Chapter 11 #2
Beside those were several small tins of salted fen pods, which were basically alien beans.
They were pale yellow, kidney-shaped, and packed in oil that solidified when the room got too cold.
Cassie picked up a tin and shook it thoughtfully.
Beans and rice—or fen pods and kareth pearls—might be possible.
Not exactly gourmet, but definitely edible.
There were also translucent cubes stacked in a clear container, each one about the size of a bouillon cube and glowing faintly orange from within.
Cassie recognized those too—they were broth stones.
Drop one into boiling water and it dissolved into a savory broth.
The Visskous preferred theirs flavored with insect shells and mineral salts, but this container had a South Continent supply mark on the lid, thank God, which meant they were probably going to taste much better than the kind she’d usually gotten in the Crystal City.
Southern Continent broth stones were usually rich, salty, and comforting—almost like chicken stock, though not quite. Cassie had eaten plenty of chicken soup growing up, and for the first time since she’d been dragged into the bunker, a rush of homesickness went through her.
But it wasn’t homesickness for Earth, exactly. What she actually felt was homesickness for the Mother Ship—the first place she’d lived after getting away from Mitch that actually felt like home.
She felt homesick for the clean corridors and kind people…
for the steady hum of the ship beneath her feet…
for the cute little restaurants and shops around the parklands.
Most of all she felt homesick for a place where no one looked at her like she was a defective mammal because she had breasts and skin instead of scales and got sweaty at night when she had a hot flash.
Cassie had thought the Mother Ship might be her permanent home once…before Sskarth. Before she’d let herself get swept off her feet by iridescent purple scales and pretty lies about crystal spires and forever-love.
“Idiot,” she muttered, blinking hard as her eyes stung again. “You were such an idiot for be believing he really loved you! And where did it get you? Bitten and infected with the freaking Hunger Virus—that’s where.”
But no—she was not going to cry into the alien beans. She had a chance here—she wasn’t going to give into despair. She wasn’t, she told herself firmly.
Taking a deep breath, she opened another cabinet and found a set of cooking implements that looked familiar.
There were deep metal pots, flat heating pans, a bundle of long stirring rods, and several flexible silicone-like bowls that folded flat when not in use.
One shelf held packets of powdered spice blends with Visskous labels— savory heat, sweet smoke, deep salt, and green herb mix.
Good—at least whoever had stocked this bunker hadn’t completely forgotten about flavor.
Cassie took down the green herb mix and sniffed it cautiously after breaking the seal.
It smelled a little like basil, a little like thyme, and a little like the inside of a freshly cut cucumber.
Not bad. The savory heat had a warm, peppery smell that made her nose tingle pleasantly.
She set both packets on the counter beside the kareth pearls, thessa mash, fen pods, loompa root, and broth stones.
There—ingredients. Now she just had to turn them into food.
She found a heating unit built into the counter and stared at the controls for a moment.
Luckily, the symbols were standard Visskous heat markings, not some obscure scientific notation, so she could actually use them.
She filled a pot with water from the filtered dispenser, dropped in two orange broth stones, and watched as they sank to the bottom and began to dissolve, sending up golden threads of flavor that swirled through the water like smoke.
The smell rose a moment later—warm and savory and almost painfully comforting because it smelled like Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.
Cassie closed her eyes and tried again not to cry.
For one stupid second, she let herself imagine Ravik and Severin sitting down to eat with her like normal people. As if they were back aboard the Mother Ship instead of stranded in a bunker on a dying planet.
She could almost pretend to herself that one of them wasn’t half-infected and the other wasn’t a terrifyingly beautiful Blood Kindred scientist who might be her only hope of survival.
Like she wasn’t infected too, with a virus that might decide at any moment to turn her into a bitey corpse with bad skin and a craving for living flesh.
Like she had hope again and everything was normal.
Then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and dumped the kareth pearls into the broth.
“Okay,” she said firmly, stirring them with one of the long rods. “Supper first. Existential crisis later.”
She was going to push her worries to the back of her mind and concentrate on the task at hand. It seemed like a sensible plan…at least, it was the only one she had at the moment and Cassie was determined to stick with it.