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"I hope you're hungry after all of that," Siriks said. "We've got a dinner reservation tonight."
"Dinner?" Eramis clung to his back, arms swept around his neck and head resting at his shoulder. The day she would be able to walk more than a few steps without assistance would be a glorious one, but she could accept being carried around for the immediate future. Siriks ambling back to the Lair at leisurely pace while she took in the sights of the Cosmodrome after so long away was hardly the worst way to spend an afternoon.
Being thrown in the river for a wash, however, was an unfortunate blip in the overall experience. Her hands felt thick and numb from the biting cold, even a half hour removed from the water. Her skin stung and carapace still buzzed, but Siriks had taken as much care as he could with the vigorous scrubbing. Because of him, she felt physically lighter than she had done in years.
And likely had less mites in her hair, too.
"Yeah, I wasn't going to not celebrate you escaping. Can't take that for granted." he replied.
"Where is it? Think about who could see me," she warned.
"Not far, it's just beside the medbay," he pointed over to another small building beside the factory. "A couple of Dregs set up a business out of cooking food for us."
"Are they good at it?"
"You'll see." he teased, nudging his head into her blinded side.
His answer didn't inspire any confidence, but her stomach didn't know the difference, and growled at the thought of a hot, freshly prepared meal. Ether alone didn't satisfy cravings in the same way as real food, and the medic had denied her even the smallest snack previously for fear she might require surgery. Outside of the Ether-rich drip he put her on for the same reason, she hadn't eaten in nearly three days, by her count. Breakfast and lunch hadn't been left at her bedside while she slept the morning and afternoon away, and food hadn't been her first priority when Siriks first picked her up with the false promise of showing her something interesting.
Mouth watering in anticipation of the reward for enduring her ice-cold bath, she held on as Siriks brought her steadily closer to a small, modular storage shed with a sloped roof. Tucked away beside the back entry to the Lair, her hearts sank to take in the sad little hut. Water damage left damp patches drizzled down the walls, and those were surrounded by narrow trails in the grass and holes dug in the earth around it. The single, boarded up window beside the entryway had a sign spray-painted on, advertising a limited time 'dinner and drinks' special. Inside, however, lay quiet and still. Not even the hearty smell of spices, smoke, and cooked meat or vegetables wafted out from the cracked open roller door at the building's far side.
She didn't want to try and comprehend the size of the rodent nest lurking beneath the floor - or worse, living inside. If the outside looked like it did, then the inside likely should have been condemned long ago. "This cannot be it."
"It is. Let me put you down," Siriks lowered himself to one knee, and she slowly put one foot down. Shifting her weight to that side to test for any immediate discomfort, she stepped off and stood on her own strength, wobbling as he added. "Don't worry about how it looks."
"Anyone would worry about an infestation," she waved her hand in a circle, encapsulating both the holes in the ground and the general state of the supposed business. Increasingly, it was beginning to dawn on her that his idea of celebratory dinner could turn out to be in much the same vein as the river. Amusing for him to introduce her to, and not so fun for her to go through. "I'm not eating a grilled rat to commemorate my return."
"You don't have to; that was on the menu last month." Siriks narrowed his eyes and offered a lower arm to assist when she took an unsteady step backwards. "Ready?"
Fearing the worst, but with her curiosity piqued too far to resist entering, she let him lead her inside. No sooner had she crossed the threshold than a voice made her jump, calling from the depths of the dim recess.
"Welcome to the Out Back Stake House! I’ll be out in a minute!”
Searching for the source of the greeting, she found that the room she stood at the edge of did, in fact, appear to be a restaurant. It could have fit twenty tables without a problem, but instead held only a few in varying states of disarray. One appeared to be made of nothing more than a few slats of wood balanced against each other. A bar on the left side of the room stood with stools unoccupied and shelves mostly empty, save for a few half empty bottles. Thick layers of dust and dirt covered everything, and a smell of mildew and old grease hung thick in the atmosphere.
Standing there in Siriks's borrowed, oversized t-shirt and a broken Captain's helm, Eramis not only felt vastly overdressed, but as if merely breathing in the cold, stale air inside would undo all of his hard work and care.
