A whole cup made for one drink, and that drink not even ale.
My daughter would carry water in this from the well, both hands, careful, and only if the good clay one had cracked. But here a man owns a shelf of them. Ten, twelve, more than his family has mouths. Each one painted, some with words, some with the face of a beast wearing spectacles, though what beast reads I could not say.
He fills it with a black brew, bitter as a penance, and there is no honey in it, no barley, nothing to fill the belly. Yet he cradles it as I cradle nothing, and holds it beneath his nose only to breathe. A man breathing his drink before he drinks it. In a hard winter I have breathed the steam off a neighbor's soup and been grateful, but that was hunger, and this is not.
The strangest part: the drink goes cold and he tips it into the wash and pours another. Good heat, thrown to the drain. I have gone to my knees in a cold field praying for one hour of that warmth, and he lets it die in the cup and does not weep.
He is not hungry. That is the marvel and the terror of him. A man so far from want he can waste heat like a lord wastes candles, on nothing, for the pleasure of the pouring.
The good Lord keeps such comfort for the saved. I fear this man has spent his whole reward and does not know he is already paid.