“Why do you never eat?” Nestorion demanded of me this morning. I had just woken up, and so to be stirred in such a manner was greatly distressing as I tried to make sense of his question. I peered out the window for a moment and saw that it was dawn, which I knew meant was far too early for the healer to be in such a foul mood. As I write this, even, I recall how furiously tempered the lines of his brow were.
“I am too tired for this line of questioning,” I told him, but that did not seem to be good enough. I had never before seen the young Sindar so frustrated with me, despite the fact that I knew I was difficult to care for at times. Before I had the chance to protest any further (or roll over as my body was screaming at me to do)... he sighed. Nestorion collapsed into the stool aside my bed and put his hands into his hair, and I felt a brief guilt.
“I have never once seen you eat,” he said to me eventually, after raising his gaze to finally look at me. “Anything we bring you, you do not touch. Or you move it around, play with it, in hopes we do not notice the fact that you take no bites. Why do you never eat?”
I am no scholar, nor have I ever claimed to be. I consider myself learned, wise, perhaps from age and experience rather than poring over books. Yet this question I cannot answer, not readily. Perhaps it is the fact that even looking at food makes my stomach turn, or that I fear if I dare to take a bite of it, that it will be taken from me. It is a clash inside myself that tells me not to eat at all, or to eat and bite at the hand that dares to feed me.
Sometimes my hands shake due to the fact that I have not eaten, yet I cannot bring myself to put fruit or wine to my tongue. It’s too sweet, or it’s too bitter. I feel bile rise in my throat just at the thought, and so it is easier to do away with it entirely. I would rather feel the hunger gnaw at the pit of my stomach and send me ill of emptiness than to allow myself to be filled, full, only to empty myself again.
It is easy not to eat when you have gone so long feeling empty; you begin to fear the fullness. I do not want to eat. I will not eat.
