by Lauren Esker
"And fun for having fun with. Like right now. In the flowers." He liked this: they were back in the kind of emotional territory he felt secure with. Fun, no-strings-attached sex. That was all it had ever been, and there was no reason why it should ache like this.
"I don't think so," she said, taking another step back. "I think probably not."
And then she flicked a hand. Skara realized what she was doing too late; he was no longer used to not being able to portal himself. "Wait—" he began, but she was already stepping through a portal that showed a sliver of the inside of his ship. It collapsed and he was standing alone in the meadow.
"So that went well," he said to the trees.
Walking back to the ship gave him time to think things through and figure out how to approach her. He was also starting to shake again by the time he got there, his body burning through the drugs with frightening speed. To his relief, the cargo-moving crew had cleared out, and the two ships—his and the bounty hunters'—sat silent and, to all appearances, abandoned in the clearing. As he palmed open the airlock on the Discordia, he wondered what the villagers had done with the bounty hunters. Was Kriff still locked up on their ship? Where was the other one? Yet another thing to take care of, he thought wearily, before they got loose and went off to turn in an entire village of escaped slaves for the bounty.
He stopped by the infirmary to give himself another shot, and changed into a clean shirt while he was at it. When the shivering and cold sweat had stopped, he went looking for Claudia. He found her by the sound of clinking in the galley. She was rummaging around in the cabinets, making Skara suddenly aware that he had, as usual, left the place in kind of a mess; there were food wrappers on the counters, and the food-cooker hadn't been properly cleaned.
"Claudia—" he began, swiping a handful of wrappers and crumbs off the countertop.
"So where can a girl get lunch around here?" she asked, not looking at him as she tried to pull out one of the cold-storage drawers. It was latched. She tugged on it futilely.
"Let me make lunch for us." He put the cooker in its self-clean-and-heat cycle; it would be ready for use in a few minutes. "I like cooking."
"You?" she said, glancing at him. She didn't look angry, just skeptical and a little bit sad. "You like cooking."
"Sure. I get lots of practice. They don't exactly have a lot of restaurants in deep space, you know." And he particularly liked cooking for other people, not that he was going to admit that to her.
Claudia got out of the way, and he started pulling out utensils and ingredients. "What kind of things do you like?" he asked her. "Spicy? Not spicy? I could make you something similar to that 'pizza'."
She dragged out a stool to sit on. "As tempting as it would be to say that I've had space pizza, I don't want to be one of those people who travels somewhere new and then goes to McDonalds." Whatever that was. "Make me something you think is good."
"I'll make you something you'll love." He was already sorting through options in his head, based on what he knew about her. This was the fun thing about cooking for other people. He could always make something he'd like. Making something someone else would like, especially if he didn't know them that well yet, was a challenge akin to a well-planned heist.
"I don't know, you raise my hopes like that, you better deliver." Her laugh was a soft, sad ghost of her real laugh, which he'd heard only a couple of times and wanted to hear more.
"You know, Claudia ..." he began, and then didn't know what to say, so he went on pulling things out and laying them out on the counter. What could he say? He knew what was upsetting her. She wanted a relationship, not sex. But that would only work if he was a completely different person. The settling-down kind. The falling-in-love kind.
The warmth and delight he felt when he was around her would fade, just like every past love affair had. More to the point, hers would too, once she saw more of him and found out what he was really like.
It was the sort of situation where the kindest thing was to get the pain out of the way, like ripping a bandage off the wound it was stuck to. And yet, he found himself wanting to soothe the pain away instead, trying to find the words to make it hurt less for her.
"Okay, look, here's the thing, Claudia," he said as he set the cooker heating. "I know you want an answer from me. I don't have one for you. I just take things one day at a time. That's what I've always done. That's the only way it can work when you're like me."
"A thief and space pirate?"
"Yes," he said, pleased that she understood and also, frustratingly, annoyed that it was turning out to be so easy for her to let him go. But that just confirmed why it was the right decision.