None of it struck her as unfamiliar. Every building interior in the Cosmodrome was the same. But that single look was all it took for her to decide that there was no amount of money nor reputation in the world that would convince her to eat there. To see the general 'ambience' of the Cosmodrome as a backdrop to where food would be served stopped any appetite she might have built up as a result of their earlier jaunt dead in its tracks.
A Dreg emerged from the darkness, wearing an apron spattered in mysterious marks. A yellowed name tag at his chest read 'Oliveks', scrawled in fading permanent marker ink, and he gestured to the side of the dining room with the tray he carried. "Your table is over there."
At a loss for words, she turned to face where he indicated. A single, wilted wildflower propped up by a filthy glass vase stood in the centre of the table, and a few candles flickered along the edge - the sole source of light in the room, beside the propped open front entrance. Concentric rings of the remainders of picked off wax suggested how far previous candles had spread as they melted, and the tablecloth itself appeared to have once been a blanket. Their seats consisted of a pair of couches, complete with peeling leather and holes picked into the cushioning. Although the longer she stared, the more the holes appeared to have been chewed into existence, rather than made by idle Eliksni hands.
“You can sit down,” Oliveks broke her from her trance. “It’s not going to bite you.”
Spotting that Siriks had willingly chosen his seat, she followed suit and slid into the opposite couch. The cushion squeezed away as she put her weight on to the sofa, leaving her sitting so low down that the table edge hit her chest, and she had to look slightly up at Oliveks as he approached.
"We're out of Chicken Permission, so I'll get you something else for the entrée," Oliviks said, plopping two short glasses filled with blue-ish liquid on the table. "Ether Fizz to get you started. The rest is coming."
Before she could stop to ask what he was talking about, he whisked away and disappeared. Only the flutter of grease stained curtains at a far doorway suggested his whereabouts, and she found she held no inclination to discover what horrors were on the other side of them. Instead, she stared around in disbelief, like taking everything in for a second time would help process it. 'Either I have gone insane, or I'm dreaming. How is this real? Why would Siriks think this is a treat?'
Shuffling and bringing her legs up to kneel so that she could sit at the correct height, she remarked, "This makes the Prison's canteen look extravagant. Is this what you call fine dining now? Do we not even choose a meal for ourselves?”
"That's kind of the fun of this place," Siriks tittered, taking a piece of the tablecloth between his claws and folding it over to cover a stain. "You make a reservation and pick the best dishes available from this month's menu. Then it's up to Oliveks and Jameks on whether they serve it."
"Wonderful." Particles floated around in her drink, and yet her compulsion to down it in an effort to blinker herself from the filth she had been led into remained. Wiping her fingers on the edge of the tablecloth-blanket and picking up the closest glass, she took an experimental sip from it and almost choked. A wave of heat rushed through her body, and tears sprang to her eye at the sharpness of the taste.
"What is this?" she wheezed, holding up the glass to examine it again, and then grimacing.
"A local specialty," Siriks chuckled at her reaction, and she noted he had yet to touch his own drink. "Ether and whatever alcohol he needs to use up, with artificial sweeteners stolen from the City."
"It will rot my teeth out," she flexed her mandibles wide in distaste, as if it would get rid of the tangy sourness prickling on her tongue.
He jolted at her comment, tapping at the table. “Oh yeah, that reminds me of what I meant to ask you earlier!"
“About Praksis's tooth collection?" she guessed.
"Yeah! Were you making that up?"
"I saw them with my own eyes," Eramis replied, scrunching her snout just to be asked to describe it. "Dozens of his own teeth kept in a drawstring pouch. He told me he was analysing the changes in the dentine and enamel in relation to the conditions of the Prison."
"So what did he find?"
Making a dismissive noise, she waved an upper hand. "What you would expect. Poor diet and poor hygiene leads to cavities and diseases, as well as slowed regeneration. He was hardly making medical breakthroughs."
"Weird little guy." Siriks clicked his mandibles once, adjusting in his seat as he tried to sit back and instead slid sideways across the worn, slippery leather. A fleeting moment of concern then darkened his expression, and she wasn't sure if it was because of the seating arrangement or their conversation before he asked, "Do you think he'll ask for my teeth?"
