Meal and Memories

[Nijil tr'Korjata 0]

Meal and Memories
with Jylliene and Nijl

 

Taking a break for lunch, the Korjatas settled down at the table at Madame Chang's. Jylliene looked over the menu, then at Nijil. “What are you hungry for?” 

Nijil looked up at her. "This is a place from Earth, correct? Asian? I am relatively unfamiliar with these dishes." He looked up and down the menu. "There are many soups. One with an egg dropped."

“There are. I think I’m going to try the fish bowl, though.” she replied.

The weary engineer laughed. "I am trying to wean myself off of fish and other things of the sea. I've had enough of that for a while." A crisis of choice lay before him, but he just needed to pick something. "I know, this miso soup, those tiny dumplings, and green tea." He quickly closed up the menu and slapped it on the table. "Your turn."

“I’ll have the whitefish bowl,” she said, stacking her menu on Nijil’s. As the server took the menus away, Jylliene looked back to her companion. “How are you feeling?”

Nijil grinned. "Where to start...uhm. Time is twisted." He gestured with his hands as if stretching dough between them. "I've been through so much in such a short about of time. Well, I mean you were pregnant, so I'm not saying I am sucking all the weirdness from the room." The tea arrived and he took it greedily. "This better have caffeine"

“It has some, but not that much,” she replied. “It’s still strange to me to hear the length of time you experienced over just a few days passing here. I keep reminding myself that it will take you time to adjust.”

"The doctor had some ideas, kept on asking me about what I did, about you, Annisha. She made sure to keep my mind on it and not go native. It took weeks just to get used to her body. I am surprised you did not take jabs at me being...she. It's a shame they are not around now, and that's a bit of a mystery." The rest of the food arrived. Nijil nodded. "Speaking of mysteries." He gestured to the outside of the station.

Jylliene looked at him, wide-eyed. “Space will always hold mysteries. Perhaps focus on where your Yith friends might have been before their disappearance. Maybe you’ll find some trace. A temporal signature or something,” she said, quickly pointing their discussion back to their very recent topic so as not to hint at anything going on that was mentioned in the conference, but giving him a very pointed look.

Nijil nearly giggled with a hiss. "Yess yess. It's like the Tal Shiar is all around us." He held up his hands, palms out. "I know. Bah, why say anything. There is a human expression...ignorance is bliss," he said nodding. "I could use a dose of that about now. Oh, though I am not going to bother the captain with my latest finding, I know who perpetrated the broadcast across the station, or enabled it." 

“You do?” she said, perking up. This was a welcome distraction - neither Yith nor the secretive revelations.

Nijil's grin was extremely wide. If he had been human it would have hurt. "Me. I should have seen the signatures in the broadcast, but I enabled them in the future to bypass our communication security settings and send it all over." He finally got to the soup. "Mmm, this is very good."

“The Yith were the ones in the broadcast??” she asked incredulously.

"How I did not create a paradox with the timing I don't know. It makes sense though."

“Who’s to say you didn’t create a paradox, and we just haven’t seen it revealed fully yet?” she replied with a shrug.

"I figure our bonding was a paradox in itself," he quipped with a smirk. "Maybe it started then. If anything it gives me a new purpose to search the broadcast. Something to pass the time when I don't have a good piece of fiction." He glanced down at her food and asked, "How is your food?"

“Oh, very good,” Jylliene answered. “You had me a bit distracted from my meal there for a bit.” She refocused on her lunch.

"Oh, I could distract you for months. Do you want my thought on fashion or clubbing? I think that's what she called it." He speared a dumpling, twirling it around, then staring at it. "I know too much about dresses now."

“Sure,” she said, gesturing to Nijil. “Fashion, go ahead.”

"Well, since they, the Yith, are pretty tall, so most dresses are long and if you are on the short side they try to make you look taller. I think I was average, at least from what Muuhi told me. Now that I think of it their fashion was much like here. I liked the outfits that were loose-fitting, easier to move around in, and not fall over. Color coordination is very important, almost to an extreme. Greens, oranges...lots of warm colors. Tops that, err, accentuated certain attributes." He stopped to take a bite. "At the very least outfit shopping should hold my interest."

She nodded. “And this clubbing you mentioned?” she asked, continuing her food, happy to keep Nijil talking, as he seemed both upbeat and, thankfully, turned fully away from any more dangerous topics.

"Dancing. Drinking. They are heavy into a kind of fast electronic style of music. Probably related to reflexes and how they see. Think tall skinny cats. Motion is very noticeable...throw in some flashing lights and it does things to you. There were these two males that made pas-" Nijil stopped suddenly mid-word, feeling his PADD vibrate in his pocket. "Already?"

“End of lunch?” Jylliene asked, as she checked the time. “That is what it looks like.” She took the last few bites of her meal. “You’ll need to tell me about the club at dinner.”

Edited June 18, 2021 by Nijil tr'Korjata