New York Carnival

Memory Transcription Subject: Rosi, Yotul Housewife

Date [standardized human time]: November 19, 2136

"Alright," said David, standing up, "this was a fun chat, but I gotta get the next course going."

I watched him head back into the kitchen and begin chopping vegetables. I knew the sound, the crisp wet chp-chp-chp noise of a knife impacting a cutting board through a vegetable stalk, even if he was chopping them astonishingly quickly.

Still, that was the first statement he'd made that I undeniably agreed with. "I hate to admit it," I said to Chiri, "but I think I may, in fact, be having fun."

Chiri shook her head as she stared at her lover. "He enjoys arguing too much," she muttered distastefully. "There's always this… violent glee when he gets the chance to run circles around someone in a conversation. You know? Like… I've seen him get visibly concerned about the thought of hurting any living thing physically, but emotionally? He just loves any chance to show off how clever and pithy he is."

I glanced back towards the kitchen, half-expecting David to rebut that, but with Chiri's voice gone low, it didn't seem like he'd heard. Interesting. Was their hearing really weaker than ours? "Maybe that's the difference," I said, shrugging. "Social predators have social dominance games. More biting words, less actual biting." I didn't know how much I believed that--humanity was probably just faking their civility--but it felt like the sort of statement that might cheer Chiri up.

"I dunno," said Chiri glumly. "I saw that one U.N. ambassador give a heartfelt plea for peace while the Krakotl ambassador was literally pecking at his face. Guy didn't even raise his voice! David… probably would have made the Krakotl ambassador cry. Just casually picked apart everything the bird believed in, for the fun of it."

I found myself suddenly worrying about how much Chiri was projecting. "...are you okay?" I asked. "Has he made you cry?"

Chiri shook her head and growled. "Just once. He looked horrified and stricken afterwards, and he hasn't since. Honestly, he's almost gone too far in the other direction, lately! I'm trying to get stronger, but he's treating me like I'm a fragile little flower." Chiri finished her beer and sighed. "You know he keeps asking me if I want to see a human PD specialist?"

I grimaced. "That sounds horrible, twice over." I finished my beer as well.

Chiri shrugged. "See, that's always the question, though: is a predator's Predator Disease treatment twice as bad, or is it a double-negative and it's actually good?" She sighed, and started rustling around with her barkeeper's tools, just to do something with her paws. "Or am I overusing the 'Predators Versus Prey' lens again, and humans just do things differently for entirely unrelated reasons?"

Gojids' time in the Federation, my memory recapped, several centuries. Yotuls, twenty years. Humanity, four months. If they'd been herbivores, yeah, they'd still be early enough along in their integration process to qualify as an island culture, unconnected from how the mainland galaxy does things.

If. The word echoed inside my head, sonorously, making my skull shake. If they'd been like us. If only!

With the wonderfully fizzy glass of grain alcohol tugging at the edges of my brain, the whole line of thought was giving me a headache. "Who knows what they're about?" I muttered. "I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually if we're stuck here on Earth for long enough and survive. Let's talk about something else for now."

Chiri shook her head hollowly and sighed. "Sure, why not?"

I drummed my paw pads on the bar. "What's there to do around here?"

"Not a lot until spring, if not summer," said Chiri. "Apparently this was a beach area. Humans generally enjoy swimming, and for the ones who don't, they had all kinds of amusement park rides and shopping areas here."

"I could do shopping," I said, rubbing my snout pensively. "We were just starting to get global trade happening on Leirn when the Federation showed up. Steam ships were bringing distant lands together, and shops full of exotic goods were popping up in all the major port cities."

Chiri gestured out the window at the rubble. "New York was a prominent port city as well. I hope I get to see it like that someday, once the rebuilding process really starts showing progress."

I tried to drink from an empty glass, to no avail. "So what's your plan, Chiri? Just kinda bumming around on Earth for now?"

The Gojid perked up. "Oh, no, I've been practicing this human technique of mixing drinks. I want to try bottling and exporting them. I think they might be popular in the Federation." She lined a few of her tools up to demonstrate. "Did they do mixed drinks on Leirn?"

