
She did, and it did not burn.
Instead, it felt whole.
Sated.