You're not in Ketra anymore...(Open!)

[Anonymous]

Cook nodded as he considered it. "Well, I'm not familiar with those really, but then I have my favorites and generally stick with them." Cook explained, pounding the bent joint of the leg back into shape before putting the bolt back in and then getting his leg finally put back together.

He awkwardly made his way over to the stove and served up a bowl and brought it to the kid. "Careful, it might still be pretty hot" he warned, settling back down on the bench and started lubricating the machinery of his body.

"No machinery? Do you sail by the wind and teleport by magic then?" He was curious. Being half biological and half mechanical did make some forms of teleportation complicated. He didn't really want to arrive anywhere missing parts.

"Balls? Cannons? Looks like a tube" He demonstrated the shape with his hands "usually use fire to start them off, balls launch out and hit things?" That sounded rather primitive considering they were sitting in the galley of a space cruiser.

[Anonymous]

((Sorry it took so long for me to reply.  Work devoured me last week.))

Completely disregarding Cook's warning, Samari immediately speared a forkful of food and ate it.  It was then that he was reintroduced to the particular awkwardness of having to choose between trying to swallow a mouthful of burning hot food before it seared your taste buds off or spitting the hot food out, saving your mouth but making you look like a barbarian.  There was no way Samari was going to cough out the food, not in front of the man that cooked it.  Samari chewed quickly, swallowed and exhaled deeply, trying to cool off his burning mouth with his breath.  He didn't even get a chance to really taste it, he just felt the lingering heat wallowing around his mouth.

Samari nodded after Cook's first two questions, trying to resist taking another bite.  The smell made it hard, but the growing rawness in the corners of his mouth were a decent enough demotivator.  Another nod when Cook repeated balls.  The weapons did shoot little balls.  Where they cannons though?  Samari would think about it after Cook was finished talking.  It sounded like he was describing what a cannon was.

Looks like a tube, check.
Usually use fire to start them off, not that he saw.
Balls launch out and hit things, check.

"They do look like tubes.  Skinny tubes.  I think you pull something on them to make the balls come out.  You can't see them go out, but you can find bits of them in the body of whatever they hit."  Samari stirred the food, watching the last trails of steam rise from it.  Burned mouth or not, he was going to start eating again in a little bit, his stomach was tightening like it was about to make some awful noise.

[Anonymous]

((Gaaaaah. It ate my post. *kicks boards* But heh, np, Glad to have you back. Life happens.))

Cook knowingly rose and retrieved a glass of water and set it in front of the boy. He recognized that undecided look of to spit, or not to spit. He'd been a hungry youth once himself. Trying to inhail food that was too hot to eat was not a new experience by any means.

"Ah" Cook considered it a moment. It sounded more like a gun than a cannon now that he thought about it. One of the older guns that ran along the same principle, but it was at least a step forward in technology from just a cannon, but that still didn't put them on par with the rest of the civilized universe. Cook wasn't sure whether to continue with the thought that maybe this kid had managed to be skipped through time, or settle on the fact that Necromancia just didn't have much technology.

He looked up when Thomas entered.

"Course is set." Thomas informed. "Adrian is going to be furious."

"So we'll make it a scouting mission, take a look around while we're there. It's not like they're going to have many people looking to provide them with supplies." Cook replied calmly, apparently not worried about Adrian.

"I am NOT setting foot in that place" Thomas stated firmly.

"I didn't say you had to. You're the Navigator, you can just stay here with the pilot while the crew goes and has a look."

"What about the virus? If that gets brought aboard, we'll all die."

"The virus that has been sitting in an empty shell of a city for umpteen years? No virus has a shelf life that long." Cook replied, still apparently perfectly at peace.

"I still don't think it's a good idea. That thing was designed as a weapon, maybe they preserved it. They couldn't kill it with anything they had, you remember that?"

Cook sighed "Fine, I'll go and you can sterilize me before I come back aboard."

"Fine" Thomas muttered and headed back up to the bridge.

Cook shook his head and looked at the kid "That one takes superstition to a whole new level of paranoid" Sailors of any sort were notoriously superstitious, himself included, but some of them were more worried about it than others. "There's a legend that says it's cursed. I don't think it's true, I think Aedolis made it up to scare people away. They're known to do things like that."

[Anonymous]

Watching Cook and the Navigator talk was an excellent way to distract him from burning his mouth again with the hot food.  Samari managed to sip the water, instead of gulping it down.  His eyes trailing from Cook to the Navigator as each once spoke.

