Cooking Disaster [2430-1-4-Wed-7:00am]

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass hadn't slept well. There had been a few bits where she'd been sleeping solidly for one or two hours, but the rest had been nothing but light, restless sleep, disturbed everytime the engine made a weird noise, or the ship shook any, or anybody started moving around.

To make matters worse, she was starving. She'd only gone out to dinner last night to get something to eat but had left without taking a bite of anything, even the entrée they'd served. Cass had to go eat pretty soon, otherwise she'd start getting ill, and the connections between her mind and limbs would get weaker. An unfortunate side-effect of the prosthetics was that they worked best when she was clear-headed, and worst when she wasn't. Cass was really hoping to fix that as soon as she figured out how to do it.

She got dressed in her other set of clothes. She'd have to figure out what to do with the first set. Maybe she could wash them? She hadn't washed anything before in her life, but she was going to have to figure it out because she didn't have anything else to wear.

Hood up, Cass quickly headed out and into the mess hall. It wasn't as awful to walk into when it was empty. It was smaller than the dinning room back home, and even smaller than their kitchen, which Cass had rarely gone into. The servants always made her food for her, and the few times she'd gone in were salvage missions to find the peice she needed for her latest improvement.

Cass managed to locate the fridge and looked in it, hoping to find something to eat. But it looked like there weren't many pre-made meals, and certainly not anything with as much protein as her system needed right now. She began looking through the drawers to find meat. Cass wasn't sure what to do with it when she found it, but she'd figure it out. How hard could it be? The servants didn't seem particularly educated, so someone as smart as Cass would be able to solve the problem with ease.

[Olive]

Olive hopped down the hallway. It had been weird sleeping on a moving space ship again but it was certainly better than trying to do it in the seat of the shuttle that she and Sol had arrived on Terra in. However, she'd had a fairly good sleep and was in good spirits. She really needed breakfast, though. Her tummy was rumbling like crazy.

She turned the corner and was surprised to see Cass rifling around in the kitchen. She figured she must be even more hungry than Olive was, since she hadn't eaten her dinner the night before. "Good morning!" she beamed at her.

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass was started by the cheery voice and nearly knocked her head on the fridge. She stepped back, turning to see who it was. It was the Faun from yesterday. Olive? Cass was pretty sure that was her name.

"um. morning." Cass returned the greeting, much less enthusiastic than Olive. Another glance at the fridge still revealed no protein, just fresh vegetables and grains. "... do you know where the meat is?" Cass had a sudden horrible thought. What if it didn't carry any meat? What if they were all vegetarians? "does this ship carry any?"

[Olive]

"Meat?" Olive couldn't help but scrunch up her nose. Gross. Why anyone would want to eat meat was beyond her, all bloody and smelly, but it seemed the fauns were one of the few races who thought that. "Uhmm... I think I saw some yesterday in the crate. I put it in the freezer cause I didn't know what else to do with it."

"Is there any salad left?" she wondered, peering into the fridge over the door. "There was some left over from supper but maybe they all ate the rest of it for breakfast..." Then she spotted it, shoved to the back of the fridge. "Oh it's still there... I guess no one had breakfast yet..." she frowned a little.

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass almost felt a little bad for a faun. It was clear she didn't like meat and probably didn't understand that other people needed it, especially the men. There just wasn't enough energy in fruits and grains to keep you going. At home, Cass had eaten a specially prepared diet to help her body compensate for the lost limbs and weird energy drains caused by operating the prosthetics all the time. She'd learned a lot about necessary nutrition, just in case she ever found herself without her cooks and father to look after her.

But she hadn't learned about cooking. She was going to have to fix that. Cass opened the freezer and looked over the meat. There was a pound of hamburger in there, and she grabbed it. That would be perfect. "salad isn't really a breakfast food..." She said to Olive, setting the frozen block of meat on the cupboard.

[Olive]

"It isn't?" Olive wondered. She was pretty sure it was. Maybe not for humans, though. "I have it for breakfast all the time..."

She eyed the hunk of meat on the cupboard. It looked really gross. Like something that came out of the back end of a creature, maybe. Except it was the wrong color, she supposed. A sick creature maybe. "You're really gonna eat that?"

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass didn't really want to talk, but she had a sinking feeling that nobody else was going to tell Olive that humans weren't big on salad all the time. They probably thought they were saving her feelings, like lying to someone for a long time wouldn't just bring more hurt when they found out. And if Olive was the cook, then she had to know because Cass was not eating nothing but salad for every meal.

"I have to." She said to Olive, unwrapping the paper and then digging through the cupboards, looking for some sort of dish. "humans need protein and dairy, and stuff that isn't just vegetables. we're not herbivores." She found a metal tray. Cass set the frozen meat on it, trying to ignore how weird it felt to be touching the frozen raw meat.

