“I am—I really am! I so long for my lovely Tabuu!” Lord Torrid exclaimed. “Please tell me about your food to distract me.”
“All right, well, these are sausages…” Em began, as she cut into one. However, having just looked at Lord Torrid’s swollen pair of pink bananas, she found she was less than eager to eat it, so she moved on to the fried egg and explained it instead.
“So you say this is the ovum of an avian species?” Lord Torrid asked, raising his dark pink eyebrows.
“Yes—they’re domesticated animals,” Em explained. “Their eggs are delicious and versatile.” And cold, she thought, as she finally took a bite. If only Lord Torrid would stop talking and let her eat. She finally had some decent food in front of her but he just went on and on, completely oblivious to the fact that she really wanted to have her breakfast.
“And which of these items on your plate are aphrodisiacs?” he inquired next. “Those little brown things?” He pointed to her pile of somewhat misshapen baked beans. Em had been in a hurry as she made them from the clay and had rolled them out any which way. This meant they were all different sizes, but they still tasted quite nice.
“Er, no, those are beans,” Em said, and wished she’d made some toast to go with them.
“Well, are those considered aphrodisiacs then?” he asked, pointing next at her tomatoes.
“Afraid not,” Em said, cutting into one. “Actually, none of this food has any aphrodisiac qualities.”
“None?” Lord Torrid looked shocked. “But how very strange!”
“Not really,” Em said shortly. “Actually, none of the food on Earth can be said to be a true aphrodisiac. I mean, some foods are rumored to have qualities that enhance, er, libido, but none of them really affect sexual performance—as far as I know.”
“Why, on my planet you’re hard pressed to find a food that isn’t an aphrodisiac!” Lord Torrid exclaimed. “I don’t know how you manage without!”
“We make do quite nicely,” Em assured him. “But then we’re not constantly, er, making love.”
“Oh, my people aren’t either,” Lord Torrid assured her. “In fact, the average couple—or throuple—on Sexualis Centris, only makes love five or six times a day. Can you imagine?”
Quite easily, Em thought, but politely didn’t say. She simply made a “Hmmm,” noise which was meant to let him know she was listening and hopefully encourage him to talk more, so that she could carry on eating her breakfast.
It seemed that Lord Torrid was about to say more, but just at that moment, Channa, the mermaid wife of Om’bobla, asked him to help her put her own food into the Rigellen microwave and he began talking to her instead.
Em couldn’t deny she was relieved. She’d heard quite enough about the odd planet Lord Torrid and his wife came from. Right now she just wanted to finish her breakfast and get on with the third Trial…whatever it might be, she thought ominously.
But luck was not on her side. Because the moment Lord Torrid turned his attentions elsewhere, Om’bobla turned to talk to her.
“Well, you’re looking fresh as a seeblu flower this morning,” he said, leering at Em and talking more to her breasts than her face. “You must have had a good night’s sleep.”
“Fairly well,” Em said, only speaking to be polite. “And yourself?” she added, raising her eyebrows.
“Oh pretty good, pretty good. You have to be careful here, though,” the squid man said. “You know they have some kind of ingredient in their cleansing suds that’s bad for the skin? For mine at least—it nearly ate all the way through my slime coat before I could wash it off me!” He shivered, his slimy gray skin twitching with the motion.
Em thought of her own terrible bathing experience and nodded sympathetically.
“That’s dreadful. They really ought to post warning signs or something,” she said.
“Yes, they should—I was going to sue them and take their fucking Mining Rights that way, but Channa says we should win the contract fair and square without involving the intergalactic court,” the squid man burbled.
Em frowned. There was an intergalactic court? This was the first she’d heard of any such thing. But then, she was rapidly learning, during her trip with Rarev, that there were more things in Heaven and Earth than were dreamed of in her philosophy.
“Well, I—” she began.
“Because we will win,” Om’bobla went on, boastfully. “Nobody can fuck like an Octo-squid—that’s me,” he added proudly, poking his chest with one squirming tentacle thumb. “Channa swears I destroy her pussy every single time. It’s a pretty sweet ride for her, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“I’d rather not,” Em said stiffly. “How did your breakfast turn out?” she asked, hoping to change the subject.
“You mean my First Meal? Not bad, not bad.” He shrugged. “How about yours? What’s that?” he demanded, stabbing one sharp chopstick right into the middle of her plumpest sausage. “I touched it now so it’s mine,” he continued rudely, before she could even answer. “That’s the rule on my planet!”