I shook my head. "Not… really? More like the drink equivalent of condiments. Sugar cube goes in this spirit, splash of some herbal tincture goes in that one. We're really more of a beer culture overall."

Chiri nodded. "Same, but more of a wine and cider culture."

I thumped the bar. "Right, your family orchard. Thinking about resuming business?"

Chiri grimaced. "I'd need farmland, a rootstock sample that hasn't been atomized, and a professional botanist to turn the sample back into trees."

I wilted a little. "So rich, basically. You'd need to be rich first."

Chiri shrugged. "Pretty much," she said. "If I want to get back into the business of authentic Garnet Orchards wine, at least. Buuuut…" She grabbed a few bottles off the shelf. "I think I've concocted an oddly-close substitute out of local ingredients, if you're interested."

I stared at the massive library of bottles on the wall that Chiri had plucked her chosen ingredients out of. Every size, every shape, every color, and all meticulously labelled in what I'd come to recognize as the local Terran script. "...you're serious?" I asked. "Humans actually make this many different types of spirits? None of these are Federation imports?"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Not a one," said Chiri, smirking. "Just a bunch of frugivorous primates who've been farming for ten thousand years, and the endless drive of all sapients to turn their brains off for a bit now and then."

"Frugivorous?" I repeated, skeptically. "Where does the meat come in?"

David trotted back in with a set of steaming cups of liquid. "Omnivorous is more accurate," the human said, setting one of the cups down in front of Chiri. "We can generally eat anything that's food. Oh, except cellulose. I mean, we still eat it in some forms…" He shook the other cup for emphasis as he served it to me. "But we kinda evolved away our ability to break cellulose down, so it mostly just passes right through us. Pretty much anything else is fair game, though, especially cooked. But I also don't think it's entirely wrong to say that we tend to have a lingering craving for fruits and other sweet things from our evolutionary ancestors' days living in the trees."

I eyed him up suspiciously. "What fruit pairs best with meat?"

"Prosciutto and melon," David answered, immediately. Unsettling, how readily he had that answer close to hand. "It's a very salty and fatty slice of cured meat. Really pairs beautifully with the mellow sweetness of melon." He tapped his chin, thinking. "I can probably whip up a salad or something with similar flavors, actually. Hrm. Food for thought. Anyway, I brought you a quick little simple vegetable soup. Scarcely more than a mirepoix. Less a course, more a palate-cleanser. Enjoy."

I snorted as I watched the human stalk back towards his kitchen. Dishes that weren't courses, meats that pair with fruits, Predator Disease for predators… "This whole planet is upside-down and backwards," I muttered. "Like I've fallen down a deep hole and landed in Fairyland."

Chiri laughed. "Exactly! That's why I like it here." She sipped at her soup, happy and unharmed by it. "Welcome to the savage predator homeworld. Try the wine, it's to die for."

"But not literally, right?" I asked.

Chiri shrugged, but she was grinning. "Haven't died yet!" She tapped the bartop, letting the forest spirits living in the wood know to bless us with luck and pluck and why the frick was I starting to vibe with her weird superstitions? Yotuls like me were the ones everyone kept calling primitive! Gojids were supposed to be civilized, cosmopolitan, and otherwise have a place carved out for themselves on the galactic stage. Not weirdo mystic runaways hiding out among bloodthirsty trickster spirits.

I shook my head to clear out all the odd thoughts, and looked at my little cup of soup. Wafer-thin slivers of brightly colored vegetables floated in salted warm water, swirling around in little eddies whenever I nudged the cup. Leaves of fresh herbs dotted the spaces in between, slowly wilting in their warm bath as the residual heat cooked them. Unlike the other dishes, I scarcely needed to wait for Chiri to taste-test this one. It was unambiguously made of vegetables. I could see them, individually, clear as if it had been a salad. I took a long warming sip. It was like a savory tea. The floating flecks of produce added a texture to what was otherwise flavored water, but the end result was incredible. Touches of tangy and sweet and bitterly herbaceous underpinned the salty fragrant warmth.

