“Better to try and forget her,” Dra’vik muttered to himself. “Go back to bed and hope you don’t see her in your dreams again.”
But even more important, he hoped he would never see her in real life.
FOUR
For dinner that night, Iyanna tried a Monstrum meal called Ha’chukk, which turned out to be a giant slab of raw meat. At least, she thought it was raw. It was bright purple flesh marbled with green fat, so it was difficult to tell.
She did try to eat it—she had meant every word she said to Commander Rarev about using cuisine as a gateway to understand a new culture. But after a few squishy bites that tasted like fresh blood, she had to acknowledge that her stomach just wasn’t going to digest this particular Monstrum meal very well.
Wrapping the meat in some clear green clingy stuff she found in one of the drawers, she placed it in the chiller unit and chose another cube from the Earth food pile.
After choking down several bites of the raw alien meant, the Caesar salad sounded most appealing. Iyanna popped the little cube in the rehydrator and watched as it grew and expanded into a white paper bowl filled with crisp lettuce, crunchy croutons, creamy dressing, and tangy Parmesan cheese.
The salad was excellent—though she couldn’t help feeling lonely, dining by herself. She was a sociable person by nature and liked to eat with friends. But Iyanna reminded herself that this was just the first night in her new home—there would be plenty of time to make friends later. Hopefully she could find someone to share meals with as her time aboard the Monstrum Mother Ship went on.
Not that she was looking for a romantic relationship, of course, she told herself hastily. She found some of the Monstrum quite appealing, in a wild, animalistic kind of way, but after getting out of a long-term relationship with Ian, she was in no condition to start something new. Her heart was still sore and bruised—too tender to jump back into the dating pool anytime soon.
But it would be nice to find someone to spend time with on her off hours. Maybe the guide that Commander Rarev had assigned to her would turn out to be friendly…
So musing, she put her waste in the disposal chute—which conveniently sucked it away—and made her way to the bathroom.
“It’s a good thing I’m a strong swimmer,” Iyanna muttered to herself as she shed her clothes and eyed the vast bathing pool. She could seriously do laps in this thing—in fact, she might. It would be good exercise—probably the only exercise she’d get, other than walking all over the enormous ship.
Iyanna didn’t exercise to try and lose weight—past experience had shown her that it didn’t help much. She was just built to be curvy or, as her Granny said, “big boned.” She’d often felt self-conscious about her size when she was with Ian because he had been half an inch shorter than her and next to him, she felt she looked even bigger than she was.
“Well, that’s not going to be a problem here,” she told herself cheerfully. “Since none of the Monstrum are under seven feet tall. But I still need to get some exercise.”
Physical activity helped her stay sharp mentally and improved her mood. She had especially been trying to stay active since her breakup with Ian. As a natural optimist, she hated feeling like her usually bubbly personality was clouded by heartbreak.
Pinning her long, curly butterfly locs up to keep them dry, she folded her clothes and placed them on a bench near the edge of the pool. Then she slipped into the clear blue water, which was beautifully warm, and began swimming laps.
But soon her energetic strokes became more and more languid. The water felt silky against her bare skin and Iyanna felt decadent swimming in the nude. It reminded her of skinny-dipping—one of the few acts of rebellion she’d participated in when she was a teenager. Only here, there was no worry that someone might see her and get her into trouble for swimming “butt-nekkid.”
The lack of worry and the sensuous feeling of the water sliding over her bare skin made Iyanna feel free in a way she never had before. The bathing pool was gorgeous and she found that instead of doing vigorous exercise, she just wanted to relax and enjoy its beauty.
She swam to a spot beside the weeping willow tree that was covered in pink cherry blossoms and settled herself against the smooth wall with her arms outstretched along the sides of the pool. Lazily, she let her legs float out in front of her as she watched the pleasure blooms that ringed the tub interact with each other.
As she watched, several of the long blue pods entered the crimson pods with their sucking lips and thrust until they spent themselves inside and were reduced to thin blue ribbons. Iyanna wondered idly what would cause plants to develop such a vigorous and almost animalistic method of reproduction. It was fascinating to watch—intensely sexual in a way that she had never seen in the plant kingdom before.