goneawayworld | [OPEN] it comes, it comes, it comes

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[OPEN] it comes, it comes, it comes

Who Alloran-Semitur-Corrass and OPEN
What Morphing, chores, and trying to remember how to pray
Where Various
When Handwaved times between the sheetcake and the corporate drones
Warnings Body horror in one prompt

[various, morphing] you are here, in the body you know best
Alloran makes some effort not to morph in front of people, but it takes a couple of minutes for him to change and he does so a few times a day, going from Andalite to human, or human to Andalite. Sometimes, on the outside of the Rig, Andalite back and forth with a six-winged alien bird the size of an eagle. Chances of stumbling across him somewhere in the process are decent.

No matter what shapes are involved, it's very bad to look at. Flesh moves like soft clay. Limbs wither and suck in, or sprout suddenly. Teeth may appear and cluster before a mouth forms to hold them, or be pushed to the outside when a mouth seals up and vanishes. Fur and hair grow like a time lapse or suck into his skin. There are muffled squishing and crunching sounds. It all looks like it should be extremely painful.

<Don't worry about it,> he'll tell anyone who sees, his tone distracted, the changes slowing. <It's unsightly, but there's no harm to anyone.>

[KP] dust the shelves, scrub the sink
The kitchens are no place for Andalite shape. There just isn't space for four legs and an enormous tail. Alloran's here in his chosen, unremarkable human morph and the jumpsuit set aside for it. When he's just set to tasks like chopping or washing or stirring things, it goes okay, even if he sneaks tastes of things like the liquid soap or suds or a leaf from someone's potted jade plant on its shelf overhead. In fairness, the plant's leaves have a glossy appealing look. Maybe you say something to him then.

In any case, he's then tasked to combine chopped raw Rig-grown vegetables to make a salad mix and uh. In among the acceptable stuff there are coffee grounds, and crushed eggshells, and potato peels, several tablespoons of cinnamon, and torn up paper... now he's taken down a bottle of vanilla and is unscrewing the top from an industrial-sized container of salt? Please stop him.

[morning ritual] nap with your windows open to the rain
In the confines of the enclosed gardens, Alloran is looking out of a window, his tail curling and flexing, opening and closing his seven-fingered hands. Get closer and you can pick up that he's repeating something.

<From the water that gave birth to us, from the grass that feeds us, for the freedom that unites us, we rise to the stars. Freedom is my only cause, duty to the people is my only guide, obedience to my prince, my only glory. The destruction of my enemies, my most solemn vow. I, Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, Andalite War-Prince, offer my life.>

There's an energy around him, some blend with grief and frustration where frustration is building. He paws the deck with a forehoof and shakes himself off, fur rousing, before he shifts an eyestalk, sees he's observed, and turns to face.

<Yes? Is there an issue?>

Wildcard
Anything else!

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"Oh my god, Alloran!" Saturday suddenly materializes by his elbow. "No - jesus no!"

She carefully pries the salt and vanilla from his hands, thoroughly flustered. Sampling the drano was bad enough - did he put drano in the salad, oh god -

"Those are not - half of this is garbage, okay?" She shakes her head, exasperated, and sweeps the salad mix off the counter and into a pail. "Since you put it in with regular food, now it's all garbage. I know this is all new to you, but you can't just add whatever you like! People could have gotten sick, eating that!"

She is maintaining through sheer grit the air of a primary school teacher with a very creative and challenging student. KP with the andalite has been an Experience.

Edited 2020-05-07 14:17 (UTC)

He flinches as Saturday seems to appear, relatively broad human shoulders hunching. This is the awful thing about human morph, or one of them: a very limited range of vision and no way to look at multiple things at a time.

"That isn't garbage. All of that goes back into the garden and enriches the soil," he says stubbornly. The salt was maybe a bad idea, but that's the one questionable element as far as he's concerned. "None of it's inedible and it all has an enriching texture or flavor."

