“Uh, yeah, I guess so.” Liv really didn’t want to go into the details. “I’m really looking forward to trying Twin Moon’s cuisine,” she said, hoping to change the subject. To her relief, it worked.
“Omigod, the food—I left it out by itself. Come on.” Jillian grabbed her by the hand and dragged her back to the food prep area.
Once they were settled at the massive table with a circular bench running all the way around it, she proceeded to serve Liv something that looked like a heaping plate of pale orange spaghetti.
“Pasta?” Liv poked at the noodles experimentally with her fork and then gasped when several of them reared up off the plate and poked back.
Jillian laughed. “It’s not exactly pasta although I know it looks like that.”
“But…it’s alive.” Liv laid down her fork and stared at her plate in horror.
“Well, of course it’s alive, silly. You can’t kill Grieza worms until you’re just about to eat them or you’ll lose their delicious fresh flavor.”
“Uh, I think I’ll pass, thanks.” Liv was in the act of pushing the plate away—very carefully because she didn’t want any of the pasta-worms coming after her—when Jillian stopped her.
“Come on now, Livvy—I know it takes some getting used to but believe me, they’re delicious. And look, the sauce that comes with them kills them on contact. See?” She picked up a blue metal rectangular pitcher with a long curling spout and poured a thin stream of pale bluish-green oil over the twitching strands on her plate. The pasta-worms shivered and turned a bright green color. When Jillian stirred them with her fork, not a single one so much at twitched. “Perfect!” Jillian sounded delighted and proceeded to dig in.
“This is some kind of a joke, right?” Liv asked uncertainly as Jillian poked a large forkful of the recently deceased worms into her mouth.
“Uh-uh.” Jillian swallowed and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “C’mon, Livvy, live a little. Hasn’t your honey been cooking for you at all? My guys love to cook for me—sometimes they fight over the privilege.” She grinned. “Of course that’s only because I reward them so nicely afterwards.”
“Yes, Baird cooks,” Liv admitted. “And it’s not all Earth food. In fact, he’d made quite a lot of Kindred dishes for me. But I, uh, kind of asked him not to tell me everything he was cooking.”
“You did?” Jillian frowned. “But that means you’re missing out on half the experience. I mean, the whole point of being up here is to learn their culture so we can understand them. That and the amazingly hot sex, that is.” She giggled.
“Maybe they should spend some time trying to understand us.” Liv crossed her arms over her chest.
“Honey, they’ve been studying us for ages.”
“They have?”
Jillian nodded and took another big bite of her pasta, making an ecstatic mmm sound before continuing. “I mean, think about it, they’re genetic traders. They want to know what they’re getting into before they propose a trade. Why do you think the ship is so easy to get around in? I mean, they could have made it a lot more difficult just by conforming to their own standards of comfort but they designed it to make the Earth brides comfortable.”
“Really?” Jillian thought back to her first night in Baird’s suite. Everything had seemed strange and frightening at the time but she had to admit she’d been able to tell what each room was used for. The kitchen even had a refrigerator and a stove of sorts. Who knew how Baird’s people cooked and stored food back on their home planet? For all she knew they buried it in a cold hole in the ground and seared it on lava rocks or something. She’d never considered that Baird might be living in an environment that was alien to him as well, in order to make her feel more comfortable. But now that she thought about it…
“Really,” Jillian said, breaking into her train of thought. “And since they’re so into learning about us, I figure the least we can do is give their culture a shot. Some things are easy to adapt to—I mean, I never want to live anywhere without a bathing pool again, you know? Other things are a little harder.”
“Like the uh, what did you call them?” Liv gestured at her plate.
“The Grieza worms,” Jillian said, taking another forkful. “Go on, try them, Livvy. I promise you won’t regret it.”
“Well…” Liv hesitated, feeling torn. On one hand, she was almost ashamed of herself. She’d been so determined to resist Baird that she’d been closing her eyes to his entire culture. Who would have thought that ditzy Jillian Holms would be more open minded than her? On the other hand, those were freaking worms on her plate. Lots of Earth cultures eat insects and other weird things, she reminded herself. Besides, I never expected to like sushi when I first tried it and now it’s one of my favorite foods. “All right,” she said at last. “Pass the poison sauce. I’m going to kill these suckers good and dead before I dig in.”