"No, I offered him one of my own," she smirked to recall his indignant jabbering upon her offer. "and he rejected it."
"Probably because of all your own cavities."
Giving a playful chitter, she corrected, "As a matter of fact, my teeth would have been 'an anomaly in his data'. Anyone's teeth would have ruined it. There were Eliksni who would have ripped fangs from their jaws at my behest, but he didn't care about what they could offer."
"You would've thought he would take whatever he could get in a place like that."
"That is his problem. He's short-sighted and doesn't think for anyone but himself. We spent weeks talking through his ideas of a new world, but he has no grounding in reality. No conception of how anything in this world works, if it doesn't have a motor or a motherboard inside of it," she explained. Innumerable recesses had been wasted while trying to teach him about the value of varying his research participants, and how he should look beyond his own experiences if he was so desperate for knowledge. She hoped he would take the suggestions in a more general context, too, but her lessons sailed over his head. "He grew up in a bubble. These Devils will teach him lessons that the Prison never could."
"They'll eat him alive before they teach anything. I've seen how some of the others are looking at him already." Siriks warned.
"He will learn. And so will they." she affirmed. Privately, though, she hoped Praksis didn't start picking fights with the other Devils. Somehow, he struck her as not necessarily having the sense to make a good first impression and remain calm when challenged. "He's had enough practice defending himself against bigger and stronger Eliksni and Cabal bullying him."
"Cabal?" Siriks did a double take. "But he's so small! Even I wouldn't willingly face up to one of them."
She shrugged. "Praksis did. Enough to intimidate, anyway. He had a good teacher."
"Remind me not to get in his way." he laughed lightly, folding his primary arms to lean forward on the tabletop in another futile effort to get comfortable. "What other kinds of groundbreaking research was he doing?"
Wracking her brain for a few moments, she ran through a highlight reel of Praksis's best and worst ideas. If she had to tell him every single harebrained scheme he came up with, it would take all day. One, however, almost immediately stood out above the rest. "He had a grand idea about spoons, once. Using them to escape. Through steel walls."
Siriks's expression withered. "I thought Wolf Splicers were supposed to be smart."
"He thought he discovered a weakness in the welding of his cell. In any case, I stupidly decided to humour him. I stole as many spoons as he asked for from the canteen and let him begin excavating. Then the staff and Guards realised who the culprit was for the missing cutlery," she pointed to herself. "and when they finally caught me, they sent me into the arena with a spoon. They wanted to make an example of me, and to lose. So I-"
"Two Souper Salads," the Dreg sprung up out of nowhere, shoving the bowls across the table. The soup sloshed out on to the table cloth, and she darted a hand out to stop it sliding further. When she looked up to ask for something to clean the mess with, he was gone.
As the concoction oozed over the side of the bowl like a thick slime, she noticed the cutlery already submerged in the green-ish liquid. Picking it up between her clawtips, a nauseous sensation churned in her stomach when a spoon heaping with unidentified goop emerged. It was vaguely reminiscent of what could have once been vegetables, and she made a quiet noise of disgust as she returned it to the bowl so as not to linger.
Her gaze flicked across the table to Siriks, who appeared to have no qualms about the state of his appetiser. He scooped the bowl up with one hand and readily slurped its contents down, with no regard for what could be lurking within it.
Horrified, she whispered, "How can you stomach that?"
He set the bowl down, screwing his eyes shut as he swallowed. "If you eat it fast enough, you don't taste it as much."
She shuddered, and pushed her own bowl away with one finger. "Do you want mine?"
"No," he groaned, leaning back in his seat and tilting his head to the ceiling as he panted. "It'll make me sick."
Moving her bowl away entirely so that he didn't have to keep looking down at her unfinished starter and risk making him more unwell, she took a brief moment to wonder what the dish was supposed to be. It resembled neither soup nor salad. If she let it cool and solidify, it would probably make a worthy, if gelatinous, projectile. She glanced up at the ceiling on the off chance that someone had already tried, disappointed to find any strange green lumps stuck to the rafters or sheeting above. The Devils' sense of curiosity and adventure had dwindled significantly.
