Hasperat First

Posted on 10 Aug 2023 @ 11:49pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Corporal Syimmi
Edited on on 11 Aug 2023 @ 10:25am

Mission: M4 - Falling Out
Location: "Marine country" Reception Hall
Timeline: Following "Homecoming"
783 words - 1.6 OF Standard Post Measure

After the brass band and honor guard and kind formalities, Ibis felt everything as if she were watching, disembodied. It was surreal. There were people everywhere, honest to goodness people. Although it had been almost a decade without it, now she felt her telepathic blindness so sharply, startling anytime someone shuffled or spoke just outside of her periphery. She avoided reflections of herself in all the polished surfaces they passed along the way, looking away, embarrassed. Everyone was kind and welcoming. She couldn’t seem to commit any names to memory. Aside from Major Finn whom she'd met in sickbay, and the General, MacTayrn, she forgot them as fast as she repeated them back in murmurings.

But whatever their names all were, the Marines had prepared a nice reception. They were always surprisingly prepared to set up a formal or a band night or some other kind of thing. At least that’s what she thought she remembered. Not that Wallace had actually ever seen to throwing any, but sometimes others in the marine complement had. How were you ever supposed to get to know anyone outside of your team if you didn’t have a mixer every now and again?

Olivia was asking her questions. Ibis’ head pulsed with them, but they seemed to flow around her processing center. Ibis couldn’t even make out the subject of any of them, just the pattern of language, the music of a question, the way the punctuation lifted the end. All she could find to say was “...I’m not sure...”

People were talking with Wallace. They got him a chair. They brought him a drink. Ikemba was content in his lap, clinging around his neck. Ibis felt her hand empty of his and she stood, eyes unfocused, not far away from Wallace, but on another world. Under water. The crowd around turned into the bubbling of water.

Time passed, although she didn’t experience it passing.

But everything came rushing back into focus when a six limbed bug-like woman stepped into her eye line and Ibis’ amygdala kicked into drive to warn her. She jumped and her heart raced. “What the—?

“I am saying this, yes? The charcuterie, have you any?” Asked the bug lady.

Ibis’ eyes focused now, she noted this was a marine corporal. She was in a marine dress uniform variant cut to her strange form. And maybe she was more akin to a lobster than a bug? Ibis wasn’t sure how to classify this species. She realized that in the ten years she had been missing, she had no idea what new worlds had joined the federation, or what discoveries had been made… a word finally made it from her ears to her brain.

“No I — there’s charcuterie?”

The woman handed Ibis one of the three plates she was holding, while her one free hand picked from the other two and she nibbled. Everything she said was though a kind of mechanical purr of clicks. “For you, I find. Before tables they all are cleared. You have to get while the getting is good, is yeah?”

Ibis found the plate in her hand, not remembering taking it. There were olives and brie on broken off pieces of dry crackers, and slices of strawberries. There was a mini hasperat, and some glazed nuts. There was something in a little puff pastry and a handful of tiny miniature little citrus slices, almost glowing from within like juicy gems.

“What is matter? Is wrong things. Syimmi, I take guess, what Xeri likes. I take guess, no shrimp. Is done with the ocean eating. Not so? Is wanting shrimp?”

“No, it’s. It’s really beautiful. I almost can’t eat it, it's like a little work of art. It’s perfect.”

Her antenna unfurled, clearly relaxing and leaning outward and away from one another. Syimmi was pleased. “Always, they send me, looking first. Syimmi, good gut feelings. Right again, I guess.”

“I’ve been looking forward to some charcuterie. How did they know?”

“Always is way to go. Each one, he takes what he likes. Is little things, dainty, on tiny picks. To slows them down, says caterer.” Ibis watched as Syimmi's strange, translucent fingers grasped the finger food. They were almost jellyfish-like. “Slows the grunts down, don’t chew like a cow. Tiny plates. Sends them back and forth, is makes for the mingling. This is way to go.”

After a while standing with Syimmi, Ibis finally decided where to begin on the plate. She ate the tiny hasperat first, savoring the mix of textures and the delicate layer of just enough spicy mustard. “Way to go,” she repeated.