Hearing them talk about Necromantia was unreal.  They called it Necromantia, but they kept talking like it was a backwater.  Full of mysterious viruses that would devour the living and all alone in the endless ocean.  It was a little strange that they would know about Necromantia and not Adela or Serendipity, or even Connlaoth.  Very strange.

On a more positive note.  By the time the Navigator scurried back off to wherever his hiding place was, his food would be cool enough to eat without scalding off more of the lining of his mouth.  Samari was taking another bite as Cook turned to talk to him, and nodded while he was chewing.  "I suppose it never crossed his mind that I'm still functioning quite well.  Breathing and everything, and I've been in Necromantia for years."

Of course, he didn't do any breathing or any such living thing while he was in Necromantia.  Cook didn't need to know that though.  It would only make things more complicated.  The rumor about the curse was definitely interesting though.  It might explain why there was no killer virus on Necromantia that he could remember.  

"Maybe the virus is just a rumor," he mused, taking another bite of food and chasing it down with more water.  "I've never heard of it and I lived there."

[Anonymous]

Cook nodded "It would make sense. Stranger things have happened." He agreed "Don't mind Thomas though, he's just a little nervous. Our boss usually likes things to go as planned, and making detours doesn't usually fit into that. Adrian'll get over it though. He always does." Cook winked with his good eye. "You need another helping?" He asked, nodding to the meal in front of the boy. No one went hungry in Cook's kitchen.

He shifted slightly. The problem with the table and benches was that there was no back for him to lean against. His body was a little older and didn't appreciate holding the same position for long periods of time.

"How old are you? Do you know?" He finally asked. To Cook, the boy seemed rather young, but then, everyone seemed young to him. It was a matter of perspective.

[Anonymous]

Samari ate another bite, nodding when Cook explained that the boss wasn't the sort that liked their plans changed.  Anyone that ever had control over another living thing probably wasn't fond of plan changes, Samari was sure he never met anyone that didn't.  Even he liked things to go smoothly within his own household.  It was like being chucked into deep water for the first time.  Once you survive the initial kicking and struggling and panicking you found yourself floating.

Learning to accept a change in plans was hard though.  Nothing was worse than a plan, nurtured to perfection, getting uprooted by anything.  Samari wasn't even sure if he could say that he got over it in time when his own plans failed.  

It'd been awhile since Samari had to estimate how much food it would take to fill himself up.  Samari had a glance at the remaining food in his bowl, then figured it wouldn't hurt to eat as much as he could, while he could.  "Yes, yes.  Once I've finished with this one."  He took another bite and began swinging a leg idly back and forth.

He stopped chewing when Cook asked his age, his lips pursing a little as he thought.  Did the years he spent undead still count?  He technically existed through them, just didn't age or anything.  Giving his entire age wouldn't be that odd, if Cook knew anything about Drow.  He'd just look like the sort that aged slowly.  

"Two hundred-sixty," he replied.  There was no need to add in the extra couple years, they'd just seem a little ridiculous at the end anyway.  Then, just in case, he added.  "My kind live a long time."  Then he took another bite of food.  If he was going to have a second serving it'd be best to start it while it was still warm.

[Anonymous]

"Apparently." Cook said with a squeak of his leg as he rose to get the other bowl cooling down a little as the pan tended to hold heat pretty well and he didn't want his charge burning himself anymore than he already had. "You look....young" He admitted. Or maybe it was that he carried himself young and that's what Cook really saw. That confused and perhaps rather frightened boy who had found himself in a very strange place and time. "My people aren't so good with keeping track of time really" He admitted "You get past being a kid and then you just" He shrugged "are, and then after that, you head towards old." He'd been better than most of them "I estimate myself to be around sixty years old. My people start considering that old, but I suppose it's not really." He shrugged and carried the bowl back over to the table so he wouldn't have to get up again to retrieve it. If the boy decided he didn't want to eat it, Cook would. He hadn't had lunch yet himself, he was just more interested in learning about their new passenger.

"Sixty isn't so old I guess" He shrugged and dropped back down onto the bench. "Wouldn't have made it this far without help" He lifted his mechanical arm to indicate he meant his bio-mechanics. "Technology is a good thing sometimes. I don't know that I could live in a place that still worked off pellet/ball based ammunition and sail boats." He shrugged "So what was it like there?" He'd never heard any stories about necromancia from someone who had lived there. In his opinion, all the stories he had heard were Aedolis propaganda to scare people off...but then he always thought Aedolis was up to something, and normally, they were, even if he didn't have the 'what' quite right.

