Page 76 of Eat My Moon Dust
“You’ll have to shower without me,” Hunar said, his bronze eyes sharp as he searched out his clothes. “Big shipment.”
“Okie doke!” I said, waddling to the bathroom. “See you for lunch.”
He bent his forehead to mine, slid his tendrils through my hair in the way shilpakaari couples did, then planted a kiss on my forehead.
“See you for lunch.”
“I love you,” I tacked on as the bedroom door slid open. It was more of a human thing, but he never once questioned my need to hear it. Instead, he smiled, tying his coverall sleeves around his waist.
“I love you too.”
“Taha,c’mon!You got the bathroom first last time!” Reha complained, pounding on the bathroom door in the hall.
Ka-ching.
Hunar sighed at the ceiling, then left, ushering Reha out to the kitchen to eat breakfast while she waited. Ladh dragged his feet after her with a big yawn that echoed down the hallway.
“Thirty minutes!” I bellowed before the bedroom door shut. A chorus of groans got lost in the shower as I jumped in and suds’d up.
Forty minutes later, the kids and I were on our way to school. Reha liked to walk a few paces ahead, but Taha and Ladh held onto my fingers with their tendrils as if I were holding their hands. They cuddled like toddlers too, pressing into Hunar’s and my warmth on the sofa while I force fed them all my favorite holiday classics after dinner. Apparently shilpakaari boys were just like that–as affectionate as puppies and mostly mild–while the girls were observant and rebellious. In a species that routinely had three spats per brood, it was probably a matter of parental survival that two of the three were usually well-behaved team players.
“Okay, you guys,” I said, pulling up short. They all stopped and looked at me expectantly. “Remember what we talked about? This is your first day getting to learn the human stuff.Wâpos?”
“All the cool kids try to sit in the back, but I should share with everyone. It’ll make me supremely cool,” Reha said. I pointed at her with a coach-like wink, then turned my finger to Ladh.
“Tiger?” He always woke up late and his mane purred in his sleep. It drove his siblings nuts, but I loved it. Also, his stripes were coming in early. Perfect nickname.
“Always keep my hands above the desk?” he asked, squinting with uncertainty.
Brightening stripes also meant he was going to pop unwanted and embarrassing tents soon. Better safe than sorry.
“What about you, Cookie?”
“If someone complains about uh,kooteez?I should roll my eyes and say girls are cool too,” Tahavir answered.
I clapped him on the back, sniffing back the tears of team pride. “Good man. Alright, you guys are officially good to go.”
“Is it really that different from the afternoon though?” Reha asked.
“No, but I’ve always wanted to impart playground wisdom.” I gave them each a kiss on the forehead and shooed them off towards Miss Jeong. “Have fun! And remember, humans are weird and that’s okay!”
They waved as they jumped up the stairs, manes bouncing back and forth. Rambir and Pom Pom met them at the door, practically knocking their poor teacher off the landing. I gave her a wave too, then hustled to the hangar.
The Winter Festival had already been packed away into new storage pods near the hangar’s scrapyard. It only took two days to take down the official decorations and the ones people donated. I’d felt awkward working in the hangar at the break table after all those tasks were complete, but everyone just smiled and made me feel welcome.
It probably helped that I laughed at Bree’s outbursts and yelled at her tools with her when all the guys ducked for cover.
So now I spent my mornings in the hangar until lunch, closing up the Winter Festival and thinking about other holidays. Like Halloween! It wouldn’t be for another six months if I wanted to follow the weather, but that gave me enough time to plan for real.
And figure out my yeast cultures so I could actuallybake.That’s what I spent my afternoons doing at home, trying to make better cultures and get my dough to rise.
And force feeding poor Omi my experiments, of course. Besties were an invaluable resource. They never lied if something tasted bad, but also never said no to trying the next horrible thing on the list.
“Morning!” I called out, bouncing through the hangar doors. It was still early, dew gathering on the walls and the windows of the transpos. Piro, Aavar, and Bree all sat around a crate, cleaning parts on the far side of the hangar, where the landing platform hung over the jungle valley below like an Olympic diving board. They waved as I turned the corner into the engineering lounge.
Bajora had expanded it to twice its original size. The shelving was no longer double-stacked, and the break table, chairs, and lockers were downright comfy in their own nook. There was more light too, what with the entire bank of windows cleaned of pollen and grime. Long steel tables had been moved in over the last couple days, and crates stored on their bottom shelves. The workspace was for a new engineer Hunar hadn’t been able to tell me much about, other than the fact that they’d be working with a molecular printing bay, which was apparently hard to get access to outside of a proper lab.
“Hi, honey!” I called, immediately spying Hunar huddled together with Bajora and someone else, talking about the machine and two crates that now sat upon the table next to the windows. Many of the crates were open, I realized as I hung my bag in Hunar’s locker and joined them. “What’s up?”
