The Flavor Fiend

“Rhine, Rhine! Tell me the story about the flavor thief again!”

Rhine smiled, shaking their head. Despite being a fully-grown cinna, there was something about Cosmo that made it love stories just like a little kid - asking for them to be repeated, retold, given more detail. It was sweet, though. They liked their friend, and loved to see her happy.

“Alright, just one more time this week, though!” They said, laughing. “I don’t know how many more times I can tell it before I start getting bored.”

“But how could you ever be bored about it?” Cosmo asked, tilting her head - genuinely confused. “It’s the greatest story ever! It’s so scary!”

Rhine just laughed. “I wouldn’t call it the greatest. It’s just a story told to little kids to make sure they don’t go out at night. It isn’t even that creepy.”

Cosmo frowned, as if saying that her favorite story was just so-so was a stab to the heart. Rhine shook their hands back and forth at this.

“Not to say that you can’t like it! It’s a perfectly good story!” They corrected, “Here, I’ll tell it for you now one last time. The story…”

They put on a more dramatic face - leaning in and widening their eyes. “Of the flavor fiend.”

—

Once upon a time, long ago, far before cursed or forbidden flavors have even been discovered, the world was new and young. Language had just been developed, along with recordkeeping and story writing, which meant that for the first time in this world, people were recording things. From love letters to newspapers, the world was abustle with language.

And that, of course, meant that sightings of strange creatures were being logged for the first time. There was an explosion of events being documented - the cinnacabra, the mothbeast, and bigtail all had their very first sightings recorded during these times. But one monster seemingly appeared more often than any other…

The flavor fiend.

Said to be a gigantic cinna, unknown if it used to be -dog, -cat, or something else, it hid itself deep in the woods, lurking for any traveler unlucky enough to wander too far from home. Some of the first witnesses claimed that it was taller than a tree. Others said that it had so many tails, they couldn’t make out which were which. Some claimed that it could speak in many voices, all echoing at once as a chorus.

All of these witnesses seemed just fine, though - untouched, unscathed by their encounter. They claimed that they were able to narrowly escape its grasp, just barely getting out of the woods unharmed. Most people doubted the legitimacy of their statements. Some exaggerated them, telling them to others, making it harder to determine what was the truth and what were the lies. Others went into the forest themselves, cocky that they wouldn’t find anything in there, and that they would prove these people wrong.

It all seemed to just be rumors - perhaps a cinna had seen a wild animal, and it had frightened them so much that they thought it was a monster. Until… someone came back wrong.

The cinnadog who had made their way back to their home village was hardly even recognized as a cinnadog - all their color was gone, and their tail, formerly a beautiful, tall and frosting-decorated conifer, was missing, only an injured stump left behind.

They shook when anyone tried to approach and help them, shouting something about how it’s here. About how it was only biding its time, it was going to come for them all one of these days. When asked about their experience, all they could do was shiver and ramble, mumbling about how disgusting it looked, how it wobbled under the weight of all the tails it had, how its fangs sucked the flavor dry from anyone unlucky enough to be caught.

The village, of course, was shaken by the event. But whenever they called to other townships for help, they were laughed off and ignored - what did they mean, the flavor fiend was real? Didn’t they know it was just a ghost story, told by teenagers to frighten each other in the dark?

They had no choice but to advice anyone to avoid the forest, and worked hard to try helping the wounded cinna recover. But nothing they attempted helped restore their flavor - from feeding them pastries, to doing thoughtful mediation on their former flavor, to even trying to give them a new tail with the magic and medicine they had access to at the time - nothing seemed to work. The cinnadog’s disposition had also turned grim - what used to be one of the happiest, cheerful members of the village suddenly became depressed, drab, gray. Everyone was worried about what this could mean for their town.

Sadly, things would get worse before they got better.

A second victim was found the following week. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. More and more kept being found, until most of the town had been attacked by the monster. All of their stories sounded eerily similar - that they were out alone at night, or they were with someone who had been attacked earlier, and it just… appeared. It lunged at them, stealing their flavor, and all they could do was scream as they felt it fade from themself.

It was inching closer to them by now. Making itself more known to the town. It was no longer hiding away in the woods - villagers who were still flavorful would catch glimpses of a strange tail they’d never seen before, before it twitched back behind a corner. They’d hear its growls in the night. Some saw its glowing eyes peering through their windows.

They didn’t know if they would be saved. They could only wish that it wouldn’t finish them off, moving on to the next town to conquer.

One cinna who was particularly terrified of this beast was a small cinnacat, who had always been bullied for their flavor. They were called disgusting, strange, cursed. It wasn’t their own fault they were born like this, but the words stung. But what scared them even more was the idea of losing the only flavor they had.

One night, when they were tucking themself into bed, they heard a thump from outside. They nervously opened the blinds, and…

Saw a gigantic eye staring right back at them.

They tried to scream as it broke through their window and grabbed them, but it was too late - it was already sinking its fangs into their tail, trying to drain them of the flavor. They squeezed their eyes shut, wondering if this was the end, when…

They heard it make a wheezing sound.

They were dropped with a thud back onto their bedroom floor, and the monster outside howled in pain as it writhed on the ground. Lights began to turn on in the village, and people, both flavorless and flavorful, began to watch - as the monster tried to choke back up a flavor that it simply could not handle eating.

As it writhed on the ground, it began to shrink - tails dropping off of itself, and onto the ground. One bystander gasped - “Mine! That’s my tail!” They ran from their house to go grab it, and once they did, the color began to return to their features - and their tail fused back into place, right where it should be.

A fantastic commotion began, as cinnas ran forth to reclaim their flavor. The beast tried to crawl away, but it was just too slow. By the time it had struggled to go back to the woods from whence it came, everyone had their flavors back - and everyone had begun to cheer for the tiny cinnacat who had saved them all.

From that day forward, the cinnacat was proud to show off their flavor, and recount the story of how they’d saved their town. From time to time, they were still called cursed, but they always refuted it - to them, it was a blessing.

The end.

—

“But wait, what happened to the flavor fiend?”

Rhine paused, blinking. “...What do you mean?”

“It went back into the forest, right?” Cosmo frowned. “They didn’t kill it.”

“Well, sure.” Rhine grinned, deciding to put on a more menacing expression. “It’s probably still out there, over the years, biding its time. Trying to regain more power. Sure, cursed flavors are more common now, but perhaps it’s trying to learn how to steal those as well…”

“Rhine!” Cosmo shouted, crossing her arms. “That’s too scary.”

Rhine laughed. “What, I thought you liked how scary it is! It’s just a story, anyways. It’s probably just a myth that someone made up - a story to scare kids into not wandering off, like I said.”

Cosmo frowned. “Maybe…”

The two of them continued telling stories far into the night - all while Cosmo kept looking over her shoulder, half expecting to see the twitch of an unknown tail, a bright, shining eye, or some flavor-stealing fangs.