[Anonymous]

The corner of Samari's mouth twitched when Cook called him young.  He managed to keep it from becoming a full grin - or whatever else it was growing into by taking another bite of food.  Since he was technically in the prime of his life when he stopped aging, was short, not very masculine looking and (here at least) confused and out of his element he would have appeared a lot younger than he was supposed to look.  Not that he knew what that would be like, all the relatives he knew died before they reached two hundred years old.

Usually he would have had a cooler head under such strange circumstances, but the circumstances were far too strange.  He didn't have the right kind of personality for it, when he was overwhelmed with wrongness he tended to act emotionally before logically.

When Cook told him his age, Samari busied himself trying to equate it into his race's set of age categories.  Assuming Cook was human.  Samari couldn't entirely be sure, since most of him was already made of metal, why couldn't they have replaced something with more fleshy bits?  Thinking Cook was human made it a little easier.  His own words, that he was just starting to be considered old fit.  A drow that reached human sixty would be considered getting old and would probably be watched for a good time to put a knife between their shoulder blades.  Humans didn't do that though.  

Apparently, in this place, Aedolis, they just put metal parts on to help them get by.  Samari watched Cook's metal leg a bit too closely when the man began walking back to the bench with the second bowl of food.  Later, he was going to have to ask some questions about how the metal parts worked so seamlessly with his own body.  He paused mid-bite to pay better attention when Cook began talking about technology, raising an eyebrow.  He ate the forkful of food and wondered if Cook was overreacting.  Surely he could have found some way to keep living if he was in a place like Necromantia.

"We may not have machines," Samari took a few sips of water.  "But, I don't think we're completely hopeless.  We get by with, well, necromancy.  The way machinery does metal, necromancy works with death and flesh."  Who knows what people in Aedolis were told about necromancy, better get him on the proper page before continuing.  "Some think that Necromantia is a gloomy place.  Most of the inhabitants embrace death instead of fearing it.  Some of them are actually between life and death.  We call it undead in Necromantia and the countries around it.

"It isn't that dangerous though.  No more than most places on the surface can be dangerous. Sorry if that sounded redundant, I was born underground.  Hmm... sorry to break subject, but, since you know a little about Necromantia... do you know anything about Serendipity or maybe Adela?  Perhaps a strange place called Connlaoth?  They're nations that are near Necromantia."

Samari glanced in his bowl for a second, swirling his fork around to fill it with more food.

[Anonymous]

Cook caught him watching his leg. "I was blown up." He explained "And because of the work I do, I needed something I could fix myself with scraps and bits. If I had to go into a medical port every time part of me broke down, I'd be tossed right off this ship. No crew is going to put up with a member that constantly causes delays." He shrugged

"I think it's the fact that you use magic and make the dead do your bidding that creeps people out. Most places still think death is permanent, and people should be respectfully laid to rest, in whatever way their culture says is the right way, and then left alone. Horror movies since way before earth started dying, had what they called 'zombies' which were dead things that came alive and...generally tried to kill everyone else." Cook explained "It sounds like your culture views putting them to good use is the right thing to do." Thankfully, Cook was generally an open minded person, though often a grumpy one. "Undead....brings up thoughts of vampires." He tilted his head slightly "Do the undead happen to drink blood?" Maybe there was more to this vampire idea after all.

"Mostly just legends. I think they are also cities or countries that have died or been taken over by Aedolis." He shrugged, and his little tentacles fidgeted with a life of their own. "I've never been great with remembering which cities are on what planet or any of that stuff. That's why I am the cook, and not the navigator."

[Anonymous]

Interesting, Samari thought as Cook explained that he could fix his metal bits instead of going to a medical port.  If Cook hadn't said he had to go into the medical port, Samari would have though that was the proper title of a person that worked with the metal bits, machines.  That was a question for sometime later, what did you call a person that's work was in machines?

Right now he considered that taking machinery back to Necromancia might not be the best idea.  Necromancy could only work successfully when someone was trained in it - unless Cook was also a sort of machine worker, that meant anyone could work a machine.  Someone else could bring in machinery then.  Though, it definitely wouldn't hurt to study it a little.