"Coffee ground and eggshells don't taste good to most of the people here," Saturday says, elbowing him aside and cleaning his workstation of the god-knows-what he'd been adding. "The texture is unpleasant, among other things. Potato peel is something people can eat, but it needs to be cooked or it tastes and feels wrong."

As she speaks, she gestures generally in the direction of what she's cleaning up. He's new. This is education. Do not get frustrated, Saturday.

"Cinnamon is a spice, used to add flavor, not a food. Eating too much just by itself makes people sick, for serious. You don't use that much. If you used it in a salad, it would be in the dressing - a kind of cold sauce, sweet or savory, that goes over the plants and such, which are called the greens - not on the greens themselves. And paper is not food, ever. Vanilla is another kind of spice. It smells really good, but it tastes to most people like raw rocket fuel if you eat it by itself."

She realizes she's gone on a diatribe and reels herself in with a quick, sunny smile flashed in his direction.

"The salt wasn't a bad idea, though! A little bit of salt makes most things taste better."

He cedes the workstation, since she's this determined about it.

Human food is incredibly elaborate in what strikes him as a completely arbitrary way. He's not actually sure what 'sweet' or 'savory' are, beyond flavor descriptors, and why the plants are 'greens'. Earth plants all apparently have chlorophyll and so tend to an almost monochromatic series of green, but the plants apparently on the approved list included carrots (orange) and radishes and beets (variously white and red).

"I don't see what's unpleasant about the texture of eggshells, when they've been crushed sufficiently," he insists. "They're also rich in minerals."

"Most of the time, if humans don't like to eat something that isn't toxic or rotten, it's because it smells, or looks, or tastes like something that could be toxic or rotten or otherwise bad for us. We learned to not like certain flavors, looks, and textures back when we could barely think because that's how we avoided eating things that could kill us."

She takes out another tub of prepped vegetables. "You can eat them if you want, but when you're making food for other people, you have to think about what they like to eat, too. C'mon," she gestures. "Let me show you how to do this, an' then we can make some dressing for it. Learn by doing, sort of thing."

Her hands move like darting insects as she speaks, tossing greens together with practice skills. "The trick with a good salad is proportions. And also not to use iceberg lettuce, but Jorg's too cheap for real greens, so we're making do. Iceberg lettuce is crunchy but doesn't have a lot of taste or, frankly, nutritional value. But I see they gave us some spinach, and shredded carrots - ugh, radishes. But people do like them, so..."

This is now Saturday's operation. But she narrates as she goes, clearly expecting him to be paying attention.

Alloran exhales out of his human nose and submits to watching. The mixing of plants makes more intuitive sense than the rest of this, though his inclination is to render it in finer pieces. It's like field rations. Particularly nutritious grass, leaves, mealybugs and the like are cut fine and then compressed and preserved in various ways. They're much more portable than a proper grazing field and that is practical and useful, though the rations themselves have been despised probably for all time.

Stupid thing to miss. He's probably going to be eating the tough silica-heavy green grass of Earth for the rest of his life.

"What makes it not a real green? It's grown here. It was rooted and alive yesterday."

"It's a real plant, yeah," Saturday says, some of her equilibrium recovered now that she's able to prevent culinary catastrophe. "But iceberg lettuce is kinda notorious for having basically no nutritional value. It's crunchy and very cool, lots of water, but not much else. An' it doesn't have a real taste. Mostly it's just cheap filler."

Saturday has mixed the salad greens, and is now cheerfully ignoring the industiral quantities of fucking disgusting goo-salad dressing. Instead she's filched several containers of, among other things, oil, vinegar, buttermilk, and garlic.

"And now we make the dressing. Gonna aim for two kinds - a creamy one and a more oily one, so people can add what they like. As always with cooking," Did Alloran ask for cookery lessons? He's getting them anyway, "we start with prep. Let me show you how to chop garlic heads - these are safe to eat raw so have a nibble, get a sense for how it feels. Raw garlic is eaten medicinally sometimes, but mostly you cook it with something else, as a flavoring." She has a head of garlic peeled and chopped in a moment, and offers a bit to Alloran.