"Someone who works and works," she went on, "and risks his life and freedom, and spends everything he makes to buy supplies for a village of refugees."
.... oops.
"Not everything I make," he grumbled, adding a pinch of salt to the kvee dough. "Far from it. I'm running a business here. They're potential customers. Sometimes you have to lose some money to make more money later."
"Oh, is that what you're doing? Building up a bunch of broke refugees as a customer base?"
"Sure, they're broke now," he said, warming to the topic. "But you saw their village, right?"
"The inside of one house, yes," she said dryly.
"Right. Well, you saw enough to get an idea. When I first saw them, they were living in a crashed spaceship and a few huts made out of sticks. They had nothing. And that was just a few months ago. Now they have proper houses, a village council, and they're setting up a school. Give them time, and Haven is going to be an economic powerhouse."
"I can't figure out if you believe your own bullshit or not," Claudia said. "I mean, I believe you about the village, I just don't believe you about you."
She watched with interest, however, as he took a generous handful of kvee dough and rolled it between his palms into a long snake. She looked even more curious when he coiled it inside the cooker and closed the lid.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Making kvee. It's a comfort food from Tyboria—the home of Kite's people." He laid out a shallow dish and began shaking spices into it, laying them down the traditional way that Rook and Kite had taught him, in vertical stripes of contrasting color and texture.
Colors are important, he could hear Rook saying, with the solemnity of a teenager imparting wisdom to another teenager. It doesn't matter if all the tastes work together. You want it to be beautiful.
Thinking about that, he added a swath of bright red colva spice beside yellow saffron, a strip of blue soffeca, a band of cinnamon, of sugar, of pink salt.
"You know what I think about you?" Claudia said.
Skara glanced over at her. She was idly kicking her legs on the stool, tapping her heels against it. "Not really, but I'm sure you're going to tell me."
"I think you're more of a jerk than you should be, but less of one than you want everyone to think you are."
He was saved from having to answer her by the ding! of the cooker. The rope of kvee was hot and crispy in his hand. He swapped it for a couple of eggs—local reptilian eggs, part of his food exchange with the village, staples for fresh supplies—and then tore off a piece of hot kvee and handed it to Claudia.
"Ow! That's hot!" She almost dropped it, then held it with a gingerly grip. "So what is this, an alien donut or something? Do you just eat it?"
"You pull off a piece, and roll it in your preferred spices." He demonstrated, tearing a steaming piece off the end and dabbing it in the sugar, then in soffeca because the color would look nice against the pale dough.
You want it to be beautiful.
"I don't even know what all of these are," Claudia protested. She kicked her stool forward and leaned over the spices, shoulder to shoulder with Skara. "Actually, I don't know what any of these are."
"Try one and see. Not all of the flavors work together, or with the flavor of the kvee. That's part of what makes it fun."
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"Are you saying aliens have independently invented Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans?" she asked nonsensically, and tried a nervous little dunk. When she took a bite, her face brightened. "Hey! That's cinnamon! I thought it was going to be something weird."
"I'm sure many of our spices come from your world. A lot of our plants do."
"And a lot don't, because I have no idea what this kvee stuff is." She chewed thoughtfully. "Hmm, it does make me think of donuts, at least the texture. Kind of nutty, a little sweet ... sort of like monkey bread or something. Huh." She tore off another piece, and more daringly sampled the brilliant colva.
"That's spicy," Skara warned her, a second too late.
"No kidding!" she wheezed. Skara handed her a cup of water.
"Traditionally, you take sips of tea or water between bites to clear the palate, but that's more of a formal dining thing. When kids eat it, you just rip off some chunks and go for it. At least that's what I picked up from Kite and her brother Rook."
"Huh." She ran the tip of her tongue around her lips. Skara tried not to be too fascinated, and failed. "That stuff is hella hot, but it kinda harmonizes with the cinnamon, doesn't it? Like Mayan chocolate or something."
