The welcome at Toral's gates had been enough for Julienne. Unfortunately, it had not been enough for the people of Toral.

Trumpets blared as a well-organized crowd of lords and ladies bowed and curtsied in their fancy dresses. Chefs stood in three rows of a dozen each to welcome Julienne. He scanned their faces, searching. Every noble from Donelin to Montsier must have been waiting in the courtyard. Everyone but his parents.

The carriage came to a stop as it skidded across the crunchy gravel road of the courtyard. Julienne stood to disembark. The crowd got quiet. The trumpets stopped. Even the workers in the little patches of vineyards stopped and stood tall at attention. Julienne looked at them all, arrested by them as they were by him.

"Say something," Mindy whispered.

"Right. Right, right." Julienne cleared his throat, breathed in through his nose, and clutched his trembling hand. He tricked his own mind into forgetting where he was and acted as if he were presenting a dish at Cafe Julienne. "My lords and ladies. My fellow Chefs. Thank you so much for your warm welcome. The story of Julienne is one of leaving Labrusca. I am honored and privileged that my story has allowed me to return to it."

The crowd applauded. Julienne took the moment to catch his breath. In. In. In. Out. Yarrow nodded to reassure him.

"A Julienne is primarily a symbol of generosity. But a Julienne is also a representative of the fine culture and people of Labrusca. During my brief return, I hope to experience Labrusca as a Labruscan so that I may better represent it. I wish to see the sights of Labrusca. Its people. To cook the Labruscan way. And of course, I would love to eat like a Labruscan."

The crowd laughed.

"I appreciate the accommodations that have been made for our arrival and stay. I hope to repay your generosity in turn, and I'm so very excited to be here."

And one final round of applause. Julienne held his hand out for Mindy, half to help her down the carriage, half to give himself something to do.

Oliver clapped Julienne on the back hard enough to make him cough. "Killed it with the speech."

The crowd broke up once Julienne set his feet down on solid ground. A Black Jacket shuffled up to Julienne, who greeted him with a big smile. "Uncle Neccio!"

"Ah, young Julienne!" The man spoke in song, his seemingly randomly elongated vowels adding a melody to his words. "You remember me!"

Julienne laughed. How could he not? Neccio hadn't aged a day—but perhaps only because age had done its work on him early in life and was now letting him rest. Even before Julienne had left, Neccio's hair had diminished to the sides of his head, revealing his great, white scalp. His nose had grown bulbous and long, wrinkles forming around his mouth and drooping down to his blocky chin.

"How could I forget my favorite uncle?"

Neccio let out a deep, booming chuckle. "Ohoho, so your time in Ambrosia City has not warmed you to the qualities of my brother, then?"

"If he has any beyond the kitchen, I haven't seen them," Julienne said with a laugh that quickly disappeared. The statement had been harsher than he intended, and he didn't want complaining to be the first thing he did upon returning to Labrusca.

Luckily, Neccio loved to laugh. His chuckle drowned out Julienne's worries. Almost.

"And how's your sister?" Julienne asked.

Neccio scrunched up his face, his laughter getting closed in his expression. "If you don't call her mother, you'll break her heart. Mama, if you can manage it."

"I'll do what I can."

"She did not want her reunion with her baby boy to be so…" Neccio wrung his hands and looked around. "So so-and-so. She'll come to you when you're settled. Or you could go to her."

Julienne nodded and bit his lip. Mindy placed her hand on his back. "Should we go ahead?" she asked.

Julienne looked around. The crowd had lost its formation, but not its enthusiasm, dozens of people wanting to meet him.

"Oh, go, go!" Neccio said, shooing them away. "If you stay, these people will talk to you until you're tender enough to fall off the bone."

"Thanks, Uncle Neccio," Julienne said with a warm slap to the arm. Neccio returned it threefold, his great bear hands making Julienne shuffle across the gravel to keep himself upright.

While his uncle turned to pacify the crowd, Julienne hustled past his friends to lead them inside the main castle. Unlike Ambrosia City, Toral was built with space—they did not have the difficult task of fitting an entire city on a mesa. As such, the castle was many times wider than it was tall, its great round towers nearly wide enough to be castles in their own right.

The interior was a maze of a thousand rooms, but as Julienne stepped into that great foyer with its twenty-foot tall banners and its red rugs and its gold-framed paintings, he knew that he could navigate the labyrinth with his eyes closed.

For as many things as he struggled to remember, the layout of the castle seemed as clear to him as the day he had left. He knew the location of every kitchen. Every stuffy meeting room that he had forbidden from. He knew the wing where his parents lived. As a butler approached, Julienne hoped he wouldn't be led to them.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Where will we be staying?" Julienne asked.

"The southeast wing. Your uncle, Master Julienne wanted you to be close to the river so that it would be easy getting to Lyceum Labrusca."

"So that we spend all our time making appearances in the city instead of walking through the castle," Julienne scoffed. At least they'd be on the other side of the castle as the one he had grown up at.

The butler did not share Julienne's humor. "I only interpret a request if I see a way to better accommodate my lords. Would you prefer the west wing?"

"No," Julienned blurted. "Thank you. The southeast wing will do just fine."

"Where's our stuff?" Yarrow asked as he looked around.

"No one's going to steal your things," Julienne sighed. "They'll bring it through the servant's entrance."

"What, we're too good for that one?"

