the mistress witch from mcclure

THEY THOUGHT I WAS TASTY | A CANNIBALISTIC ASOIAF AU

“Well, it’s not your brother if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says, when she looks curiously down at the food he has brought her, sealed up into a foil package.

She wants to shout at him for this, but she worries he will take the food away. She hasn’t eaten for three days and her ribs are beginning to stick.

“It’s bread,” he says, “there’s still some of that left. See for yourself.”

She opens it and it appears to be true—it tastes terrible, synthetic, but it doesn’t take like meat and that is a relief.

He opens another package, of something else (she does not look at what it is).

“They’ll make an example of you if you’re found,” he says (he eats very politely, never speaks with his mouth full), “it’s best you stay underground.”

“I see.”

“They have a flagrant disregard for rules, don’t they, your family?”

“I suppose they did.”

“There was even talk your brother and his wife were trying to—” He takes another bite and she waits for him to swallow before finishing speaking. “Well, just a rumor. Now not eating people is one thing—making new people is simply foolish, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t matter now, anyway, she’s dead in all likelihood. But you’re not like that, are you? About rules?”

She smiles tightly.

“Not in the same way, maybe.”

“Always a relief,” he says, “I like you very much. Wouldn’t be fortunate if you were too much a branch from that tree.”

“Thank you,” she says dully. She doesn’t know what else to say.

“Eat up, darling,” he says, “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

THEY THOUGHT I WAS TASTY - an asoiaf au.

Westeros’ food supply has run out. The rulers tried rationing and continued various searches for a new food source but what remained was meager, people were impatient and much of the population has now resorted to cannibalism to survive. The rich stay inside, walls high to keep out bands of people literally hungry for their flesh. Ned Stark and his son Robb after him tried to come up with a more humane system but Ned was executed long ago and Robb and his entire band of supporters recently murdered. The only living Stark (aside from Robb’s widow, who has recently and mysteriously disappeared) is Sansa, who ran from the Lannister stronghold with Petyr Baelish, the holder of the largest legal “meat” corporation in Westeros. The last clean food has largely been hoarded by the Lannister family, who eats well—with the exception, of course, of brother Jaime, who has gone rogue and well, isn’t someone you want to run into on a dark road. Meanwhile, in the absence of food, the top scientific minds are desperate to find a way to alter the human body chemistry and there are rumors there are some hostages of theirs among the presumed dead.