That was a thought for later too, now Cook was explaining that it was the necromancy that scared other nations.  Samari tried hard not to roll his eyes, smirking wryly.  Of course it was the necromancy, it wasn't like people in Necromancy were particularly vicious or xenophobic as a whole.  The smirk was rubbed off his face in a wave of curiosity when Cook said something about moovees and something even more interesting about the earth dying.  Samari's eyes widened and he blinked vacantly, coming back to himself when Cook asked about undead drinking blood.

That they did.  Well, those among them that were vampires.  Samari, curious, raised his tongue up under his lips to feel his canine teeth.  They were still somewhat thin and felt sharp on the tip, but he couldn't feel the muscle that would push them down for easier purchase into flesh.  Samari pulled his tongue back into his mouth once he was sure he couldn't grin without giving Cook the idea that he might want something else to round off his meal and ate another forkful of food.  Once it was swallowed he nodded, saying.  "Yes, vampires drink blood, but there are other types of intelligent undead that don't.  Most siege undead don't need any sort of sustenance - that would be your zombies.  Only small animals are in danger around a zombie, they usually need orders to start killing everything they see."

Samari got confused again when Cook said that the other countries were legends, dead or conquered by Aedolis.  Those second two were definitely false - he just came from Adela and never heard of Aedolis until he came to it.  "They're not dead.  I can't speak for Connlaoth, but Adela and Serendipity are alive and flourishing."

Samari fiddled with the last morsel of food a few seconds before scooping it up and eating it.  He set the bowl down next to himself on the bench and looked up at the ceiling, leaning back as far as he dared on the bench.  "Is it possible that Aedolis has never traveled beyond Necromantia?  If you aren't approaching from the Tuor Ocean, then you might come across Necromantia before you reached the others."

[Anonymous]

"Well, Aedolis has been in war with other planets, so they've definately gone beyond their own city. Some folks figure they want to take over the universe, and well, I wouldn't be surprised if that were actually the case." He shrugged. "They tend to be a little power hungry there-- one of the reasons I hate stopping for anything on that planet. One of these days they're going to catch us and force us to stay. They've got some dragon or something as part of their army. Not something I really want to try to fight." He stretched a little and settled back.

"Ah. I'd never put much stock in vampires being real and blood drinkers and all, but that's very interesting. Did you have a blood bank or the like, or do you bite people on the neck and just take it?" The boy had managed to peak the man's curiosity.

When he started speaking about how alive and well all the other cities were. This once again, made Cook wonder if the boy had jumped time. It was seeming more and more likely. If he'd been in Adela and never heard of Aedolis, it would make sense. "Do your people, or anyone you know of have time magics?" He finally asked. That was also a good thing to know before just showing up at a city. Time magics could be nasty things to encounter depending on how they were used. Some cheated in Cook's opinion and used it to jump around a fight they had already seen once. Despite how unsportsmanlike that was, Cook also worried about the so-called 'fabric of time' and what people messing with it all the time might actually do.

[Anonymous]

Samari stared blankly at Cook when he described Aedolis' plan to take over the universe, whatever that was.  The way he kept changing planet and Aedolis had him a little worried though.  Maybe he was somehow teleported to another planet... one that knew about Necromantia's planet.  It was a good thing they thought there was a killer virus.  They probably just set one of their strange ships down in some paranoid necromancer's property, one that killed first and asked questions after you rose from the dead.  Their dragons might be a problem if they decided to invade, though beneficial once they were dead and could be raised.  Samari had no idea what use they could put their machinery to though.

It'd been awhile since Samari blushed without willing it.  Why did Cook have to say 'you' when he was talking about vampires?  He probably saw something when Samari was poking his teeth, or he didn't and was able to put together what a person mouthing around their canine teeth when vampires were mentioned might suggest.  At least Cook wouldn't see him blushing... unless he could pick out the difference between his usual darkness and black with red underneath.  He should probably stop holding onto the bench like he was about to fall off the roof of a building.  "They bite people.  Blood wouldn't keep well in a bank."  He would have gone on, explaining how there were people that either sold their own blood or the blood of people they owned in Necromantia, but that was too much information.  It would invite the inevitable, how did you know that?

Which, hopefully, wouldn't come up if Cook asked whether or not vampires attacked their victims and he answered.

