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“Why not?” Slade asked.
“Oh, I was just…” She cleared her throat and blushed. “I was just thinking it’s not exactly good first date food. But it’s not like this is really a date. We’re just…working through some issues.”
“It can be a date…if you want,” Slade offered softly. “If by date you mean a meeting to get to know a romantic partner better.”
“We’re not really partners though,” Brandi pointed out quickly. “We just kind of…got stuck together by accident. Um…what other Earth food cubes do you have?” she asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.
“Let’s see.” Slade frowned at the food cubes on the shelf labeled “Earth food.” “Looks like you can have…tacos or sushi or tuna salad or pizz-ah. Did I say that right?”
Brandi stifled a giggle. “That last one is supposed to be pronounced ‘peet-zah’ but that’s okay. Um, sushi might be nice. I can’t afford it very often but I really like it when I can get it.”
“All right—sushi coming up.” Slade popped the tiny white cube into the re-hydrator and pressed the button. In a moment the small machine let out a ding.
When Slade opened the re-hydrator, he found a large round white plate with many colorful little circles placed on it in an artful design. There was also a tiny bowl of black liquid, a lump of green putty, and a mound of thin pink shreds. Included with the meal was a small white vessel with a pour spout, a tiny white cup, and two long, thin wooden sticks.
It looked pretty strange to be honest.
“Hmm…” He frowned at it and showed the plate to Brandi. “Does this look right to you? Because if not I can always make you something else.”
“Oh, that looks perfect!” Her eyes lit up and she took the plate from him eagerly. “And it even has some saki to go with it! Not that I ought to drink much in the middle of the day but I’ll have a sip.”
Slade shrugged. Well, to each his or her own. The Earth food looked strange to him but Brandi seemed delighted with it, which gave him a deep glow of satisfaction. He realized it was just his natural Kindred instinct to want to feed and provide for his mate but it made him happy just the same.
Putting a cube in the machine for himself, he turned it on and waited for the ding. When he opened the door again, a mound of blue and purple tubes in pink sauce, each about the size of his longest finger and garnished with tiny, orange, crunchy crustaceans called tikis, awaited him.
Slade felt his stomach rumble as the fragrant scent of the chando-chando drifted to his nose. It was a dish he’d learned to love while fighting in the Blood Circuit because it was almost pure protein, since the tubes were actually muscle from the inside of a ker-dragon’s fire throat. As such, it was a spicy dish but completely delicious as far as Slade was concerned. He was surprised but pleased to find the dish aboard the Kindred shuttle’s food stores.
“Wow,” Brandi murmured, watching as he brought the plate to the table. “That’s uh, really colorful.”
“Delicious too.” Slade dug in with the multi-tined utensil that had come with his meal. “Would you like a bite?” he asked, offering her one of the tubes.
“Well…my grandma Ida always did say it’s good to try new things.” She hesitated for a moment, then opened her mouth and took the bite he was offering. She chewed for a moment, a look of surprise coming over her face. “Hey, that’s pretty tasty. I thought it was going to be like multicolored mac ‘n cheese but it’s really more like calamari.”
“Don’t know what that is,” Slade remarked. “But if it’s anything like chando-chando I’ll give it a try. Is yours good?”
“It’s great.” Brandi sounded surprised. “Although how the Kindred managed to shrink fresh sushi down to a tiny cube and then grow it up again and make it taste like it was just made, I’ll never understand.”
Slade frowned. “I can try to explain the technology, if you want. Are you at all mechanically minded?”
“Not a bit,” Brandi said cheerfully. Then she sighed. “I wish I was though. I’d like to be able to fix my old clunker myself instead of always relying on someone else. Back before Earl went to jail, he kept it running pretty regularly but now that he’s gone it just seems to break down all the time.”
“Earl is your…former mate?” Slade asked, stabbing another bite of chando-chando and popping it into his mouth. “And now he’s in prison?”
She nodded. “He got busted for dealing and it wasn’t exactly the first time. I begged him to quit. I even quoted him statistics on how much harder kids with dads in prison have it and I warned him I wasn’t going to bring Emmie to see him if he got sent off.” She frowned. “I won’t expose my child to that environment. I thought maybe he’d quit for Emmie’s sake.” She shook her head. “Nothing stopped him, though. Not until they sent him away for good.”
