Chapter VII02.IX.2023
It was early morning in Zakossos. So early, in fact, that Yadi - a close pair of warm orange sister stars - weren't even visible from the ground yet. On the sixty-ninth floor of the university, though, one of them already was.
The sky - discarding few patches of cirrus clouds - was abundantly clear, though its stark light blue was a bit colder in hue than one Tayne was used to on Hena'an.
Tayne was first to wake up from staring into yet another dreamless abyss, and well, she already regretted sleeping altogether. Her head was heavy and buzzing inside, she had a yucky sour taste in her mouth, the whole body somewhat ached - and she was hungry even more than yesterday. She kind of forgot to eat, or even to mention being hungry to Lana - and, well, after Lana fell asleep upon barely touching the pillow, Tayne decided to deal with it in the morning. Well, damn.
The first thing she did was heavily scrutinizing the room for snacks - but unfortunately to no avail. The only thing she found was a small unpacked tube of transluscent slimy gel with an unfamiliar name, hiding in Lana's side nightstand among other odd things - and although the tube specified its contents were edible, the taste turned out to be rather weird.
After putting everything back where it was, Tayne pulled the tulle curtains apart, swung a balcony door open - it was of clear glass and had a faceted glass handle - and stepped outside to freshen up. She was immediately greeted by a burst of fresh wind, that slammed the door closed behind her - leaving her face to face with a birds-eye view of the city. And what an astounding view that was.
Tayne was so high she could see Zakossos up to the very edge of it - a round, perfectly symmetrical city with spokes and rims of boulevards, covered in greenery. It was still submerged into morning twilight, lit up by sparse pale pink speckles. Beyond the edge it was surrounded by a sea of suburban villages, with occasional narrow roads waving through it. These looked quite loose and chaotic compared to Zakossos' rigid planning, as if the city was just plomped down atop of their ancient pattern.
No actual sea was visible, but Tayne could've sworn the air smelled lightly salty.
For several minutes Tayne observed light of the first Yadi crawling closer along the ground, as well as the second Yadi peeking more and more from behind the horizon (Tayne had no idea what do they call the Yadi separately, and even if she knew, she still wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them), and saw spires of one wormhole tower after another flaring up with flaming orange - until her stomach once again reminded of itself. Well, she had at least dispelled the sticky remains of slumber.
Returning to the room, Tayne found Lana still sleeping in a double bed they shared for the night - hugging a long skinny pillow. How cute. So um... what shall she do?
Tayne was firmly against just leaving, she wanted to at least thank Lana for everything she did. Neither did she want to wake Lana up. So she decided to leave a note and scrutinized the room and its adjacent bathroom once again for something to write on and with - until finally noting her Cosmarium handle and domain and writing «text me» on a paper towel with a weird soft pencil she found earlier in the same nightstand as that odd sauce. Then she spent a good chunk of time looking for her backpack... before realising she hadn't seen or held it since awakening at the park. How could she never had noticed its absence before, and oh stars, what even was there besides her medi? A lot of things probably since Tayne remembered it being quite heavy, but she couldn't recall any single item. Some clothing maybe? Oh well...
Still deciding if she should care about that loss or not at all given all other losses that also happened, Tayne left the room, accidentially slammed the door too hard on the way out, panicked, unpanicked, but still proceeded to the elevator - before realising she took Lana's pencil with her. And of course, upon returning, she found Lana had just been woken up by the door slam. Of course.
"I'm so damn sorry, here's your pencil!" – she threw it at Lana without much thought and immediately regretted it, as it overshot Lana and rolled under a minifridge.
"What pencil?" - Lana, still sleepy, failed to realize what just flew by her and looked around, eventually noticing the paper towel. – "Oh. You mean my eyeliner."
Tayne blushed, wanting to sink through the floor, but instead went to pick the eyeliner up from under the fridge.
"Here. Sorry again."
Lana smiled. "Hey, don't be sorry, that's a cute note you've left! Good morning, by the way. Oh and... why'd you decided to leave at such an early hour, if you don't mind that question?"