It sounded like he was going to ask some other question though.  Good.  Or... Samari blinked and looked at Cook blankly.  After two more blinks he tilted his head to the side a little.  "No...  Unless they were hiding something.  Time magic is even dangerous by Necromantian standards."

Samari glanced at the other bowl of food Cook made, unsure of how hungry he was.  He'd wait for the growls before he dived for it.  The last thing he wanted was to eat so much that he threw up his first proper meal.

[Anonymous]

Cook had used 'you' in the broad sense of the term. He was from necromancia and so Cook had just lumped him with the undead vampire people temporarily. The fact that the boy was eating real food put him off the thought of him being a vampire for the moment, but that might change as the conversation went on.

"Well, that's good to know" Cook admitted "I always did think it was irresponsible and rather stupid to go fiddling with something as vast as time. You screw that up and everybody's clucked." Cook pointed out "Have known a couple people though that don't care enough about anything to be worried when something is 'dangerous'" a certain city came to mind actually.

"Some cities do have blood in banks, but they don't drink it, they use it to keep people from bleeding to death when they get injured" He should know all about that. He flexed his mechanical hand. "I think it's another one of those technology things. They have to do something to it so it doesn't spoil...and they keep it cold too." This brought up another question. "How do you store food on your planet? And what sort of things did you eat?"

It had been a very long time indeed since Cook had actually been curious, but then again, it had been a very long time since he'd run into something completely new also. Besides, normally he considered it his job to be surly, and it was difficult to be surly and curious all at once. He was actually rather surprised none of the crew had come in yet, but then again, maybe his last berating of his kitchen help had temporarily scared them off again. He didn't mind. Most of them were more trouble than help, but the captain kept sending them down to him.

"Are these vampires regular citizens there?" Cook asked "In the human stories, they're always...lurking. People are scared of them so they just sort of hang around in the dark, not letting themselves be seen until they find their victim, then they bite their necks and drink their blood...and sometimes turn them into new vampires, depending on which legend the author of the story is basing the vampire off of." Sometimes, he really did wonder where he came up with some of this useless information. Mostly the overly-talkative kitchen help, he guessed. They had had a vampire obsessed one, and Cook had been stuck with him for longer than usual.

[Anonymous]

((Bah, December is too busy @-@.  My apologies for taking a second to reply.))

Samari nodded.  Tinkering with life and death magic was risky enough, he didn't want to imagine what would happen if a time spell went wrong.  The most horrible thing was that no one would know something went wrong and be able to fix it.  

Blood banks were another thing to add to the 'interesting things about Aedolis that Thanatos could use' list he was compiling.  Of course, if they were to keep blood that wouldn't clot up and become useless, someone would start selling it to vampires or to necromancers who wanted to experiment on it.  He wasn't sure how much would be used to actually save lives.  Not when the person could be 'saved' (in a sense) by a necromancer.  Keeping it cold was an interesting idea.  They could probably manage that without difficulty, at least in the winter.  Summer would require them stockpiling ice and keeping it cold.  He had to fight to keep his eyes from widening when Cook asked about what sort of food they ate.  Since he couldn't get any use out of it, Samari usually ignored food while he was in Thanatos, unless it smelled good.  "How to store food isn't my strong point.  We can keep it cold in an ice chest, smoke meats," Samari watched Cook's eyes for any sign of understanding so he could skip onto the harder question.  "Keep it in a larder... that sort of thing."

Samari looked into his empty bowl for a heartbeat before continuing.  "We eat... a lot of plants.  Grain, root vegetables, fruit from trees and a lot of mushrooms.  Mushrooms grow easily in Thanatos.  We have to have meat delivered by ship most of the time, but we can fish for seafood."

It was a fairly generic description.  He could probably remember the names of a few dishes if he thought about it, but chances were he'd remember something from his home town instead.

He was almost grateful to be back in familiar territory again.

"Vampires are citizens," he said, nodding.  "It's easy enough for them to get blood without having to hunt for it.  If they aren't hunting, there's no reason for living people to be scared of them, unless they're scared of everything."  He paused for a second, wanting to look like was remembering something, when it was something he already knew.  "If I recall... a vampire needs a license to turn a new vampire."

[Anonymous]

"Not so different from the way things used to be done on earth way back when" He commented. There were lots of books and such on earth, granted they might or might not be known about by some of the officials, but they definately had survived over the years. Plus, they had been passed down through the generations. He wasn't from earth himself, but he'd had a neighbor who liked to tell stories passed down from a long string of relatives.

