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Fantasy of the Month 10 (life with dava)
Area: TALK.BIZARRE Date: 4 Nov 94 1:37:51 From: Nikolai Kingsley To : all Subj: life with dava Foursday morning. That means the home shopping delivery! Food! I went over to the wall, checked the flag - which was flashing green - and pulled open the drawer. This time, the second and third drawers opened as well, making a bin set into the side of our apartment about one and a half metres deep. I started lifting out plastic bags and dumping them on the kitchen table, selecting the ones that had been refrigerated by feel and putting them under the conical stasis-field in the corner. That still left a large assortment of... things. I picked up one, examined it; a blank white waxed cardboard tetrahedron about the size of a softball, faint raised edges spelling out alien pictograms that I could see by holding the container up to the light, turning it from side to side, catching the shallow shadows. I shook it; whatever was inside shifted around like a liquid. I shrugged, took it over to the sink and punched a hole in one side with a fork, a scratch and three small punctures leaking a thick saffron fluid which smelled like blood. My nose wrinkled involuntarily and it went into the waste recycler. If any of the others wanted to try them, there were five more. There was a box which i knew had a passable copy of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, the blobby, oddly-shaped script on the side of the box remeniscent of Moridani Phandric. This box and two others like it went on the shelf. There were things like a book of raffle-tickets, five centimetres along the spine by thirty centimetres, the leaves pale green, pulpy and edible, faint taste of cinnamon. On the shelf. A hexagonal-closest-packed stack of ball bearings wrapped in blue-tinted clingfilm. That went over in the don't know corner with the knotted finger-thick tubes filled with glowing white liquid, the incomprehensibly twisted spanner set, the tin cans with non-human script and pictures of spitted and dressed people on the labels, the package of two-dimensional biscuits that we couldn't pick up once we'd unwrapped them, the music disks with unreadable or incomprehensible data and pictures of six-legged animals on their labels. Four clear plastic pencils filled with dark grey powder. I hid these in my jacket pocket. Most of the other stuff that they'd sent us was standard, generic non-interesting food, things we'd identified before and had been game enough to taste; short, wide jars filled with rich, yeasty-smelling black paste, bright orange grapes, spherical sponge-cakes, dodecahedrons filled with slightly salty water; amidst all of this, a startlingly human-looking jar of Nescafe Blend 43 instant coffee (the label saying that it was 'MADE ON SYNDAINE', wherever that was). I held the jar up and shouted, "Hey, everyone! coffee!" Peter passed by, looked in, sniffed, grabbed some grapes and continued on down the hall. Dava came in behind him, took the jar, unscrewed the lid and broke the seal with her thumbnail; she inhaled and shuddered. "Lovely! Is there any sugar left?" I indicated the crystalline block on the shelf with spoon-marks on one side; she leaped at me and hugged me. After disengaging, she sorted through the few things left on the table that I hadn't moved into the don't know corner. She picked up a mirror-surfaced forearm-sized cylinder, examined it, looked at me; I shrugged. She took it over to the sink and gently tapped it against the edge of the waste- recycler's mouth. there was a brief fingernails-on-blackboard screech, the mirror-surface vanished and she was holding a roll of soft black cloth, carpet-thick. A reel of thread had been attached to the end; it fell into the sink and she caught it before it rolled down the waste-recycler. For almost a minute she just stood there, rubbing a fold of the cloth between her fingers, eyes closed, cooing. "Come here and feel this." Tentatively, I stroked it with an index finger. It felt... well, strange; very slippery, almost frictionless in fact; warm, furry, elastic. She held up the edge and let the rest drop, a jet-black strip half a metre wide and almost two metres long. very black. No shadows; I'd even go as far as to say light-absorbent. She laid it out on the table and fetched her sewing kit. While I sat on the bench, pulling off chunks of sponge and chewing them, she took off her jeans - faded black denim that fit her slim hips like a tight glove - and laid them next to the strip of alien cloth. They looked dusty in comparison. Dava turned them inside-out and took a pair of scissors to them, cutting out a wide pinnate section starting at the base of the zip, under and between the legs, up the back. She held them up for my examination. "Crotchless jeans. Nice," I said around a mouthful of sponge. She picked up the alien cloth and cut out a broad hastate strip just larger than the section she'd cut out of the denim. It took her only ten minutes to hand-sew it into the crotch of her jeans. She took off her underpants before trying them on, wriggling her hips as she settled into the familiar shape. "What does it feel like?" I asked. She stood facing me, hips moving in tentative circles, her eyes closed. she ran her hand down her behind, shivered and then murmured, "Excuse me." She left the room, walking slowly, the crease of alien material riding up between her buttocks. I shook my head and made some coffee. |
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