Tenuk gave Kohra a friendly pat on the shoulder as he sat down at the table and handed him his ice cream. They’d both ordered the biggest thing on the menu, a triple chocolate surprise, which lied about the amount of chocolate it contained – rather than just the three advertised, the ice cream had milk, dark and white chocolate ice creams, several scoops of mint and chocolate chip, chocolate buttons, chocolate wafers, chocolate squares and a chocolate sauce on top.
“I’m totally going to eat all of this!” Kohra beamed. “Thanks, bro!”
“No worries, I’m just happy to have you back!”
Kohra and Tenuk both started tucking into their ice cream treats. Tenuk started by scooping up chocolate chips and mixing them with a little bit of white chocolate ice cream, while Kohra scrapped off some of the chocolate sauce and licked it off his spoon.
“I’m glad to be back. It was all so… weird. And I’m so hungry.”
“You clearly lost a lot of weight in a very short amount of time.”
“Yeah. And not in a good way.”
“You were starved…”
Kohra shoved a spoon of ice cream in his mouth, not wanting to continue the discussion. Tenuk knew not to push any further.
“You can talk to-”
“I don’t want to talk about that. It’s all anyone wants to discuss.”
“That’s fine.” Tenuk went back to his ice cream.
The two of them ate in silence. Kohra quickly forgot about his struggles, burying himself in his love for ice cream and chocolate. Tenuk seemed pretty happy as well. But after a while, something else in the shop caught his attention. Two figures had entered the shop behind them.
“What you looking at?” Kohra asked, his spoon hanging out of his mouth.
“Other customers.”
Kohra tried to look behind him without looking obviously suspicious, but quickly gave up, instead using the reflection of some glass to do so.
“Huh. Wonder what Arkadin’s doing here?”
“You recognise him too?”
“He looks good with the black armour. Sometimes you can overdo the yellow, you know?” Kohra played with some of the chocolate buttons, then placed them in his mouth.
“True. Who is he with?”
Kohra strained as he looked at the reflection. He quickly stopped bothering and glanced behind him.
The other being in question was obviously a very brightly coloured Thraki with strange, glowing scutes running down its neck and weirdly overweight body. This being looked very dragon-y, but clearly had a poor diet and needed to exercise more. The Thraki sat down at a table behind the two Kronospasts with a smile and a creak, while Arkadin walked past and inspected the ice creams on display.
“Should we talk to him?” Tenuk asked.
“I don’t know…”
“Who is the dragon? I don’t really recognise them.”
“Me neither. I know that he has a friend who is dragon-y but… he didn’t look like that. Not so… fat…”
“They seem to be friends though.”
“Yeah, but what are they doing here?”
“I dunno…”
“Me neither…” Kohra paused, then stared at his ice cream. He took a spoonful and ate it, then sighed.
“What?”
“We’re being rude…” Kohra muttered, pushing his ice cream around. “Judgemental.”
Tenuk blinked. “Wow. We really are.”
“We should just eat our ice creams and stop judging others, like normal people.”
“Normal vok, normal people judge all the time though.”
Kohra smiled. “Better than normal people then!”
Tenuk agreed as he shoved more ice cream into his mouth. “Yep. Plus, there’s no time to judge. Our ice creams are melting.”