Dinner was… interesting.
Aileen, Sparky, and Shade ate knotweed mashed with too much-burnt garlic and green onion. Normally Aileen liked green onions. Not brown green onion, though. Not green onion burnt to a crisp.
Aileen asked Shade if she had made this herself. Shade took a bite, grimaced, and said, “No. I taught Sparky how to make my signature dish.”
“I did it perfectly!” Sparky said proudly.
“Right. Perfectly. Very well, very much not overcooked,” Aileen lied, secretly spitting her bite into her napkin and hiding it under the table. A wet, cold scaly thing snatched it up, and Aileen heard eating sounds. Caffeinated Fish was lurking under the table.
Aileen looked under the table and saw that Fish had an underwater (undercaffeine?) tunnel system. She guessed it must connect to the coffee cup fish tank. Well, that was definitely a way to get rid of food she didn’t want.
Aileen offered Caffeinated Fish another chunk of knotweed mush, but he wasn’t there. He had swum over to the other side of the table, where Shade was also feeding him the most burned garlicky bits of her mash.
“Well!” Shade said, pushing her chair back. “This was - ahem - delicious, but I think I’ll retire to my room for the night.” She nodded respectfully at me and hurried out into the cave’s hallway.
“Wait, take your mash!” Sparky said, shoving a plate at Shade. A slimy glob of mash slid off the plate onto the floor, where it disappeared into Fish’s gullet.
“NOOOOOOOO!!!! Um… I mean… I’m full” Shade said meekly, then she retreated down the hall.
Aileen shoved the rest of her knotweed mash into her mouth, then mumbled, “I need to go to the bathroom. Be right back!”
Aileen ran to the bathroom and spit the mash out into the toilet. She considered washing her mouth with soap - surely even soap would taste better than the mash but decided against it. Instead, she rinsed out her mouth several times.
Cooking had never been Sparky’s strong suit. There was a reason why, back when we were living in the wilderness, she went out and found food and sparked the fire, but Aileen did all the cooking. Fire Elementals always either were amazing cooks or burned EVERYTHING (Sparky was in the second group).
Coming back into the kitchen, Aileen found Sparky cleaning up. “Care to join me?” she asked, offering me a dirty plate. “Cleanup goes faster with a Water Elemental.”
Taking all the plates, Aileen ran to the kitchen and held all the dirty dishes over the sink. She squeezed a few drops of soap over the stack, and then reached out her free arm, pointed at the dishes, and washed them with a powerful stream of water. She put the glistening plates into the drain tray to dry.
Just then, Shade came back into the kitchen. She was holding a little purple and silver device with a screen and said, “Get some sleep. There’s someone I think would do well in the OctoFrog Cult, and now I have enough members to recruit her.”
She showed us the screen.
“It’s… a bunny,” Sparky said, staring.
Aileen frowned, gently stroking my tanzanite pendant. She was so confused that part of her water disguise melted, splashing water onto the floor. “Oops.” She quickly gathered it back up.
Taking a closer look, Aileen discovered the bunny was in a shimmering silver tutu. She blinked. Aileen knew Shade was on the weird side, but she wanted to recruit a rabbit?
The bunny bounced around a bit, and then it stood up on its hind legs and morphed into a human. A shapeshifter!
The human was a girl, a little older than Aileen. She had long caramel hair, brown eyes, and a mischievous, slightly hyper look on her face. Reaching up, she tugged on one of the bunny ears from the top of her head. Aileen couldn’t tell if they were a headband or if she had half-shapeshifted.
Suddenly, the girl stuck her nose into the air. She twitched it a few times, then turned around and seemed to look directly through the screen at the three of them.
“That’s impossible,” Shade said. “My technology is undetectable.”
“Maybe she can’t see us, but she can definitely see something,” Sparky said.
The girl turned back into a bunny and extended her sharp little claws. She lunged and slashed her paw across the screen. Little jolts of electricity shot off the device, and the screen went black.
“No!” Shade shook the little device. “No, no, no!” Aileen could’ve sworn she sounded choked up like she would be crying if she had eyes.
“Geez, it’s just a little device,” Sparky said. “Can’t you replace it?”
Shade turned and ‘glared’ at Sparky. Sparky stumbled back, clutching her head and mumbling, “Ow. Ow. seriously, calm down!”
Aileen could only guess that Shade had done some kind of mind trick and hurt Sparky’s brain.
“Where did you get the device?” Aileen asked softly and carefully. It seemed to be a sore spot for Shade. Aileen examined the little purple device however, she made sure to stay back. Water and technology didn’t mix well.
“My foster mother, Twilight, made it,” Shade said. “She was one of the former members of the OctoFrog Cult. She had a way of technology. Everything she made was purple - it was her favorite color - but I hated purple. I always begged her to make a green one, but she refused. She said it was her signature color. This was the last device she ever made. It’s called the Twilight 3ooo. One night, she gave it to me, and the next night she was just… gone. From that day on, I always wore purple.” She absently smoothed her long royal purple gown.
Sparky immediately said, “I’m sorry about the device, I’m sorry I fed Caffeinated Fish a taco-” She stopped there.
“YOU WHAT!?” Shade said. “TACOS MAKE HIM CONSTIPATED”
“Yeah… I discovered that the hard way,” Sparky said sheepishly.
“I better go give Fishy his all-purpose remedy,” Shade said, sighing. “And keep your wet hands off my device!” she called after me as she left the room.
Comments (0)
See all