Tayne sighed and sat down on the bed. Well first, she still kind of felt awkward about staying with Lana, as she still couldn't grasp how Lana can be comfortable hanging out overnight and sleeping in one bed with a girl she just met. Not that Tayne wasn't enjoying it - she was a ton and was so damn grateful for this - but it felt wrong to prolong her stay, even though yesterday Lana said a bunch of times she's cool with it.
But all that was too tangled of a thought to put in words, so Tayne went with a second reason:
"I wanted to eat something."
"Oh!" - Lana realised, - "we totally need to, yeah! I doubt we'd find an open lunchroom in town at this hour, but we can probably request something to here. What do you want?"
"I don't care," - Tayne laid back down and stretched. - "And i don't know your local cuisine, so you can choose. What do you breakfast with?"
"I usually skip it," - shrugged Lana. - "But generally... err... usually vegetable mush, or some papa nikolau, or maybe a cheese toast or two."
Lana pulled her scroll over and started browsing it, searching for what's avaliable to be requested.
"Papa nikolau? What's that?"
"Oh, you don't have it there? It's like a salad but with balls of dough, noodles, cooked eggs and grated cheese, do you want to try? I love preparing it myself, but they have it decent at the cantine."
"I hope it's without that slimy sauce you have here?"
"Yeah?..." – Lana drawled, – "some add mayo but it's usually without sauce. What slimy sauce do you even mean?"
"Nevermind."
Lana requested the papa nikolau, scheduled to arrive in ten minutes, and decided to turn on upbeat music. Meanwhile, Tayne went to the bathroom and accidentially remembered she haven't showered since three days ago - thus deciding to do just that.
It felt a bit weird to put on the same clothing afterwards - torn shorts, stripy red and black top and a denim shirt she wore all through yesterday and even slept in - but... what else could she do with nothing to change into? She ended up washing her underpants in a sink with soap, though, killing even more time – she was used to doing that at home considering she only had two pairs and couldn't throw one in a laundry washer every day. And well, after putting everything back on and making sure everything is tucked where it needs to be - it turned out way more than ten minutes passed. Lana already finished her part and got to scrolling.
"Sorry, I..." - Tayne chuckled, - "got carried away a bit."
"It's fine..." - drawled Lana, - "I left your half there for you," - she waved at the tray she put on Tayne's nighstand.
Tayne examined the tray. It looked peculiar even by itself, made of silvery metal with ornament engraving throughout. A simple clay pot with three handles stood in the center, filled with such an amount of tasty-smelling biomass that it would've probably been too much for Tayne alone if only she'd adequately fed herself yesterday - at least, it was certainly way over half of the pot. What's more, it all came with a shaker of salt, a shaker of a mysterious red powder, a whole untouched second set of cutlery and two pear-shaped fruits. Which were probably pears, Tayne just wasn't sure if pears can be red.
"Lana," – she asked in excitement, – "are you sure it's all for me? You took almost nothing!"
Lana put the scroll away for a moment and smiled. "Yeah, of course! You need it."
"Oh my stars Lana thank you bestie!" – and Tayne immediately dug into the pot with a fork.
"You'll thank me when I'll get around to cooking one for you myself," – Lana winked and returned to scrolling.
Surprisingly, papa nicolau was still warm, with cheese near melting between the noodles. It tasted like diluted cheese, and even though Tayne wasn't that big about cheese, in her current state of stomach it was the best thing ever. She haven't even noticed some unexpected objects in it until being nearly done with the pot.
"Lana, is this a... mushroom?" - she asked with curiosity, raising a piece of dark organic tissue up from the pot.
"What?..." - Lana took a second to focus, "oh yeah, they add them to every dish this month where they even remotely fit. Biologists blew up their mushroom reactor recently."
Tayne slowly put her fork down. "A mushroom reactor?"
"Yep, they had one under the uni to recycle biomass. One mess up in the growth rate and the whole floor turned into mushrooms for a week until someone noticed. They mobilised a thousand students to clean it all up, it was something out of this world!"
Well, if the whole university eats these mushrooms, they're probably safe - deduced Tayne and went back to finishing with the pot.