Chapter Fifteen

"So, keep that in mind as you attempt to sway The Heirophant one way or another. Let him decide on his own."

 

Nothing was quite as surreal as watching an elder god go through an existential crisis. Gina did her best to make her feel at home, ignoring how sexually frustrating it was to wake up each morning with a beautiful girl cuddling her, but every day, Callana would drift off into the corners of their apartment, staring at nothing for hours. Whatever Callana had meant by “being dead,” she’d certainly taken it poorly. Von and Clenard seemed just as lost as Gina, and they hadn’t helped much when she asked them what to do.

Gina wasn’t a therapist, and she definitely wasn’t going to force herself into the role of one; that would probably hurt Callana—and herself—more than it would help. Still, she hated the sight of this once-free-spirited girl drifting into a depressive spiral.

So, that Friday night after work, she mustered up all her courage, gritted her teeth, and marched up to Callana as she sat on the couch, watching some show about cooking country-style pierogi.

“Doyouwanttogoonadatewithme?” she asked, forcing the question through her teeth.

Callana cocked her head, turning to face her. Brovar’s ashes, why did this have to be so hard?

“I mean,” Gina said, “do you wanna, like, go get dinner tonight? Or something?” She chuckled awkwardly, envisioning Von’s inevitable mockery later.

“Dinner… that is a ‘meal,’ yes?” Callana asked, that old toothy grin showing its face.

“Yeah, it’s a meal. With food. And, uh, atmosphere.”

“Hmm. Yes! Okay! I will eat the dinner with the—with Gina!”

Why on Brovar’s green earth did Gina frame this as a date? It wasn’t a date. Clearly it wasn’t a date. Callana was wearing a T-shirt, and Gina was in athletic shorts—obviously, that meant it wasn’t a date. So, she’d taken Callana to a fancy restaurant. So, that fancy restaurant had a blood-red carpet, dangling chandeliers, dim lights, and a tasting menu. So, she couldn’t afford anything on the menu, and so she was going to front the whole bill anyway, so what?

“It is dark in here,” Callana said, sipping on her water, which they’d served in a champagne flute. She kept staring at the glass hungrily, and as much as Gina hated to admit it, the flute looked damn tasty. Why, why, why did she think that?

Because it probably tasted great, that’s why.

Still, this was a public place, and they hadn’t come to eat the tableware. Although… Gina had half a mind to swipe one of the salad forks, which looked like it had a certain umami—no, no, she wasn’t about to steal a fork for a snack.

“You’ve thoroughly ruined my sense of taste,” she said, flipping through the menu.

“What did I do?” Callana asked.

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Is this about the bottles?”

“It might be about the bottles.”

Callana grinned. “They are good.”

Gina sighed. “Way too fucking good.”

“I know why humans do not eat not-food—because they would die, you see—but it is a shame.”

Gina shook her head. “What are you gonna order?”

“I do not know,” Callana said. “Hmm. I… I have not had much of the food. What of the foods is best?”

“I dunno, it’s subjective. Von loves beans, I hate ’em. Does that mean beans are bad? Nah, it’s just that I don’t like them. So, you might not like one thing on the menu, but you might like another thing. It’s all up to you.”

“Hmm. Yes! I will like the things that th—that Gina likes, and not what Von likes.”

“Uh, well, I don’t know if that’s how it works.”

“I will have what you have!”

Gina shrugged. “If you want, I won’t stop you. Just know this: I have quite a particular palate.”

“Palate?”

“The kinds of foods I like. They’re a bit… unconventional.”

“Like bottles?”

Gina frowned.

“Shut.”

For a moment, they smiled at each other, but they then took a few moments to look over the menu. The grilled shashlik looked fantastic, but she’d have to ask them to remove the tomatoes… and the onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, and endelroots. That, however, would just leave her with meat on a stick. Now, Gina wasn’t about to pretend that meat on a stick wasn’t fantastic on its own, but… she could have the pirozhki without any modifications, even if she liked it a bit less. And if Callana was about to copy her order, well, how could Gina properly introduce the girl to traditional Borakovoni dishes if she got such a heavily modified order? No, she’d start them off with some salads, some lamb, and then she’d try a few different types of pirozhki. From the list on the menu, they had dozens of varieties, so she selected a good half-dozen, wincing at the prices, and ordered a few for the both of them.

Their stuffy waiter walked off with their order, adorned in flowy, black robes with jewels sewn into the seams, leading up to starched, white lapels. His face looked face bizarrely pale and powdered—apparently, the old nobility had liked lightening their skin tones with charcoal ash, and the habit had stuck among the upper crust. Frankly, given how dark most Borakovoni people’s skin tones were compared to northerners like—well, whoever’s body Callana’s form was based off—Gina considered the effect rather ghostly and odd.

“Hopefully you’ll like pirozhkis,” Gina said. “They’re these little puff pastry buns with a whole bunch of different fillings. And yeah, they’re street food, but this place has its own flair, so it should be properly fancy.”

Callana cocked her head. “Do you think I will like food?”

