Page 66 of Eat My Moon Dust
But I stopped mid-stride, looking at the mess on the counter.
No, not a mess…
Creamy violet powder covered a square foot of the countertop, surrounded by storage cubes, their labels glowing with different human words.Synthetic mammalian infant formula, general, fermenting ryhidon maternal fluid, zepesti vinegar from pickle jar, egg whites separated from yiwreni cocktail, crushed wine-making vidisti, citrus concentrate…Most of the labels were long winded, suggesting Tinsley was using human culinary terms that my native Dharateen no longer translated well. Fermented maternal fluid…?
A memory resurfaced of Tinsley walking into the hangar the morning after I’d coiled for her. My mind had been so addled that I’d completely forgotten the bag she’d held up, filled to the brim with the powder now strewn on her countertop. All I’d been able to think about was how to rub her scent into my pores and paint her skin in semen without losing my self-respect or violating her in the process.
I tasted the powder with the sensitive ridges of my palm.Birianut. My eyes grew wide.
It was–what was the powder used to make bread–flour?
Indeed, stacked on a plate near the food bay was a display of different breads, all misshapen in different ways. Some darker, some pasty. Some flat, some collapsed. I picked up a curious jar filled with a red, frothing paste and immediately set it back down. It tasted sour and poisonous.Birianut for sure, but also somethingalive…
I moved onto a stack of plas notes scribbled with combinations of human numbers and letters and smeared with dried pastes of varying degrees of aubergine. I winked on my bionic eye and took a few snaps, storing them in my holotab. She was trying to find some sort of ingredient replacement. It translated as “riser” but that wasn’t really a word in Dharateen.
Most puzzling was a stack of printouts of molecular compounds. Glucose, fructose, sucrose? Sugars. Sodium bicarbonate? Salt. Potassium bitartrate… some sort of acid. Why would she be breaking down compounds? I needed to ask Bajora.
I took more snaps and sent them all in a comm as I entered the lift moments later, holding the waistband of my dhoti closed in one lower fist. My luck held and no one was awake between our floors.
But when the door to my own unit swished open, I came face to face with Tahavir, a cup of water poised comically in front of his puckered lips. He grinned up at me. “Hi, Baan.”
The door slid shut, trapping me with my offspring in the middle of my walk of shame, and I groaned under my breath, trying to cover my bare chest with my upper hands. “Uh, morning, son.”
“How is Na’maan?”
“She’s sleeping well.”
“Why doesn’t she sleep here?”
I shuffled to the nearest dining chair and sat. Tahavir set his upper elbows on the table and swung his hips back and forth like spats do, not teasing me but torturing me nonetheless with his sharp eyes. He was the most childlike of his brood, but the most empathetic.
It would slowly kill me.
“Because,” I said slowly. “We… we haven’t talked about it.”
“She said it was to give us space to be your priority.”
Was I standing in a microwave? Because even my bones warmed up hearing that. I bit my lip like Tinsley did, her daily mannerisms rubbing off on me in all the ways I obsessed over her, and immediately licked the sting from my lip, rubbing a hand over my mouth.
“Do youwanther to sleep here?” I asked, clearing my throat.
“Who, Tinsley?” Reha asked, rubbing her eyes in the hallway.
“Seas save me,” I sighed, staring up at the ceiling for strength. I hadn’t even constructed my plan yet.
“Yeah,” Tahavir confirmed, nodding sagely like a human as his sister joined us. He slid his water her way and she took a big swig, sitting primly in the seat across from me. She waited for me to continue, as assertive as if she sat in a boardroom. I held her stare, but my tendrils twisted.
“I was worried it would be uncomfortable. You haven’t been away from your maan for very long and it was…”
“Shitty?”
I coughed to hide the little smile at hearing her swear for the first time. “Yeah. Also, language.”
“Youdo it.”
“And I was wasting away less than a satbit ago, so I wouldn’t count me as a shining role model.”
“Why not? Na’maan’s right. You’re an awesome baan.”