"So this arena," Siriks managed to recover and digest his sludge after a few more seconds, easing himself upright like he would shatter if he moved too fast. "Were you fighting against Lightbearers? Like the Challenge of Elders?"
Her breath caught in her throat as she realised what she had walked herself into. Of all their shared experiences between their lifetimes, the Prison wasn't one of them. He wasn't the one in a cell beside her, having been captured after a failed battle. She ordered him to evacuate the Devilship for a reason. So that no matter the outcome, they wouldn't be forced to suffer together through what seemed inevitable.
It left her dithering, unsure of what she could tell him. What she should tell. He knew nothing of the arena. Not the one she knew so well, nestled deep in the belly of the Prison. Few survived to speak of it. She had been the reason why for four decades.
All he knew was of Variks's sanitised, televised bloodsports. He watched them when they first began, out of a morbid curiosity. Declining to join him initially, she eventually found herself drawn to look over his shoulder, and she saw a spectacle - a distraction. Perfectly maintained combat arenas designed to suit each wave of combatants; a scrapyard for Eliksni, dim cave systems for Hive, Cabal in a multi-levelled furnace, and Vex contained in their own enclosure around a false Gate. Clever camera angles hid the mess of gore, chitin, or body parts as three Lightbearers worked together to take down waves of opponents. Others highlighted the most gruesome executions, replayed over commentary once the challenge was over.
Her victories weren't glorious and legendary like the champions who defeated Lightbearers in the arena. They were brutal, bloody skirmishes, undertaken to solidify her place as prisoner-Kell. Outside of the Prison, she was nothing. For as proud as she could feel about reaching an untouchable status within the walls, obfuscating the truth and gloating about her success and determination to survive wasn't going to work in her favour when it came to explain to Siriks. He picked her up out of the medbay and spent the best part of an hour scrubbing the caked on dirt, sweat, and blood from her skin. Through every scar, every scratch, he saw a canvas of her suffering. The questions he did ask - out of pity and shock, rather than the want to know precise details - didn't probe too far, but she couldn't hold the details to her chest and dodge giving full answers forever.
After far too long a pause, she made her decision. 'No. Other prisoners. To the death."
He blinked in response, tilting his head. "Just because?"
"The Guards had access to our files and chose champions to bet on."
"Who chose you?"
Her throat dried up. Unable to meet his eyes, she fixated on the stain on the cloth for want of a focus. "Nobody. Not after my first and second fights."
Siriks didn't probe further, but she sensed his questions hanging in the air through the silence. It compelled her to speak again. "I had to prove myself, constantly. To the Guards. To the other prisoners. To Variks," her tone grew hard at the mention of his name. "And there were two Houses that most Eliksni organised themselves into. House Rat, and House Scar-"
"Like Taniks's old House?"
"In the image of it," Eramis made a face and bobbled her head. How he would have hated to know that the very House he had destroyed with his own four hands had been bastardised and recreated for the sake of idolising his achievements. Anyone who knew Taniks knew how he despised the House system, but in the microcosm of the Prison, shell-deep allegiances and a vague feeling of belonging mattered more than the opinions of one mercenary. "They were the furthest things from Houses. Rivalries for the sake of them, and then grudges held within the gangs depending on the colour of banner you wore. I wouldn't swear loyalty to either side, and they despised me for it."
Siriks rumbled, swirling his glass before finally opting to take a sip of his own drink.He did not shudder at the taste, to her astonishment. "Taniks broke in to the Prison a few years ago, actually."
Jaw dropping open, her head shot up. "What? "
"He looked for you! He went searching and said he couldn't find you. Draksis paid him double to go and get Aksor so he could try and rally House Winter and Kings together. He got him, but the whole.plan ended about as badly as you'd expect."
"Did Taniks…?"
"No," he shook his head. "A Lightbearer got to Draksis and Aksor first. He didn't say much else about it, but…you know."
She hummed in sympathy. Even through what precious little Taniks permitted her to know about his life on the Scar-Ketch, she knew well that he would have given anything to have the opportunity to eviscerate the Winter Kell with his bare hands, as he had done for the Scar Kell. "Is Taniks alive?"
"I don't think so. I haven't heard from him in a long time. Maybe three years, almost."
