Page 11 of Crush
Not nutritionally optimized—and more like three bites for a certain Earther’s less mighty yet still strangely alluring mouth—but sometimes, as Amma said, in a hard universe, something soft and sweet was warranted.
Vug, he was worse than a void-viper. The deadly slithering creatures that infested poorly kept ships sometimes also lurked in the inferior asteroids they harvested for scraps. He’d be industriously crushing along and then suddenly venomous vermin would be trying to gnaw through his carapace. He didn’t want to be lurking and slavering. It was embarrassing.
He forced himself to turn away.
And almost stumbled over Amma.
She looked up at him. “So you’ve chosen.”
He reared back. “What? No. I’ve not… I will not be choosing. I can’t, as you well know.”
Though the threads of her antennae had become sparse with time, her focus on him was still sharper than any of the tools he wielded against the rock. “Did you tell that to the i’lva?”
He’d noticed that Adeline instinctively closed her eyes when she was being evasive, but orcs couldn’t hide, even in the dark. “The i’lva is a myth, lost with our world.”
“The i’lva doesn’t come from the stone,” Amma said softly. “It comes from you.”
Holding his antennae vigilantly stiff, he said, “Then it won’t be coming at all. I feel nothing.”
“You can’t ignore the i’lva,” she warned. “If you don’t share its light, the bonding fire will consume you from within, leaving you empty.”
“In the fractures is where the most prized crystals grow,” he pointed out.
“You are not just a hollow in the rock, Teq.”
“Maybe not. But I can dream.”
“Maybe you’re just hungry.”
At the piping voice, Teq looked down to find the hatchling.
Amma laughed, the wilted scales of her carapace vibrating with her amusement. “Teq is very hungry,” she agreed, slanting a sly look at him through the cloudy age-haze over her black eyes. “He needs something sweet and heady.”
Ollie looked down at his clenched hands then unfurled his five fingers toward them, displaying the dewdrop whorl, as big as his palm and slightly mashed from his grip. “I got the last one,” he said solemnly. “But I’ll share with you.”
Teq just gazed down at him, nonplussed, until Amma finally gave him a nudge. “I taught you how to share, didn’t I?”
Chagrined, Teq lowered himself to one knee, although he still towered over the hatchling. “I thank you for this gift.”
“Well, really it was yours first anyway,” Ollie pointed out. “So you were sharing with me. We can share together.”
Teq twisted the dewdrop in two, but before he could place his half in his mouth, another voice interrupted. “There you are, Ollie,” Adeline said.
Teq’s throat closed up, and the two pieces of dewdrop felt like void-vipers in his hands.
“The dewdrop is Mom’s favorite,” Ollie announced, confirming what Teq had himself observed. “She said it reminds her of baklava.”
Teq couldn’t help but glance at her. Was she longing for home so soon? Without a word, still on bended knee, he held out one half of the dewdrop to her. She glanced sidelong at him, the tip of her tongue flicking out to her lips, as if she could already taste the sweetness.
“Oh, the two of you were sharing,” she said hesitantly.
“I already had lots—some, a few,” Ollie quickly corrected himself. “Anyway, it’s your turn.”
Amma put one hand on his shoulder. “There will be many more new and exciting and tasty things to come,” she told him, although Teq suspected the old orc didn’t mean just desserts. “But this has been a long day for you, eh? Teq, why don’t you show them to their new quarters?”
He gave her hard antennae, and she kept hers fluttering, as if the missing threads meant she didn’t know he was perturbed.
So what else could he do? He gestured with the least of his hands. “This way.”
