Chapter 16 #2
A platter with a very large portion of some kind of casserole, covered in a blue sauce.
Adryel’s stomach started to growl.
“Your maid left you blue grass pasta?”
He smiled. “With kotair mushrooms and poultry.” He grabbed two bowls and started to separate the large portion into two.
Her stomach growled again.
Or maybe that was his. It was deep.
He grinned as he handed her the eating sticks. “This is one of my favorites. I needed this today.”
Adryel accepted the sticks and the bowl, smelling it. Stars, it smelled like pure joy.
“Ahh,” she said, smelling the aroma again. “I think I did too.”
They both took their first bites at the same time. And it was just as divine as it smelled. They ate in silence for a few minutes, Adryel not realizing how hungry she really had been.
Finally Stron spoke between bites. “Nothing like a home-cooked meal. What about you? What’s your favorite meal from home?”
She shook her head. And what could she tell him, really? “My home was not like this.”
“Not many people can say their home is like this,” he said reaching up and touching a tree branch that arched over the ceiling.
She picked another bite out of her bowl. “One that feels like a place to belong.” Even the pasta felt comforting. One of those things she’d heard stories about, when coming home to a real family, and they had food and drink for you.
Something she didn’t really know much about.
Hence why it was only stories.
He paused, his cup still part way to his mouth, and raised his eyebrow. “Did you not have a home?”
“Not really. I grew up on the streets alone, and wound up running with the wrong crowd.”
“How wrong?”
She shrugged. No use in denying it. “Gangsters, mostly. The type who moved money, paid off officials, and got away with a lot of stuff that most people would go to prison for.”
“And how did you wind up here?”
“Accident. I might have creatively borrowed a small citricite stone.”
“‘Creatively borrowed’?”
“A nice way to say stole.” That’s what she typically referred to her more illegal-but-necessary-for-survival activities.
“You stole citricite? Why?”
She blinked, annoyed with his question and lack of understanding.
“Unlike you all, who have it so abundant you carve statues out of it,” she gestured to the citricite figures, tucked into little nooks all around, “some of us need it to survive, and it’s expensive when you get on Trinity Alpha Prime. ” Her voice got louder with each word.
“Theft should have put you in jail.”
“It should have,” she fired back. “But I was smarter than they were.”
“I doubt that,” Stron said.
“Oh, so now I’m stupid because I had to survive?” She fired back. “I’d like to see you, on the streets, without your precious credits and lifestyle and family home, and see how you survive with nothing, and don’t know when your next meal is coming!”
He opened his mouth to speak, but the heavy slam of a door jarred them both.
Her tea spilled on the counter.
Stron glanced at her, then at the spill. He grimaced.
Adryel reached to catch it with her hand Some kind of way to stop it from running off the counter, and looked for a towel to clean it.
Instead, three circular cleaner bots the size of her palm emerged from the countertop, and immediately rolled over and around the spill, cleaned the mess.
She blinked, picking up her cup as they cleaned the pooling tea, and then disappeared back into the countertop.
She didn’t want to guess what a food prep update like that would cost.
“Did you get your dinner?” A new voice cracked through the room. “Oh, my!”
Adryel turned toward the voice, and saw an elderly Kantenan female standing in the main seating area.
Her horns were curled around her head, her hair fluffed and wrapped around them, a strawberry blonde color mixed with white.
Lines creased her mouth and at her eyes, but they merely emphasized the wide smile on her face.
She clapped her hands together like a child as she shuffled forward. “Oh, you brought her here! If I had known, I would have made more!”
“Baba!” Stron said. “Here, let me help you.” He reached her in a moment and held out his arm.
“I can manage,” Baba replied, but she leaned into him, and her footing seemed more solid as she crossed the room with him.
“But it would be rude of me not to help,” Stron replied.
She sighed, but had a twinkle in her eye.
“You made this?” Adryel asked, wondering why in the world Stron had such an old person living with him. “It’s wonderful.”
“Oh, blessings, young miss. I knew this one would be having a tough day, from all the reports. I knew he’d need a comfort meal.”
Stron rolled his eyes. “Baba, this is Adryel. Adryel, this is my grandmother.”
“Oh, is she, is she your foreigner?” Baba asked, who wasn’t as tall as Stron, but still came up to just above his shoulder.
They had very similar coloring, and even the pattern on his horns was similar to hers, though hers were smaller, and looked less strong.
Stron glanced at Adryel then back at the elder female. “Well Baba, we don’t know yet.”
She patted his hand. “But do you like her?”
“She is intriguing.” Stron led her to the seating area nearby.
“Temperamental, too,” Baba said. “You already made her start yelling.”
“I didn’t make her do anything.”
“Yes, he did,” Adryel said. “He was rude.”
“Well, that’s good,” Baba said as she took a seat on one of the wide sofas. “If he’s already making you yell at him, then he’s getting under your skin.” She patted the chair. “Come, sit with me, girl. Tell me who you are.”