"That's part of the fun too, trying different flavor combinations. Or just ..." He dabbed a piece in the blue, the yellow, the red. "... make it pretty. You're supposed to. It's a beautiful food. You make it as beautiful as you want it."
Her entire face brightened, and the sudden beam of her delight socked him in the chest. "It's like an artist's palette for food!"
Skara had never known you could live off another person's pleasure like this. He couldn't stop watching her. She dived in with gusto, pinching off bits of kvee so she could mix colors and flavors.
"I knew you'd like this. Your people seem to like chewy food that's eaten with the hands, like your 'pizza'."
"We do have food we don't eat with our hands, you know."
"But you like it?"
"I do. I can't believe you found me an artistic food," she said through a mouthful. "Eugh. That blue one does not work. Bleh. What is that, oven cleaner?"
"Try it with a little sugar. It helps cut the bitterness."
"No thank you. I want to try one that's just the red stuff and the cinnamon. Oh, this is pretty," she added, dusting on a bit of saffron to complement it. "Dunno how that's going to taste, and it's probably way too much, but YOLO."
Skara laughed at the variety of faces she made as the colva set fire to her tongue and then the cinnamon taste set in.
"Hokay, I wasn't wrong, that was way too much. But it's so good, when it stops burning. Almost chocolatey. What is that stuff? It's not chili powder."
"Colva. It's from a tree and that's all I know."
"Huh. Maybe your Founders somehow married cacao with hot peppers." She shook her head and pulled the tray a little closer to her. "Let's see what happens if you mix this green one with the, what did you call it? Colva?"
The cooker dinged again. Skara turned and used tongs to lift out the two eggs, now cooked to perfection. "It goes well with eggs, and that's part of the traditional way it's eaten. You can dip them too. This was the kind of food that you'd eat on a rainy afternoon on the Tybor homeworld, the part of it that Kite and Rook come from. Families sitting around together and eating bread and eggs—they'd boil it in a pot of hot water, back on the homeworld—and then spreading out all the spices to eat it with."
"Sounds a little bit like hot pot, except colorful." She peeled her egg and looked around for what to do with the shells. Skara pointed to the recycler.
"What's hot pot?" he asked.
"You have little dishes of different meats and vegetables, and a pot of boiling water in the middle of the table that you dip them into. I've only done it once. I went with some of my co-workers. It was fun. It's not something I grew up with. But there are parts of the world—of my world—where that's common and ordinary." She smiled a little. "Do you have sushi in space?"
"I don't know that word. What is it?"
So she described different foods from her homeworld, and he told her of Polaran communal hunts, Galatean honeycomb bread, Yosnani giant grub skewers ("Ewww," was her reaction to that), and the ceremonial feasts called toscapa on the Hnee world, where different meats and fish and leaves were layered with coals in a great pit.
"Oh, we have that! I mean, not us specifically, in Seattle. But there are parts of Earth where that's done, too. I'm pretty sure a luau is a lot like that." She laughed. "About the closest thing I've personally been to, back in Louisiana, is a pig roast. Which, in case you were wondering, is exactly what it sounds like. There's a pig. You roast it. Not very fancy."
"I can enjoy fancy things," Skara said, grinning at her. "But I also like simple things."
He relished the sparkle in her dark eyes, the glitter of sugar and colored spices on her lips—even the way those lips pursed up as she tried to decide if she was being teased. He felt well enough at the moment not to be distracted by his own discomfort. The jittery ache in his bones had been muted to a barely noticeable throb, and he was only dimly aware of a headache at the edges of his perception, threatening in a way that suggested it could swell to a migraine, but not quite there yet. It was the relief of feeling a little better after a severe illness, and he decided to enjoy it while it lasted.
"So what about your people?" Claudia asked, licking sugar off her fingers. "You've told me about the food of just about everyone else in the galaxy—"
"Oh no, we have many more to go. There are a lot of worlds, and like your world, most have many different cuisines. Though I must say, I don't think most worlds are as diverse as yours, but that makes sense. Your world is the one we all come from, after all."