"I…imagine he didn't take my imprisonment well." she said, stilted. It would have been nice to see him again. His triumphant laughter and inevitable sarcastic comment echoed in her mind as if it had already happened. But then there were the hatchlings. Their children. The little blobs that Taniks had worked himself up into silent fits over. That Siriks had run himself ragged over, the strain wearing him worryingly thin. The desire to ask what became of them, and their children by extension, didn't bear thinking about. It turned her limbs to jelly.
"It was tough. After everything," Siriks sighed, then quickly offered a weak smile in place of his deflating. "Sounds like you didn't have a much better time than we did."
His answer left her feeling disconnected, separated by an invisible tension like a barrier erected between them. While she couldn't share her full truth, neither could Siriks. The Eliksni who sat across the table should have been someone she could unload everything upon, and she would have accepted the same from him without hesitation. The last four decades had not been kind to either of them, and just as she couldn't hide her wounds, he couldn't hide the tiredness and sadness simmering in his gaze when he waved her concern off. It hadn't left him since the last time she saw it, on the day of her capture. And once more, there was nothing she could do to make it better.
Her return has been picture perfect in so many ways, but it unsettled her to think that they would have to learn to trust each other. For the first time, they had grown separately. Approaching one another like strangers for the sake of protecting the other from the full extent of their mutual trauma. Playing an intricate game of testing the waters, selecting a detail here or there to mention to gauge a reaction - or because any further explanations or embellishments wouldn't come out.
He kept contact with Taniks. Things hadn't collapsed completely between them, like she feared it would sooner rather than later. She was alive after several concerted efforts to kill her. They had each other, the Cosmodrome, their House, and the pathetic excuse for a restaurant.
The children, she would remain clinging to the vain and foolish hope that they were alive. Even if they weren't Devils, and were missing somewhere within House Wolves, or as members of Taniks's crew. They had to have survived.
But there, sitting beside the candlelight in of a storage shed, was not the time to ask. For the time being, it seemed to her that the less they knew of each other and between each other, the better.
At the noise of the curtain rail moving, she straightened up sharpish and watched Oliveks saunter back to their table. Her hackles rose to think that he might have been listening to their conversation, tensing and glaring as he approached their table.
"How was that?" Oliveks asked, seemingly ignorant to her hostility. At the sight of her untouched bowl, however, he clicked at her. "There are starving hatchlings out there, you know."
"I am sure they will be grateful for my leftovers," she hissed. "Have some respect."
Receiving a sneer and warning chitter in return, he gathered up the bowls and replaced them by slinging a large plate to the table. It clinked against the vase with a harsh noise that made her grit her teeth, but the new dish remained where it should have done and didn't grace the cloth with its presence.
As he stalked off, he called out, "There's your blooming onion."
In front of her was a wonky, mangled, foodstuff, fried and coated unevenly in some sort of golden batter. Diagonal cross-cuts scored through and split it apart, and a pot of creamy sauce leant against it. The description of 'blooming' seemed to match, but it took several seconds of studying the foodstuff before its appearance clicked into place. "That's a potato."
Siriks shrugged, pulling a piece off and dipping it in the pot of sauce. "Onion shortage."
Eramis shook her head, disappointed but halfway expecting such a ridiculous answer. She muttered under her breath, "Onion shortage."
"They both grow underground, it's basically the same thing."
His argument was irrefutable. And ultimately, it didn't matter what Oliveks called it, as long as it was edible. Although her hunger had long since departed, she mimicked her partner and took a chunk of potato, dabbing it in the sauce but taking care not to slather it on in case it turned out to be as horrific as the appetizer. Popping it into her mouth, the taste of stale oil was covered by the gentle, garlicky sauce. Beneath that, though, the potato was unseasoned and fibrous. "This is the best they have to offer?"
"Be glad it was this and not the Chef's Surprise with Probably Rice. I thought you'd want something that has less of a chance of wriggling."
Having seen enough creatures crawling through food supplies to last two lifetimes, she balked to think about that becoming standard fare for House Devils. "You put up with this. Voluntarily."
"For you. Once. So you can experience it."
She chuffed, because 'experience' was the most generous word he could have chosen. "What a treat you have given me."