"So it's Earth grass, essentially. A lot of species look appealing but they're low on calories and nutrients, and the flavors don't have the range or complexity of domestic varietals." Andalites have bred and tweaked strains of edible plants from their own homeworld for thousands of years. It's not a fair comparison.

This part seems more technological, or scientific. Is that how humans approach food? Is that why they associate making it with women? No, he remembers, humans and Andalites have different views on the typical roles of women.

He eats the garlic clove without hesitation. "Oh, it's good! Almost like drain cleaner," he marvels, briefly more energetic and animated. "What a strong flavor."

"You guys are vegetarians, then?" Saturday asks, making conversation while chopping the garlic. "No wonder you didn't want the sausage... I'll remember that. And, uh, don't drink drain cleaner, please, or serve it to anyone else. It might taste good, but it's toxic and deadly. Garlic is fine, though! It's one of my favorite spices, I put it in everything."

She offers him a tub of crumbled white cheese. "This should be blue cheese, which is not actually blue, not sure why they call it that, but the kitchens didn't have any, so instead I'm using feta. This is feta, have a taste - just take a chunk and eat it, there you go."

Saturday dumps the rest in her creamy dressing base, along with the garlic, and starts to mix.

"My pops taught me how to cook," she says, while waiting for Alloran's take on the feta. "He used to tell me, if you can feed 'em, you can lead 'em - people's hearts are reached through their stomachs. Hard to hate someone you've broken bread with in good faith, you know?"

"We are grazers, mostly. We'll eat the insects and other little animals that live in the grass. Earth has those segmented worms that come up out of the ground when it rains - those are good. Excellent texture." He doesn't comment on why he doesn't eat other kinds of meat. Or on drain cleaner. His human stomach is starting to shiver and send uncertain signals, so maybe the refreshing beverage is deadly, but he can morph out if it becomes too uncomfortable. That means he'll sample it again in the future.

"Cheese is secreted by large hooved animals, I think? Cows, or cattle, or whatever you call them?" He has a vague notion he picked up from Aria that it's scraped or washed off in some procedure that has to be done frequently for the animal's health. After considering for a second, he puts the piece of cheese into his mouth and sends out an astonished impression.

It's soft! There are aspects of flavor linked powerfully to smell, smell is often a good indication of flavor, but there's also the novelty of processing items in a sensitive orifice equipped with a grasping appendage, and how that makes even more familiar elements like texture and taste seem new. Without even being chewed, feta dissolves into many intense particles that flow with predigestive juices and spreads a curious brightness. Alloran needs a moment.

Saturday understands. Cheese is powerful.

"You know," she says idly, when Alloran seems to be recovering from his trance, "Feta is just one kind of cheese. Well, one kind of one type of cheese. There's thousands of cheeses out there, and each one is unique."

She finishes her mix and scoops out a spoonful of dressing. "Here. This is salad dressing, which is a kind of cool sauce that goes on salads. This type is creamy, meaning that it uses dairy products - which come from cows, yes. Dairy is made from milk. Milk is used by cows to feed their young, but they overproduce it, so we take what's left and make food from it. Not just cheese - milk can be made into all kinds of things. Cream, butter, yogurt - it's essential for baking, for cream sauce, even for helping feed human young - cows, and other milk-giving animals, are very important. If you see one," she says, entirely seriously, "tell it thanks for the hard work."

She's not setting him up. Saturday was raised by a devout animist; cows work hard, so they deserve respect.

"And I suppose with this Earth as it is, there are many fewer," he says with real regret.

"Humans also make milk," he observes, taking the spoon with exaggerated care. Human hands are a bit clumsy by his standards and it would be easy to spill the combined fluid. "Andalites have a rough equivalent. Do you want to be thanked? I don't think I do. It was a particular effort and difficulty, but it was also quite a long time ago."