Now she had to cook it. She was pretty sure you couldn't cook something like this on top of the stove, so it would have to go inside. She turned the dial, setting it at 250 celsius. That seemed like a safe temperature. You could sterilize plenty of things with that sort of heat. She put it inside the oven, then turned on the little light so she could see inside.

[Olive]

"I didn't know that... I guess that's why Sol always went hunting. Sometimes with the Elves too..." Olive pondered. She'd thought it was just cause they liked it for some weird reason, not why they needed it to live. This changed a lot.

Olive watched her dig around in the kitchen and eventually put the meat into the weird box. Cass flicked some switches and the inside of the box lit up much to Olive's surprise. "Ooo. What's that do??"

[Cassandra Nida]

If Cass were a bit more open, she probably would have opened her mouth and shown Olive the difference between their teeth. Olive's were likely flat, where Cass had a mix of flat and sharp. But that was just weird to do with someone she didn't know, so Cass just nodded.

She was a little shocked Olive didn't know what a stove was. Cass had never cooked and even she knew. But things were different on other planets. And most of Antheia didn't have electricity. "it's a stove. it makes heat, like... fire, but without open flame. it'll start getting hot in another few minutes, and then it'll cook the meat."

Already, the lump of hamburger was sweating, blood melting and running out of it in the oven and pooling in the tray. Cass hadn't seen this side of cooking before, and she was beginning to wish she didn't have to. But maybe it would be better once it stopped melting and started looking like it was supposed to.

[Olive]

"Heat without fire... hmmm..." Olive pondered this. The humans really were impressive with the things they'd invented. Usually the fauns used fire for heat and for dancing around. Sometimes some vegetables would be cooked on it, but never meat. "What does cooking do to meat??"

She nosed her way in to peer into the stove as well, curious as to what was happening in there. She quickly wrinkled her nose at the sight of the sizzling meat. "Ewww what's it doing... is that blood??"

[Cassandra Nida]

"well... it makes it taste better. and it kills bacteria and germs that could make us sick." Cass had eaten some meat raw before, mostly fish. She loved sushi. But it wasn't likely that they'd have any sushi here. Fish was super expensive, and even Cass' father hadn't bought it often. Real meat was always so much harder to get a hold of, especially the further away the planet was.

"yeah. it's... I think it's defrosting." Cass looked at the meat again, then decided not to watch it cook for a while. "the blood will go away when the oven gets hotter... I think."

[Olive]

"So... your body needs it to survive... but it has stuff in it that could make someone sick?" Olive pondered. "Something that's good and bad for you... that's weird!"

Olive was completely grossed out by the view in front of her, but for some reason she couldn't bring herself to look away. It was so weird and gross, yet so interesting. "So how long does it take? Will it be done soon?"

[Cassandra Nida]

"if we all eat raw meat from birth, it wouldn't make us sick. but we all cook it, so we never get used to the bacteria." There were a lot of things bodies didn't get used to. For a project once, Cass had drank unpasteurized milk, and it had been completely awful. Her father couldn't understand why Cass would do that, when she didn't have to do anything she didn't want to. But she'd wanted to know, especially since a lot of humans on Heimdall drank it that way. You got used to things and eventually they stopped hurting you.

She understand that.

"I... I don't know." Cass admitted. "I've never had to cook before... I had other people to do it for me." She didn't want to tell Olive too much, but she seemed harmless enough. If she didn't know what a stove was, then she probably didn't know how to look up bounties. But on the other hand, could she kept her mouth shut? If Solomon knew... would he turn her in? Or kick her off the ship so she couldn't endanger anyone?

[Olive]

Humans were a strange lot, that's for sure. But Olive liked learning things, so as weird as it was it was all still pretty interesting to her. She stared at the meat for a little while longer as it bubbled and oozed. She definitely couldn't imagine eating it, but boy was it exciting.

"So... what do we do while we wait?" she wondered out loud. "Do we gotta turn it or something? Sometimes they turned vegetables over the fire at home so they got done all the way around... but those are on sticks and not in a box. Should we just keep staring at it??"

[Cassandra Nida]

"well... we could make other food to eat with the meat. we could have some of your salad. ... maybe add a little dressing to it." Did they even have dressing? Or would Olive even know what dressing was? She checked the fridge. Somebody had been smart enough to pick up a bottle. She took it and set it on the counter.

Cass took another peek at the meat. The outside was browning. But what about the inside? With the density of the frozen meat, it meant the outside would cook faster than the inside. So you'd end up with the outer half burnt and the inside raw. She opened the oven, reached in and pulled the pan out, setting it on top of the stove. She'd have to scrape away at the outside.

Only about two seconds later did Cass realize that was a bad move. The skin at the end of her fingers had gotten a bit... melty. She quickly headed to the sink and ran them under some cold water to keep Olive from noticing that she hadn't so much burnt herself as just melted them. "ow." She said, absentmindedly, "ow ow ow." It didn't hurt, but she still had to act like it did.