"Here in the ship, some things are kept cold in a refrigerator, or a freezer. But we have a lot of freeze-dried foods. Basically, all the moisture is taken out of the food, so it can't spoil." he explained with a shrug. "Without all that water, it's not so heavy and we can take more onto the ship without weighing her down much."

"Sounds almost like a vegetarian sort of a place" Cook mused "But, I suppose when you can't get much meat, you eat what you got." He rose "You want any more of that?" He asked, pointing to his empty bowl. "I'm going to get myself some." His tenticles wriggled a moment, as if anticipating having something to do. It seemed they had a mind of their own half the time. And maybe they did. No one ever dared to ask him. He wasn't always as nice as he was being to his little guest. Normally, he was known for being quite crotchety and grumpy-- but that was also when he had a kitchen to run and was trying to get inept assistants to do things like they were supposed to.

"A license you say? Now that's an interesting idea. I never thought a vampire would get a license to turn people. Do they just turn when they get bit, or do they have to really mean to turn a person?" Of course, no one else had managed to make Cook curious either.

[Anonymous]

Somehow, Samari managed to keep from asking Cook what he meant by 'way back when'.  He didn't like the way that sounded, especially when it was about Earth.  Even more because he knew that Earth was the planet that Thanatos was on.  There was nothing 'way back when' about how they stored their foods... it was very much a 'this day and age' sort of thing.  In the end, Samari wrote it off as Cook forgetting to say that on this part of Earth, people stored food like that way back when.  It wasn't that hard to imagine, they did have ships that flew and all sorts of weird metal gadgets.  

Samari understood the concept of keeping food cold, they did that in Thanatos too.  Not with a 'refrigerator', but with blocks of ice and sawdust.  They called them ice houses, maybe the 'refrigerator' operated on a similar concept.  Or... not, Samari raised an eyebrow when Cook mentioned freeze-dried food.  He didn't even know it was possible to take the water out of food without ruining it completely.  It made him wonder if the food he just finished eating was freeze dried.  

"Was this food freeze dried?" He put a hand against his empty bowl and tilted his head toward it briefly.

Vegetarian?  That must have had something to do with not eating meat, from what Cook said.  Samari wasn't quite sure if that applied to all of Thanatos.  Those that were rich enough could eat all the imported meat they wanted, and the seafood was plentiful enough that everyone could afford to eat it at least once a week.  He shook his head when Cook offered him the second bowl, he didn't feel quite as hungry as he did before and wanted to know whether or not the food was freeze dried before he had more.  He wanted to see what food without any water tasted like.

"It helps keep the vampire population in check," Samari explained.  "Helps keep people that don't want to be turned from being turned against their will and that keeps the living and other undead satisfied.  As for how," Samari paused, pretending to think again.  "It really depends on the vampire.  I've never heard about a person being turned from being bitten.  Be a little hard for the vampire to feed if they had to worry about their meal growing fangs and hunting humans once they were finished.  They would have to kill anyone they didn't want to turn, or drink the blood of the recently dead - and from what I hear, a dead person's blood is terrible."  Samari winced a little.  A dead person's blood, or worse the remnants of an siege undead's blood, was like a bottle of sparkling champagne that was allowed to go flat, complete with clots and bits of dried crusts worked loose by the liquid blood moving.

Just thinking about it was enough to make him feel a little nauseous.  Samari tried to contain his expression though.  Couldn't have Cook thinking that his food made him feel sick.

[Anonymous]

"No, this wasn't freeze dried. This was what they call a 'protein' block. Basically, it's got the nutrients, but isn't anything in particular. I mix it with other stuff and it mostly takes the place of meat. The freeze-dried meats just don't seem right in a casserole like this." He explained, dropping back down on the bench where he'd been.

"Ah, that makes good sense. If everyone was running around drinking every one else's blood and turning vampires left and right, the world and universes would be overrun in short order. Still, I am curious how they went about turning people." He admitted. Here he was learning about what he'd thought was just made up stories. But then again, for some reason he trusted what this boy said was true.

Lights overhead blinked on and off while colored lights on the wall, near the intercom flashed in a sequence of colors. "Ah, well, I best get this food stowed quick. We'll be taking off shortly." He explained, rising yet again and quickly storing the left overs in what looked like a drawer of some kind. He checked the stoves and hit a couple buttons above them to make sure the power to them remained off before he motioned the kid up off the bench. "Come on, we'll get you strapped in."