He puts the spoon in his mouth and makes a little noise down in his throat. It's approved, apparently.

"There's a strong taboo around using our own milk for anyone but our own children. It's something to do with sex, probably." Saturday shrugs. "Human mothers can't always make enough to feed their children, or sometimes the baby has trouble feeding. Mixing together milk from other animals can keep them alive when something like that happens. It's another one of those deep history things, you know? Over the course of our entire history, having animals to supply extra milk has been a very important reason we survived."

She pours the handmade dressing into its squirt bottle - the sheer savagery of this place, culinarily speaking, is appaling and starts on the next one.

"So this is gonna be the oil-based dressing. You're gonna find that compared the cream one, it has a much lighter taste. Since the cream dressing usesd a savory cheese I'm going to use a sweet fruit for this dressing."

She offers him a bright red, bulbous fruit about the size of her thumb. "This is a raspberry. Give it a taste. Think about how it's different from the cheese, and you'll start to understand the difference between a sweet flavor and a savory flavor. And understanding flavors is the essence of cooking."

"...it's not that I don't believe you about the harm part." said Dojima. He sounds incredibly appalled -- if not outright creeped out by the transformation! Flesh shouldn't move like that!

That's going to be hard to forget.

"...should I leave?"

In case there's more morphing to be done? While he does seem to be...done for now, what does Dojima know? Nothing, really.

There is a pop of jawbones coming into alignment, and the morph is done. Unsteady on two bare feet, Alloran gets upright - as happens often, he fell over while morphing human, which did not help how it looked at all - and tucks his long hair back behind his ears in an incongruously normal gesture.

"No, I've finished. My apologies if you were disturbed." There's a flat, resigned quality to his voice, and a little mushiness of the consonants.

The clothing that formed during the morph is not adequate to how cold the inside of the Rig is right now. He's goosebumped up and already shivering as he picks up the one-piece coveralls sized for this body and frowns at them. "All right. How do I put this on? Through the neck hole?"

Dojima is pretty sure what he saw breaks a couple physics principles. Where does all the mass go?

...

Just--Just try to take it in stride, Dojima. Trying hard to not think about the mechanics of the transformation, he gestures vaguely at the ankles of the coveralls.

"Feet go in first. Once you got them in the rest is like putting on a hood on your entire body."

An excellent question, though it does have an answer. He also normally weighs several hundred pounds, the most of any of the New Hires so far, and presently does not.

"This is a terrible garment," he complains, starting with it backwards and then having to disentangle. "Now I see the point of having discrete pants. How do your people stand for this?"

He may mean this literally. To keep from falling over he's leaned against a wall.

Mac's seen the weird centaur guy in passing, but it didn't actually occur to him that the guy was a person until he heard him talk. He just assumed he was a giant pet or pack animal or maybe a Muppet. It's one thing to accept a talking giant rabbit or whatever; those are at least Earth-shaped. It's another to try and wrap one's head around the idea that this clearly alien being might be a teammate and not just an animated coatrack.

He stumbles on Alloran by accident, honestly. Mac typically doesn't get up before ten, a habit he credits to working "late nights" but which is more a function of laziness and the fact that his alarm clock's been broken for half a decade. He's only awake now, here wandering the gardens, because the entirety of...this...has upset his usual routines and replaced deep drunken slumber with listless tossing and turning punctuated with intermittent and incoherent nightmares. As such, he's stretching his legs, slid into a non-regulation sleeveless uniform that he's missed a belt loop or two on. Stretching his legs and keeling around for company, which he finds in an unexpectedly inhuman and blue source.

"Amen." He presses his hands together and nods his head. "Dude, that's a hardcore psalm. Real badass."

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[OPEN] it comes, it comes, it comes

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Morphing

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[morning ritual]