Adryel glanced at Stron, then back at Baba. “Um, sure.” She sat on the sofa near her and glanced at the woman.
She had kind eyes.
Then she cut to Stron, the kindness turning stern. “You should apologize.”
“For what?” Stron asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Baba said. “You made her mad. Apologize.”
Stron raised his eyebrow. “Baba, you don’t know—”
“Hush,” she fired back. “Apologize.”
Stron sighed. “I apologize, Adryel, for frustrating you.”
“Good,” Baba said.
Adryel smiled. “Thank you.” She glanced at Baba. “You, I like.”
“Remind you of your elder parents, I imagine?” Baba asked.
“I never had any,” Adryel said. “Not that I know of, anyway.”
“They’re not all they claim to be,” Stron said.
Baba glared at him. “Watch it, boy.”
This time, Stron grinned, and so did she. He brought Adryel’s cup and their food over to the sitting area.
“Get me some tea, please,” Baba said.
“Yes, Baba,” he replied, returning to the food prep area.
“So this is…” Adryel led.
“My father’s mother,” Stron called back. “She lives with me here.”
“It is my home,” Baba said. “He lives with me.”
“I thought you said the house was empty before you moved in?” Adryel asked, picking up her cup. Had she already caught him in a lie?
Not a good beginning to this friendship.
“It was,” Baba said. “For several years, I lived with the family instead of here.”
“She got very ill,” Stron said.
“You make it sound like I was dying,” she said.
“You were,” Stron said. “At least, that’s what it looked like at the time.”
She waved her hand. “I’m of stronger stuff than that virus.”
“Many died of it,” Stron said as he came back with a cup for Baba. “She wanted to come back to her home—”
“I don’t get along with Stron’s mother.”
“And she couldn’t be here alone. So I came too.” He handed the tea to Baba, and she thanked him with a nod.
“He doesn’t have to stay here,” Baba said before sipping on her tea. “I’m much better, and honestly, he’s never here, anyway.”
“You still need someone to check on you occasionally.”
She waved her hand. “I’ll get one of those medical droids.”
“Baba, you would break it.”
“Stron, that’s rude,” Adryel said. “She doesn’t seem that sick.”
Baba chuckled. “He thinks I would break it because the first time it told me what to do, I’d smack it with one of my canes,” she said, and reached to the side of the couch. Tucked between it and the nearby table she pulled out an ornate wooden staff.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you did,” Stron said, smiling as he seated himself in another chair across from them.
Baba grinned. “Now, what are your plans with this one?” she asked, staring at Stron.
“Keep her safe,” he said.
She nodded. “And after that?”
“I have no idea. We are in the middle of a crisis right now.”
“I heard whispers that there were a lot of ambassadors injured. That’s what the main channels are saying.”
“No word of why they were here?” Stron asked.
Baba shook her head. “Though there are rumors. Some as wild as they can be, honestly.”
“Any close to what’s really going on?”
Baba shrugged. “Not enough to lead to anything.”
Stron grimaced.
Adryel watched him. “Not to be rude, but why would she know what’s going on?” She glanced at Baba. “No disrespect.”
Baba smiled. “None accepted. You don’t know yet our ways. Or my ways.”
“Baba was the previous Ruler of the Green, and her circle is more aware of the happenings in our world than many others.”
“You were on the Coalition,” Adryel said, remembering that Ruler of the Green was one of the branches in the organization. The Kantenans had a council rather than a singular leader, on their topmost tier of society.
“For many years, I was,” she said. “And those connections have stayed with me over the decades.” She glanced at Stron. “And you need to get down and see Knobb, if you want to get this figured out.”
Stron grimaced. “Knobb?”
She nodded. “He is going to know what this is before anyone else.”
“Knobb.”
“Yes. Knobb.”
He wasn’t thrilled with that. “Fine,” he finally said. “She can stay here with you while I go see him.”
“Excuse me?” Adryel replied. “I’m not sitting around waiting on you.”
“And I’m not taking you into an unsafe place just to amuse you,” Stron countered, standing up.
Well, that wasn’t going to go unanswered. Adryel stood as well. “Listen here, big guy, your underworld isn’t a foreign place to me. They’re all the same, no matter what the world is. Same class of humanoids, same rules. I know my way around the underbelly of any world.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to allow you to be forced into a harmful situation.”
“I’m already in a harmful situation. My ship blew up.
I’m stuck here, with unknown forces out to kill me and the rest of the survivors.
I’ve got no way to get out of here until help comes, and who knows how long that will be, and who will be on that ship.
I’m already in a dangerous situation. Leaving me sitting around, waiting for someone to attack again is stupid. ”
“She might prove beneficial,” Baba added.
“Don’t you start helping her.”
“Maybe I’m trying to help you,” Baba said. “An extra set of eyes is always a good thing when going to see Knobb.”
Stron sighed. “Females will be the end of me.”