"Thought you'd like it," he smirked. "If you'd arrived a few days earlier, I could've brought you to the 'Craft Brewery' night."
"I dread to imagine." The spots of glitter stuck around the table legs appeared to be a good indication of what it involved. Alcohol, plentiful Ether, and a collection of Devils usually allowed for a great many creative developments. Trying to imagine the sour bunch of Devils in the Lair letting loose and partaking in some artistry seemed like a stretch, however.
Falling into silence as they ate, Eramis found her hunger suddenly returned with a vengeance, ravenous despite the disgusting appetiser. Leaning forward and putting an arm down across the table, she shifted in her seat to keep one eye fixed at the doorway, ready for any newcomers who might interrupt. Her other hand busied itself with tearing into the potato, hardly caring for the quality or if any nasty surprises could be lurking within it. Edible food was edible food, and there was no way she could let the first normal looking thing she had been presented in days go to waste.
The only thing she became dimly aware of was an air of bemused surprise coming over Siriks, and him gradually stopping to let her carry on without any competition. "Do you want another one?"
"No," Eramis answered through a mouthful, only then bothering to check how much was left. In the blink of an eye, most of the potato had been decimated, and the side she ate from was significantly depleted compared to Siriks's. Or what was left of his, after discovering she had strayed over into eating his half. "...Do you?"
"Don't think I can after the starter. And you…look hungry." When he continued, his tone was tinged with an uneasy suspicion. "What did you eat in the Prison, anyway?"
Doing her level best not to snatch the plate away too fast after he gave his permission for her to continue, she hunched over the plate. Forcing herself to consider how best to phrase the description of the prison's catering forced her to pause and briefly forget about defending it quite as fiercely, swiping the crumbs away from her mouth. In the end, she settled on, "Slurry of different shades. Or other prisoners."
"Like the Wolves used to?"
"And still do," she grimaced to recall the swiftness with which some of them could strip carapace from flesh, and flesh from bone. Bodies would be transformed into unrecognisable chunks of meat within minutes, and starved prisoners descended upon the remains like locusts. "Their art is very much being kept alive."
Siriks shook his head, swirling the Ether Fizz in his glass. "How did anyone survive this? I'd heard the rumours, but I didn't think it was as bad as it sounded. I don't remember prison back on Riis being anything like that,"
"It isn't Riis-prison," her upper arm curled around the remains of the food, blocking it from his sight as much as anyone else's. She moved on to finishing the last globs of sauce in the pot, swiping a finger around the edge to get at every last bit. "There's no rehabilitation. We were research subjects in a quarantine centre, and they culled us when we outlived our usefulness."
"One day they'll run out of prisoners if they keep going along those lines. Then what?"
"Sol is bigger than you would think. Now we all have our freedom, the Reef will take back whoever is hiding they can immediately reach in their colonies and the Tangled Shore. There will be thousands there. Not many ships were willing or able to travel so far immediately. We were lucky the Runner had been refueled."
"So your job is to hide here so they don't go looking to take you back."
Eramis chittered a confirmation while picking at the scraps on her plate. The awful, ever-present reminder that they could one day come seeking her out for imprisonment sat heavier in her body than the sip of Ether Fizz and potato combined.
She knew all about Reef incompetence. The very fact it took until the Final Attempt for them to decide she was an Eliksni of interest, after two and a half centuries of terrorising the system, said it all. But in a Prison where she was Eramiskel, where her expertise and aggression had been directly observed by those who would seek to harm her - or even study her - she was valuable. A target had to have been pinned on her head from the moment they found her cell abandoned.
If they weren't careful, Awoken and Wolves would be on her back in no time flat. And they would take the rest of the House down with her. There would be no hope left for any Eliksni without House Devils.
As she finished off her meal and returned the plate to its rightful place between them, her stomach ached for more. Or perhaps she mistook it for the sick sensation fluttering within brought on from considering further entrapment. Without a guarantee that Oliveks was going to produce anything else that classed as palatable, the potato would have to put in its fair share of work to stave off those feelings.
It occured that her partner had yet to share anything of significance. Asking him a question would divert his attention away from her own troubles, and she knew she needed to find out more about the world she had walked back into, as bleak as the picture painted so far was.
