It smelled smoky and spicy, and a little sweet. Not like anything from home, but I wasn’t home, so that made sense. My choices were to stand around feeling weird in a quiet house or make myself a drink and pretend I had any idea what I was doing.
Tea it was.
Unfortunately, making tea required reaching for things.
I opened another cabinet, hopped once, missed the handle, and glared at it.
“Don’t start with me,” I told the cabinet.
The cabinet did not care.
I found a footstool in the mudroom under a row of coats that looked big enough to use as tents. It was sturdy, wide, and heavy enough that dragging it across the floor made a horrible scraping sound. I winced, stopped, and listened.
Nothing happened.
No one came in to ask me why I was being loud or snapped at me for scratching the floor. No one stood in the doorway and made me explain myself.
I stood there for a second with my hands on the stool and felt stupidly close to crying.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
Then I dragged the stool the rest of the way into the kitchen.
Once I climbed onto it, the room became slightly less hostile. The counter was still too high, but now I could at least use it without climbing onto the actual cabinets. Progress.
The kettle was heavier than it looked. I got water into it from the faucet, though I had to use both hands and brace my hip against the counter to keep from tipping the whole thing sideways. By the time I got it onto the stove, I was breathing like I’d done something impressive.
Maybe I had. Surviving someone else’s kitchen counted.
While I was looking for cups I could actually reach, I noticed a faint violet glow coming from the pantry.
I paused.
That was probably normal.
I had been on this planet for less than a day, and so far, normal included a seven-foot alien fiancé, trees with silver leaves, and a legal system that seemed disturbingly relaxed about marriage to strangers. Glowing pantry items were hardly the strangest part of my week.
Still, I crouched down to look.
The lower shelves were lined with jars. Inside them were small, dark fruits suspended in syrup, each one glowing softly from the inside. The light wasn’t bright, just enough to paint the wood around them purple.
Star-figs.
Kazan had mentioned them on the way in. His crop. Or one of them. I had been too busy trying not to stare at his hands on the steering controls to absorb every detail.
They were pretty.
That was annoying.
I didn’t want things here to be pretty. I wanted them to be strange and inconvenient so I could keep my distance from all of it. Pretty made it harder. Pretty made this place feel like somewhere a person might accidentally get comfortable if she was foolish and exhausted enough.
I touched one jar with the tip of my finger. The glass was cool.
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.
I’d crossed half a galaxy, signed my name onto a temporary marriage contract, and nearly had a panic attack over a tea kettle. But apparently, glowing fruit was what made my brain go, yes, this is real.
Wonderful.