“Probably,” Gina said. “I do. Most people do, to be honest.”

“But I am not a person.”

Gina raised her eyebrows. “No, you are a person. You’re just not a human. But humans aren’t the only kinds of people, you know.”

“There are other people?”

“You, for one. Those Angry Things you talk about probably are, too. Here on earth, it’s just humans—and you—but I’m pretty liberal with personhood, y’know?”

“Hmm. Yes! It makes sense. Person means 'thinking-thing,' so I am a person. Yes?”

“You got it.”

Callana seemed to like that, though Gina could sense a distinct hesitance in the girl about being labelled as anything close to human. Perhaps she was taking this whole thing about changing upon death as some kind of… dissolution of herself. As though she was less “Callana” than she was before.

“You’ve been doing a great job at work, you know,” Gina said, offering a faint smile.

“Yes?” Callana said, again cocking her head. “I am not good with words, and Ron keeps telling me that.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s an absolute cock-face.”

Blinking, Callana nodded along. “Yes! He has a… face.”

“That he does.”

“I do not understand the faces people make. There are a lot of them, and they are com-pli-cated. There are so many things I can understand, but faces are hard…”

Gina paused. “Maybe you should talk to Clenard about that. He’s always struggled with that kind of thing, too, so he might have some tips and tricks. I mean, most people just kinda know how to read other people by instinct, but there aren’t any real… rules, per se.”

“That is the problem!” Callana said, her voice rising loud enough that Gina cringed, looking around to see if anyone had started staring at them.

“If there were rules,” Callana said, “I would have learned them. But there are no rules, so I cannot learn them. It is in-furi-ating.”

“You’ve got me there,” Gina said. “It’s complicated down here. And it honestly sounds like you didn’t really have all that much to do up in space.”

“I am now realizing how boring it was,” Callana said, fiddling with her silverware, which was still all bundled up in the cloth napkins the waiter had set out for them. “Mostly, it is black up there. I had nothing to do but eat, so I ate a lot. And that was… not good of me to do.”

“That sucks,” Gina said, leaning in.

“Stars do taste good, though,” Callana said wistfully. “Not all have planets…”

Gina raised an eyebrow. She took a sip from her champagne flute.

“If you wanted to,” Callana said with a bashful grin, “perhaps I could… find a star with no planet, and you could try one, someday.”

Sputtering in shock, Gina’s teeth accidentally sliced a piece of the glass off as she choked on her drink. She took a moment to clear her throat before swallowing the shard. She’d left a clean bite mark in the flute, and she flushed in utter humiliation at the realization that she’d probably have to explain how that happened.

“I think I’m a mite bit smaller than a star, Cal,” Gina said, setting her glass down and hoping nobody noticed. Silently, she pondered if it would be a good idea to just down the whole flute and claim she hadn’t gotten one in the first place. By Brovar, it had tasted absolutely divine. Turns out, fancy restaurants didn’t just serve good food, they served good tableware.

“I could make the star smaller and bring it here,” Callana said, frowning. “I think. If it’s a small star, maybe. The biggest ones taste the best though. I like the blue ones.”

For a moment, Gina considered what it would be like to have a beautiful woman pluck one of the stars out of the sky just for her—that sounded way too romantic, though. It felt wrong to think of Callana that way, but it was so hard to avoid that.

She’d asked Callana on a date, for Brovar’s sake, so it was twice as hard as usual. Her cheeks burned, and she hoped Callana didn’t realize why.

“I mean… maybe, I guess,” Gina said, almost as fidgety as her date. Were someone to stare at the two of them, they’d see two young women, twiddling with their fingers, desperately trying not to make eye contact, while failing miserably.

“Yes? It would be hard—I am not as strong as I was, but I might be able to. Would you like one for… I know this word… dessert?”

“Wait, tonight?”

“Yes! I can get one tonight!”

“Holy shit—and I can actually eat it without, like, burning alive?”

“Easy,” Callana said. “I fixed you very good, you know.”

“And it’ll be… unpopulated? No consequences?”

“Unpopulated! No con-se-quences!”

“None of those alien guys are gonna come and blow up the planet, either?”

Shaking her head, Callana grinned. “I can put a black hole where the star was, so it will not change gra-vity. I am clever!”

Just then, the first of the salads arrived; it had kale and apple slices, with various fruits and vegetables Gina could stand to eat. The waiter fluffed out his puffy suit shoulders, then reached for his tray, procuring a silver pot, from which he drizzled an artful vinaigrette onto the salads in a swishy pattern. Wordlessly, he shuffled off to the kitchen, his nose pointed skyward.

“I guess this’ll be an interesting meal, then,” Gina said.

 

Hello, friends! If you're enjoying this story, consider supporting me on Patreon! If you'd like more stories, I post new chapters to my mainline series every Monday and Friday, and I upload a new short story every other Wednesday! Below are some of my other stories.

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Little Comforts: The world ends, and two men, Dan and Andrew, must rush to the shore for safety, pursued by a vengeful soldier and the remains of her family.