She made an attempt to probe. "How has our crew been?"
"They scattered or died. We had a few losses from the crash, but we got back together on Venus and kept our heads down until things weren't so tense. Then we went back to Sepiks-Fel and lived there for a while and…" he trailed off and shrugged. "Survived. I tried to guide them and keep everyone safe, but everything I did was wrong to someone. I couldn't get everyone together to talk about it and vote, we were stretched so thin to make up for the losses. So we just dwindled."
The situation must have been dire for him to return to that Ketch, let alone struggle to manage a crew he had worked with for decades. Morale must have been at an all time low, and that was a hard pit to climb out from. "But our friends stayed." she said, in the vain hope that there might be a single crumb of positivity in amongst the chaos.
"For a while. Phylaks and Kridis didn't like how I wasn't pushing to strike back. Bakris went a few years after them. Phensis held on, but she left a few years ago and took her fleet and crew with her. And that's how we ended up here." He chuckled, but it sounded hollow and forced.
' He doesn't want to open up to me, either. ' To see her own evasive tactics reflected back stung. Siriks always said what he believed, but the veneer of everything being normal and fine was starting to crack. He absorbed responsibility like a sponge. He always did. She worried for him every single day they were apart, because she knew he had taken on too much through the Final Attempt. Stretched between managing her crew in her temporary absence, supporting her through her newfound disability, grappling with the loss of family in battle and therefore raising the hatchling left behind, the stress of warfare, and facing down the barrel of a gun which questioned whether his people would survive the onslaught, he ran himself ragged.
While confined to her nest and unable to lead in a meaningful way, she urged her Captains into helping him after she lost her legs, and when she stayed with Taniks for rehabilitation. They stepped up to the plate without hesitation, because he was spirit-family as much as he was their superior who desperately needed the additional support through the turmoil. But it didn't make much of a difference, that she saw. Siriks was still the Quartermaster. He existed to take over in his Baroness's absence. His word was final, and if they couldn't collectively change his mind and convince him to step back and accept the help fully, then it wasn't happening.
He bottled so much up, and to consider that he was doing so to such an extreme degree - where he couldn't tell the detailed truth of what became of her own crew - sent an uncomfortable wave of fear creeping through her veins. His standard level of functioning had shifted.
There was every possibility that he was not the same Eliksni who she had left behind. Perhaps similar enough when it came to surface level interactions, but his penchant for mischief and his dry jokes didn't feel genuine. Something was missing. That little spark of life and joy in him, extinguished. Crushed under the heel of futility. And the worry that it might not come back, that she was powerless to do anything but accept that it was how he was now, shook her to the core. Either she met him where he was at, or they drifted apart.
What if all the time spent longing for him, missing him so badly that it caused a physical ache in her chest, was for nothing?
Thankfully, before her mind could sink its teeth into that line of thought, the curtain rustled again. Oliveks emerged and made his way to the table. Upon arriving, he made a chirruping noise in the back of his throat to see the empty plate, but refrained from passing a further comment as he placed it on to his tray and swapped their dishes.
"Dessert. One slice of cake, and an aiscreen sannwish," he presented a plate and a folded cardboard box, each with a flourish. "Topping bar is over in the back."
His latest offering turned out to be a dollop of white ice cream between a bread bun. Trying to work backwards in her head as to what he could possibly mean in naming it that, she gave up after a few seconds and instead squinted over at the dishes and tubs which made up the desserts table in the corner. One large bucket with a ladle sticking out, labelled as 'Strawbebbies', took over one side of the surface. Another, with 'Spinch' scrawled across, marked the other side. Between them were tubs of brightly coloured candy, and a salt shaker repurposed for 'Sinmon'.
Overall dejected, she opted to forgo any additional toppings and scooped the bread roll out of the box. The ice cream squished out and smeared into her palm, and she chattered at it with displeasure. Dropping it down and wiping her hand on the edge of the cardboard, she whispered, "Can we walk out without paying?"
"I already paid a deposit." Siriks admitted, slicing a piece of his cake off with a fork.
Eramis sighed. As she considered the slowly melting sandwich before her, she supposed she would just have to learn to love the dining options left available.