Julienne sighed again, closing his lips before it could turn into a growl. He gave the butler a constrained smile. The butler understood the look.

"When you're ready, I'll be just down this hall," he said as he stepped away to give them privacy.

Julienne turned on Yarrow with a raised finger. "You will stop this. I don't care how different it is from where you grew up or how funny you might find it. You are here representing Cafe Julienne. You will not make a mockery of customs. If you find something odd, you will find it in silence. Understand?"

"Yeah man, be cool," Oliver added. "Act like you've been there."

Julienne closed his eyes in the hopes that might prevent his pending outburst. When he opened them, he realized that the outburst had already come. Yarrow's jaw was tense, his eyes hard.

"Yes, Chef," he said.

Julienne sighed again, this time at himself. "Come on."

Julienne let the butler lead them down grand hallways with tall arches and hundreds of years of history displayed by masterpiece paintings and murals. They passed a room meant solely to display jewelry, another that chronicled the evolution of plate armor with ten displayed suits, three rooms meant for large gatherings, eight for small ones, a dozen sequential rooms that were each dedicated to honoring the life of one particular king or queen, and another thirty or so rooms that Julienne had never bothered to learn the purpose of.

Finally, they arrived at a cluster of rooms at the end of a hallway.

"Your rooms," the butler announced. "Your things will be brought up shortly and left in the hallway. I've instructed everyone to leave you to rest for a few hours, so you will have no visitors. Please, make yourselves at home. And it's good to have you back, Master Julienne."

"Thank you," Julienne said with a nod. He knew these rooms and knew which ones caught the morning sun. He stepped into one of the interior rooms with the ambition of being able to sleep in during their stay.

Yarrow followed him into the room.

"What are you doing?" Julienne asked.

"What do you mean?"

"This is my room. Take one of the others."

"Oh." Yarrow tilted his head back in thought. "I've never had my own room before."

Julienne closed his eyes, breathing through his nose as he clenched his teeth.

"Sorry," Yarrow said. "Just new to me. I'll, uh…So I just…take one, huh?"

Julienne opened his eyes and brushed back his hair. "I'm sorry, Yarrow. Between the traveling and now all the attention and…I need to lay down. I'm sorry for my attitude."

"Don't sweat it." Yarrow picked an empty room, Oliver and Mindy having already claimed theirs. He turned for one last word. "And personally, I love the attention."

Julienne humored him with a laugh before closing the door. He stomped over to his bed and fell onto it facefirst. There were too many people. Too many questions. Too much new. Too much old. He had taken the small sanctuary of Labruscella for granted. He had taken the ability to escape to the Academy for granted. Everything from his life in Ambrosia City seemed so perfect now that he was deprived of its luxuries.

He shoved his face into a silk pillow and screamed. While the expulsion of pent up emotion helped, laying on his belly and squeezing his diaphragm at the same time turned out to be a bad idea. The stinging burn of stomach acid reached the top of his throat. He rolled over and propped himself up on some pillows, relying on gravity to keep the acid down.

Sleep seemed like a hopeless prospect, but he tried anyway. On top of his unprocessed emotions, he could never sleep while laying inclined on his back. But to slump down flat and roll on his side was to invite the burn of stomach acid. It was a perpetual struggle. He cursed his family's blood for giving him the problem so early in life.

The butler had given them a few hours alone. No guests. But then what? Was there a line of people forming in the hallway just waiting for the butler's okay? Were his parents in that line? How would he address them? It had been 'mama' and 'papa' for so long. But he wasn't a child anymore. He was a man, and the affectionate address seemed inappropriately close. To be a Julienne meant to take on a thousand years of history. A grand purpose. The flimsy informalities of 'mama' and 'papa' were crushed under such gravity.

'Mother' and 'father,' then. That could work. It would signal Julienne's intention to keep them at arm's length. They needed to understand that he hadn't come for them. He would hug his mother. Perhaps he would hug his father, but he had the feeling that would come down to a handshake.

But then what? 'How have you been?' Would they try to capture all the events from eight years of absence? Would they try to explain their absence? Julienne had written to them all the time when he first moved, begging them to come visit. He stopped sending letters around the time Uncle Julienne had to teach him to shave the wispy hairs that grew on his upper lip.

Would they invite him to dinner? That could be nice. Julienne hadn't taken a day off from cooking in well over a year. He could sit back and enjoy his mother's cooking again. Or would they want him to cook for them? After all, he had been the one training day after day after day, unable to ever just be a kid, all in pursuit of culinary perfection. They would want to see what he was capable of. But would they be wondering how much their son had improved, or would their curiosity solely be from being served by a Julienne?

Should he call them 'Barbine' and 'Candele?' Calling them by their names would answer a lot of unasked questions. He was in Labrusca as a Julienne. Not their son. He did not see himself as anyone's child. They would be cordial, not affectionate. It had been too long away for that. Great Aunt Julienne was the one that showed him affection. And occasionally his uncle in subdued manners—a pat on the back, an extra second of eye contact, an approving nod.

But then Julienne thought about his birthday. He thought about the tilgul ladoo that compelled others to speak sweetly and thought about how he had only achieved that magic through the memory of Barbine. His mother. Mama.

He wouldn't wait for them to come to him. He had waited for eight years. He threw aside his silk pillows, hopped off the bed, and marched toward the door.

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