"How the flip does he keep doing this," I muttered, half to myself. "It's a thin soup he threw together in a handful of minutes. How is it this good?"

"I think it's ingredient choice and technique, mostly," said Chiri, a touch louder, at a more normal volume. "Earth grows a ton of different crops. You'd be hard-pressed to find one that isn't delicious, even in a simple preparation."

"Doin' that next!" David called back, audibly trimming and roasting larger vegetables in the kitchen. He even looked like he had a big round gourd that he was disemboweling messily like a poor prey creature's head…

I shivered. "What was that about your family's wine?" I asked Chiri. "It's been ages since I had a glass of Gemstone Harvest."

Chiri smirked. "I really preferred Tears of Autumn myself."

I snorted. "Yeah, and I'm sure when your family literally makes it, you can afford the top-shelf stuff, but for the rest of us working-class stiffs, Garnet Orchards was synonymous with Gemstone Harvest."

"Well, I'm making the fancier variant," said Chiri, nabbing a few bottles off the shelf. "You start with the driest cider you can find as the base, though I've tried Brut Prosecco as well. That adds bubbles and the underlying 'crisp' mouthfeel. Then it's just a matter of finding the perfect blend of different fortified wines and sweet liqueurs to build on it. Right amount of sugar, right amount of fruity flavor… I've been getting good results with umeshu and Pineau de Charentes, but getting it all to come together is tricky…"

Without knowing the Terran ingredients, Chiri's words started blurring together for me, but the result, at the least, looked the part. The pale bubbly cider was stained a deep reddish color by the added spirits and wines, which she stirred gently so as not to agitate the carbonation. The result was a beer glass filled with a fizzy liquid with a very distinct deep red color, and the shimmering clarity of a polished gemstone.

I touched it to my lips and let the sweet and crisp taste of it flow into my mouth, the bubbles tingling all the way down.

It was close. It was astonishingly close. But worst of all…

"Chiri, please don't take this the wrong way," I began, as Chiri's hackles raised in fear of what I was about to say, "but I think this might be better than the original."

"What?!" Chiri blurted out in shock. "Hang on, let me try that." She took a long swig of what she'd made, swished it around her mouth aggressively like she was trying to clean her teeth, and swallowed. The Gojid's face fell in horror. "What the shit, this is better! What the fuck?!" She took another sip, smaller this time, and just let it sit on her tongue as she savored it. "Son of a Letian whore, it's the fucking barrel!"

I blinked in shock at that uncouthly colorful display of language. "What… barrel?" I asked, slowly. "Do Gojids even use wooden barrels?"

"No!" Chiri shouted. "We use metal like every other space-age civilization! You know who still uses wooden barrels in this day and age?"

"...Yotuls?" I said hesitantly.

Chiri rubbed her face in exasperation. "Okay, I did not actually know that about you guys, but sure, I guess that makes sense."

"Yeah, steel foundries are kinda expensive when you don't have fusion reactors or whatever to smelt the ore," I said quietly, through gritted teeth. "But, uh, who else uses wooden barrels?" I asked, trying to set her back up.

"Humans!" Chiri shouted. "Barrel-aged liqueurs have a whole different flavor profile. Less rough, more depth. Gah!" Quickly, nearly by muscle memory, Chiri made two and a half more: one for herself, one for David, and the half to replace what she'd stolen from my glass. She took another sip, and shook her head in annoyance. "Fuckin'... gods, I can't believe I didn't notice this."

I raised my glass to her. "Well, if your goal is bottling drinks for export, it sounds like you've got your first product."

Chiri sighed. "Suppose so," she murmured. "All that, just from knowing how good Terran ingredients can be, and the local techniques of putting them together."

I tapped a tiny claw against the glass… and another against the cup of soup, with all its fragrant and colorful vegetables. Such a maddeningly simple preparation…

I held it up my nose and savored the aroma. With a bit of liquid courage flowing through me, I could feel myself remembering all the old myths of bold and clever heroes stealing secret knowledge from the gods. Surely it wouldn't take terribly long to pilfer the culinary secrets of mere mortal humans. I smiled mischievously. "Maybe there is something useful to be learned here after all…"