"—okay, so, you've given me the Great Galactic Bake-Off tour, but Skara, what about your favorite comfort foods? Tell me about—what are they called, Eustrans? What's Eustran ethnic cuisine like?"
"Iustrans." He smiled, but some of the pleasure had gone out of it. "There is no such thing as Iustran ethnic cuisine. We don't have any."
"But you must. Everyone does."
Skara turned and began rolling up the remaining kvee for later, not looking at her. "We don't. We're mimics. We blend in wherever we go. We don't really have a culture of our own."
Claudia was silent for a minute, then she said, "You're a diaspora people. I get that—"
"A what?"
"You know, scattered? Living far from where your people came from, making homes in new lands." She looked a little sad at that, making him wonder if she was sad for him or if her people were likewise. "But you still must have your own customs and ways. You said there were villages of your people still."
"I've never been to one," he said shortly. He regretted that he'd ever allowed this conversation to slide down this track.
"Well, okay—what about you, personally? You, Skara. What did your parents—"
"I didn't have any," he snapped, throwing the mixing bowl into the cleaner so hard that it clattered off the edge. "I don't have a family, all right? I never knew my parents. Mrs. Potato Head in there is probably only the third or fourth other person of my species that I've met in my entire life. Everything I know about my people, I learned from the galactic 'net. I grew up a slave, I wear other people's faces to blend in—"
*Skara?* Lyr's voice said into his head. *Is this a bad time?*
"Yes!" he said, and regretted it instantly when Claudia jerked back. "Not talking to you."
"Yes, but—" she began.
*You're upset,* Lyr said. *Are you in danger?*
"I'm fine," he snapped at both of them.
"Skara," Claudia began, and started to put her hand on his arm.
He pulled away. "Hold on just a minute. Lyr has apparently decided this is a fine time for a telepathic conversation. If he'd just tell me what he wants."
*I wanted to find out if you're planning to stay in the village tonight.*
*No,* he said. *We're leavin
g right away.* In fact, he'd let himself get distracted, too distracted, by Claudia's company and conversation. It was time to be off. The jump drive would have recharged by now.
*Very well. We would have loved to have you, and will be very glad to have you whenever you come back. Er—and Skara—*
"What?" he asked shortly. Claudia had pulled back and was watching with a concerned expression. He held up a finger to signal Wait to her.
*Were you planning to take the prisoners with you?*
Shit. He'd forgotten something was going to need to be done with them. *Um.*
*That's what I thought.*
*... Yes. Yes, I'm taking them with me.*
*They can't be allowed to know the location of this planet, Skara.*
*They don't. When we jumped, one was unconscious and the other was being towed on my ship, with no access to the controls. And they haven't seen the village. They don't know it exists.*
*You're confident enough to stake all our lives on it.*
*Yes! Stop hassling me. I'm not eight years old anymore, Lyr. I can do things for myself now, you know.*
He could feel Lyr backing off mentally. *It's not that, it's—*
*That you think I'm irresponsible and incompetent. I KNOW.*
*I don't think that.*
Claudia kicked Skara's ankle lightly. "Do you think you two could let me join in this conversation so I'm not completely left out?"
"I think this conversation was just finishing anyway," Skara said. "I was telling Lyr that we're leaving soon, and he's being rude and ignoring you."
*My sincere apologies, Claudia,* Lyr said. *I didn't know you were there.*
"Apology accepted, I guess. Um ... can he hear me if I talk out loud?"
*I can, through your ears and Skara's, if you focus on sending that information to me.*
"So how much can you, um, hear?" Claudia looked suddenly nervous. "Can you read my mind?"
*I cannot. I can hear only the thoughts you send my way, and I have strong blocks in place to prevent me from accidentally hearing something I should not.*
Which was good, because right now Skara had a feeling his mental landscape would have been filled with a guilty sense of "I am hiding something." He had a lot of practice hiding things from Lyr, though, and had gotten pretty good at it.