[Anonymous]

Samari began eying the other bowl of food with more curiosity than hunger when Cook explained what it was.  Just nutrients that took the place of meat.  He was going to have to ask Cook how they were made.  Flesh would be a lot more valuable if the nutrients could be taken out of it and the tissue left over to be forged or studied.  He'd wait a little before asking, after eating some protein block when he wasn't completely famished.  It had to be somewhat palatable if he was going to be associated with it.

Having explicit knowledge about turning would either give Samari up, or make it seem like he researched vampires or was otherwise fascinated by them.  The last two were as possible as the first, but Samari didn't want to give anymore hints.

There was also the possibility that he was reading too much into this.  Just knowing a little information about something didn't necessarily mean you were that something.  Nothing wrong with a nice dose of paranoia though.  Nothing was more gauche than leaving big obvious hints about a secret you'd rather keep.  Samari shrugged.  "I know theories, but I don't know anything that will cause a mortal being to become a vampire."

There was a human saying, something about being struck by lightning for telling a lie.  Samari knew why it crossed his mind just now, but he was glad that it was just something to tell gullible people to put their foolish hearts at ease.

Speaking of foolish hearts, his own began beating harder when all the lights went crazy.  He stared wide eyed at them, digging his hands into the bench and shrinking down slightly.  This was, apparently, normal judging from Cook's reaction.  That rational information didn't help Samari, especially being told that they were 'taking off'.  That meant moving.  Being moved by anything that wasn't another person always unsettled Samari a little...

A lot.

Samari's shoulders were trembling when Cook put the food away and turned his attention back to the bench.  As much as he would have preferred to hide under the bench, Cook was the one familiar with this sort of travel.  If he needed to be strapped in like a poor victim on a torture rack, then so be it.  No use getting hurt while traveling in an over sized people carrier.  Samari slowly detached his hands from the bench and stood, one hand immediately slapping out to rest on the nearest wall, which he followed as he walked over to Cook.

Feeling his heart throbbing again was definitely an odd feeling.  It felt like his heart would jump out of his mouth if he tried to say anything.

[Anonymous]

Cook finished up with the kitchen, making sure everything was stowed and powered down before he turned to face the boy, but paused curiously and watched him a moment. "You scared?" He asked plainly. He didn't seem likely to poke fun, but he didn't beat around the bush much either. Simply ask straight forward and get the answer hopefully in a similar manner.

He put a hand on the boy's shoulder and started trying to gently steer him towards his own quarters, though it was decidedly awkward as Cook's stride was almost always uneven and jolting as he had to adjust his weight for every step, so half the time, his guiding was almost a push.

"It'll be fine. You just sit in a chair, and I'll strap you in, we'll go shooting off across space and arrive at our destination at some point. After we get up to speed though, we can move around if you want." He didn't sit still very well some days. Sitting and waiting to arrive annoyed him. He always had work to be done. Something needed de-greasing or repair or prep.

"Here" Cook said as they reached his room, which wasn't far from the kitchen. "Just have a seat."

[Anonymous]

There was no way Samari could tell Cook that he wasn't scared without looking like a fool.  He was trembling, his hand on the wall like it was a life-line and his eyes wide.  Samari imagined his irises looked like drops of blood floating in a pool of milk as he looked up at Cook and nodded.  Opening his mouth to reply would probably get his teeth chattering.

That would just be pathetic.

Then again, the mortification would be enough to get him walking faster so he could get strapped in and be safe.  That's how it played out the first time he traveled on a ship.  He dug his heels in when the gangplank went down and started chattering soon after Jerik picked him up.  Then Jerik made that dumb comment about using him to cut lumber and he wriggled his way free and marched up the gangplank.

Cook's hand on his shoulder beat being scooped up and carried like a bride.  Even if it was a little jerky.  Samari had no idea where Cook was going, so he tolerated it.  The alternative was whatever would happen if he didn't get strapped in.  Which just might be more humiliating than not walking onto a boat.  At least it wasn't a long walk.

Samari grabbed onto the back of the closest chair he saw in Cook's room and eased himself on it with one hand grabbing the back.  Once he was seated he hooked his ankles around the bottom legs and placed his other hand behind him on the back of the chair so Cook would have an easier time strapping him down.  He looked up at Cook, still wide eyed.