Page 31 of Star-Born Anomaly
And she had until the storm abated to convince him not to take her with him.
Her stomach clenched. How was she supposed to do that? She’d wanted the chance to persuade him to abandon his task, but didn’t know how to approach it.
And this storm wouldn’t last forever. With her fields drowning in acid rain, she didn’t want it to.
She worked for a long while before Iax moved, walking through the space to stop every now and again at another part of her germination process. She remained aware of him, listening to each footfall. Then always, he would return to where she planted.
His scrutiny should have bothered her, but it didn’t.
She worked, he walked, and she didn’t call it quits until her stomach grumbled.
Wynn set down her trowel and placed the last pot on the shelf before rotating it upward. She knew exactly where Iax had stopped, examining the damaged sapling a few meters away.
Brushing her palms against her pants, she turned to him. “Are you hungry?” What did Calypsons eat?
His head lifted, and he stared at her for a long moment. “Yes.”
She nodded once, then turned away from his probing gaze.
The moist air of the greenhouse changed to the drier air of the lab as she crossed the threshold. She passed through the small hallway into the living space, then stopped.
Iax’s glasses lay on the floor. Another dual urge surged up inside her, both to crush them beneath her feet, to deny what they represented, and to pick them up and return them to him.
Movement rustled behind her, and tension stiffened her shoulders. She remained in place while Iax strode past her, stooped, and swiped the accessory from the ground. Then she was off again, heading toward the kitchen.
She stopped again when she saw the UV-suit sitting on the counter. Without dwelling on her derailed need of escape, she snatched it up in her arms, moved to the hallway, and shoved it inside the wall compartment before returning to the kitchen.
Her plan had been to order a pasta dish from the dispensary, but the need to act, todosomething made her jittery. She could return to the greenhouse, throw herself into work again, but she’d already promised herself she would eat. That she would feed Iax too.
New purpose rose inside her. Wynn stepped up to the dispensary and ordered a collection of vegetables instead of a complete meal. Next came the largest cooking pot from beneath the cupboard. She filled it half full of water before setting it on the burner at the far end of the kitchen island.
Thwack. She dropped the cutting board beside it and was already slicing into a potato by the time Iax crossed the threshold from the living room. He stopped on the other side of the counter.
Chop chop chopwent her knife. The slice and thud against the board soothed the turmoil inside her. She turned the pieces in the opposite direction.Chop chop chop.
With one swift movement, she used the flat of the knife to scoop the cubes off the surface and tossed them in the pot beside her.Plop plop plop.They sank into the water. All the pieces went inside, then she grabbed the next potato.
“What is it you do?”
She twitched at the question, his gravelly voice sending shivers over her arms. Her fingers tightened around the knife.
Blinking, she refocused on the cutting board.Chop chop chop.
“I’m making soup,” she said after her continued silence felt like intentional rudeness.Plop plop plop.She dropped more pieces into the pot.
“Your machine would make soup.”
When she lifted her head, she found him staring at the dispensary on the back wall. That meant he knew how it worked, that it was pre-programmed and could synthesize thousands of recipes from the bio-matter stored within its mechanisms.
It was how most CORE citizens ate.
“Doing it myself is relaxing, focuses me. Foster—” Her voice cracked. It hurt to say his name aloud. She cleared her throat, concentrating on her potatoes again. “My colleague liked to make soup from scratch. I helped him sometimes.” She didn’t want to forget her friend, no matter how disturbing the memories of his death.
A shrug lifted her shoulders as she dropped more pieces into the pot. “He and I would cook together at least once a week. He always said that things tasted more delicious when done by hand, and I think hewas right. Nothing from the dispensary ever tasted as good as one of his soups.”
It helped thinking of him like this instead of the way he’d died, the images that haunted her nightmares. “Everything done by hand, that’s what he always said.” She resumed her chopping. “It’s why we plant all the seeds ourselves instead of using machines.”
Swallowing that thought down, Wynn pressed the control beside the burner, and a padded seat extended next to Iax. He stepped back, his eyebrows raising at its appearance.
