Thank God you’re safe and I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands.
Rael picked up a forkful of double-chocolate beignets with fruit preserve stuffing a la mode, looked at it critically, and put it back down again.
“Playing with your food?” boggled Nik the Gyiik. “For you, this is a dangerous sign. Is all well?”
He made himself eat because he knew his body needed sustenance. For Gyiik cooking, this was almost sacrilege. “You remember Shayde,” he said.
“The pain in the anatomy clothed in an enigma, wrapped in a mystery and talked nothing but riddles? Yes. I liked her. I have a recipe for all sorts of lost Terran delights, thanks to her exquisite memory.”
“She’s gone.”
“What? She was relatively young… or was it young by relativity?”
“No, she’s not dead. The alleged gods that dropped her on me took her back.”
“What did they look like, these gods?” asked Nik. “I didn’t see it, but there are conflicting accounts and the securicams picked up nothing.”
“To me? They looked like really cheap special effects. Tacky, even. And I couldn’t do anything to stop them.”
Nik smiled. “Ah. I see. You like her more than you tell.”
“Not like that. Honestly. What is it with you evolvers and breeding?”
“Eh. Liking children helps there be more of us.” Nik shrugged with all his four arms. “But there is something you miss, no? Some way you are worried about her… something you’d like to see again.”
Rael tried to taste his food in a desperate effort to avoid the implication of romance. Romantic love was a dreadful cliche. And most likely impossible, given that, as an engineered life form, his breeding specs were -well- specific.
And he didn’t really want to know what they were.
“Eh…?” Nik waggled his crunchy eyebrows. He wasn’t giving up.
“All right. Fine. Against my better judgement, yes. I miss her. Not just any one thing… all of her. Even the annoying aspects.”
There was a sound like tearing silk as a black talon tore a temporary hole in reality and the unlikely entity known as Shayde slithered through it. “Ah I knew ye loved me! Gi’ us a hug.”
All his unlikely and unwanted emotions spilled out of his mouth at once in a flustered, “Thank the Powers you’re all right! I am going to strangle you with my bare hands!”
She just laughed and french-dipped him into a kiss.
“Er,” said Nik. “Any particular reason that you’re naked?”
Shayde looked down at herself, shrieked, and covered her censorable portions with her hands. “Really long story. Can I do the shadow-hop, then?”
Good grief. She actually remembered to ask first. Rael nodded mutely.
Once again, she was gone. But this time, he knew she would be coming back.
He still didn’t know whether to be elated or furious.
[Muse food remaining: 32. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]