“Good evening, George.” Lidea let the viney tendrils near the door curl up and over eir fingers. When Sunny talked to the plants, he always left little pauses as though they could answer. Lidea started doing the same, and sometimes ey felt the same thing that Sunny must. Little electro-magical prickles that glided over eir skin. Ey hadn’t found the pattern to it, yet, but ey could see the seeds of language in it. 

The scent and sound of garlic and onion just meeting the surface of the skillet met em as ey entered through the front door. Sunny was chopping squash on the counter next to the stove, standing on the low wooden stool that brought him to a more comfortable height. He half-glanced over his shoulder at Lidea. 

“Running a little behind on dinner prep. Could you feed the plants?” He nodded to some more gristly bits of meat on a plate. 

“We’re not on a schedule, Sunny honey.” Lidea hung eir bag on the hook next to Sunny’s. He made an odd little face, and ey moved it over one hook on the bar. It was a weird little quirk of his that ey was still getting used to. 

“There’s a show I want to watch tonight. To have enough time to eat dinner then go for a walk…”

“We can always skip the walk.” Lidea moved up to the counter to get the meat scraps. 

“Would prefer not to.”

Lidea ran a hand along his back then moved to the stairs. 

Anyone who wandered for a living had to have a level of organization to them. You didn’t survive long juggling contracts and travel plans without an eye toward detail. Everyone picked up their own little compulsions and habits to fall back on to create a sense of continuity from contract to contract. So Lidea had gone all this time not realizing just how intense Sunny was in his own space when he was at his most comfortable. 

Sunny had offered to make space in his workshop for Lidea to set up eir own workbench. Ey didn't really have any hobbies, though. At least not the kind that required large amounts of space. Ey needed space for eir stuff, though. So they collapsed enough of his workspace to make room for a wall of stacked boxes, and a second-hand lounge chair for Lidea to sit and read in while Sunny tinkered. Outside eir clothes in the closet, this was the only room that had any of eir meager belongings. Ey hadn't really pressed to move more of emself into the house but neither had Sunny.

Lidea popped inside the workroom to grab eir cardigan off the back of the chair before moving onto the bedroom. 

"I've got dinner, Josephine." It rustled out of its thorny coil and rolled across the floor toward em. A vine with a bulb spiraled up eir leg. A green bloom split down the middle and opened up a small, toothy mouth. Ey dropped a piece of meat into the pink interior. An opening filled with even more tiny teeth brought it down through the thick, green stalk. Another vine moved along the wall to drop on eir shoulder, and ey fed this mouth another piece of meat. It was a long, once a week process, feeding little chunks of protein into the myriad gullets that opened up before em. 

Ey saved a piece for George and headed back downstairs. That one didn't need the hand feeding, plenty able to catch bugs on its own. It got "jealous," however, if it didn't get the same treats. Sunny hadn't quite been able to explain how he figured that one out. 

Sunny was plating up as ey came back inside. Tabberey flank, a squash and spinach saute, and blended potato from a powdered mix. 

“It’s about to expire,” Sunny explained when Lidea gave the soup a less than enthusiastic once-over. 

It was a well-worn joke that the first few days home were a gastrointestinal disaster as your gut readjusted to “real food.” The joke felt a little burned around the edges when your “home base” was Latolan. 

There were local farms, ranches, and apiaries to support a massive honey industry, but not at all to the scale and diversity to fully supply a city-state of this size to the expectations of its populace. There were fishing fleets, but the sea was up to a couple day’s travel away, depending on the weather. Tabberey — a small four-legged furry animal with a short reproductive cycle — had become an option through adaptive breeding, but they weren’t a native species to the planet. One communicable disease or bad genetic mutation could wipe out half the local population before they caught it, and the prices skyrocketed in response. 

And that happened a lot on this world. More than their world of origin.    

If you could live on insect protein, leafy greens, and millet, you could reliably put together a fresh, wholefood diet. Some did. Otherwise, you were relying on imports, and most of those were more processed, shelf-stable products. 

So there wasn’t a tremendous change for either of them when they came “home,” but the powered potatoes were the worst of it.

“So, how was your day?” Lidea asked as ey dug into the flank. 

“Fucking teenagers,” Sunny said. “I hate that I have to give them a test. Doesn’t feel worth it. Showing up should be enough.” 

“They need some kind of grade.”

“Give ‘em all top scores. It’s already a GPA padding elective.” Sunny scooped a bite of potato into his mouth. 

“You’re becoming anti-academic in your old age.” Lidea swallowed down a bit of potato, too, pushing through eir distaste for it. 

“Just pragmatic. You hated school.” 

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get why it exists. Think they could do some things differently.”

“Hm,” Sunny decided. 

Lidea waited for him to ask about eir day. They were both through their flanks before ey decided ey was tired of waiting.

“The printer is looking at completely overhauling their design philosophy because of some of the stuff I pointed out.”

“Oh?” 

Lidea tapped the tip of eir fork to the plate. 

“Yeah. When the company set up their design reference procedures, they never actually talked to an artificer or a chemist or anything. They were just coming at it from an art perspective.”

“Hm.” 

Would he give a shit how different pigments were made from their component parts? How the color looked to the eye depended on what interactive property you needed to create. The way the actual shape of the printed image affected the way the magical effect came through. Ey was only just learning a lot of it emself, but ey was jumping to talk about. And Sunny just…he didn’t know how to bounce. How to reciprocate. They were supposed to be working on this, and yet there’d been so little change in the past six weeks. 

Ey pressed eir fork into the soft flesh of a piece of squash, testing its resistance. The fork made a little clinking sound as it pierced through to the plate. Sunny cringed at the sound. 

“I think maybe I’ll skip the walk this evening. I’ll just put the dishes in the washer. Pick up around the house a little.” 

Sunny cocked his head. 

“Are you sure? We really need to make sure we stay conditioned.”

“I think I can skip one walk and be okay.” Lidea shifted eir focus back to eir plate. 

Sunny looked at eir, searching eir face, but didn’t say anything to press the matter.