Biting my lip, I nod and do my best to look contrite.
"Look, you know I love a woman putting a douchebag in his place as much as anyone, and Valmir is competing heavily for the douchebag crown. But we're looking down the barrel of a crisis at the moment. It's gonna be snail season any day now, and we've got cave people and gladiators popping out of the mountains left and right. I do not have time for this shit."
She makes it sound like we're an endless stream of crises all happening at once, and maybe it feels like that for her. I just have to cook lunch and do my regular chores, but Liz is raising three girls, and she and her mate pretty much run the show lately now that R'jaal resonated and won't get out of Rosalind's hair.
(Not that Rosalind wants him to.)
I admire Liz. I like her. I like that she gets shit done. She's got a crazy work ethic, but she also likes to laugh and have fun. Everyone respects her. Some people fear her. Honestly, goals. I want that respect, too. I'll take a bit of fear as well. I'd get so much more done if people thought I was someone to be wary of...like right now, when Liz is treating me like a naughty child. "I'm sorry it's so stressful for you."
"It's not, but I'm trying to put these fires out before shit does get stressful. Understand me?"Her brows go up.
I realize she indeed wants an answer to this rhetorical question. "I do understand you. I'll have a talk with Valmir."
I'll do no such thing. Talking to Valmir is like talking to a really annoying brick wall. Liz doesn't need to know I'm going to continue avoiding him. I can get a few days out of a simple white lie, at least.
Liz makes a face at me. "Sure you will. For the record, you lie worse than my toddler does. Just shut this shit down, or I'm going to lock you both in a hut together and throw away the key."
My eyes go wide, this time in legit alarm. "I'll do something about it, I promise."
It's just not as simple as Liz thinks it is. Nothing with Valmir is simple.
Nothing in my life has been simple since the day we resonated.
CHAPTER 2
APRIL
WEEKS AGO AT THE DING-DING FEAST
"Where's the stewed scorpion?"Devi asks me as she hands me a bowl of dried seaweed.
Where's the what? I stare at her as I take the bowl. "Please tell me you're joking. We've been eatingscorpionshere on this planet?"
"We eat everything." Devi beams at me. "And the scorpions are especially tasty. If you can eat a crab, you can eat a scorpion. They're both arthropods."
I give her another blank stare. Like it matters if they're arthropods?
"Arthropods are?—"
"Scorpions, or crabs, I get it," I tell her, biting back a laugh. "I'd seen the shrimp tea, but I didn't realize we were eating sand-scorpions, too."
I don't know why I'm surprised. Everyone here has a great respect for the land and its creatures. If something can be eaten or utilized, we do so. The land might give us its bounty, but there's no rule that says it has to be attractive. I put aside the fish I'm scaling, then pause to say apuleover it before I forget.
"Did you say something?" Mari asks, leaning over me to grab the salt cellar.
"Just thanking the fish for feeding us today," I tell her, then look around for a bowl full of dead sand-scorpions in the vast array of food prep at our station. "Have you seen sand-scorpions?"
"Nope." She snags the salt cellar and races off.
All around me, people are rushing about to prepare food for Flor's wedding feast. It's supposed to be a surprise, since Flor and I'rec have pretty much been together since I met them, and they resonated so there wasn't a wedding ceremony, but Flor wanted a traditional Filipino wedding feast and so we're putting one on as best we can.
Or rather, Sabrina is putting it on with the help of several of the women and men here. I'm just trying to help any way I know how. I've been assisting Devi because she's friendly and chatty and you can't help but enjoy her enthusiasm for everything. She never gets mad if you're terrible at doing whatever chore you help her with, and if you stay around her long enough, she starts giving you scientific tidbits like how they'd found a fish here that has a thick layer of blubber, which makes it not really a fish but a mammal, and blubber is full of collagen. Or did I know that the fish on this planet developed an extra set of fins and some show primordial sets of lungs?
I did not know this. I did not know any of it. Devi then tried to rip apart a fish that Penny was filleting so she could show me said primordial lungs, but I told her we'd peek at them another day. Now I'm searching for a bowl that's supposed to be full of sand-scorpion, and it's nowhere to be found. "You don't suppose they got up and walked away? Or is it possible someone ate them already?"
Devi pauses in her chopping. "Wasn't Valmir working on it? I sent him off with a large basket of them anhour ago."
"He's got them? I'll go see how they're coming," I tell Devi, wiping my hands on my leather apron. "Anything else?"