Omega’s eyes were on the people streaming through the crowd and canopy of tables furled around them.

There was a rhythmic pulsing sound washing over her ears like waves.

If she focused the meanings of half heard conversations blurred into clarity.

But relaxing and just appreciating the noise itself left nothing but a vague kind of tickling association.

It was like cafeterias at the University packed full of students all dredging a few scraps of friends, food and levity before turning back to the grindstones of the incredibly harsh teachers.

It was like the noise of the festivals in Aoria when nearly every single village would stream together in celebration of one of the ancient rites.

The turning of the shade from the valley. The changing of the flowers.

The fall of the fish!

In her lives Omega had an undercurrent of Aoria that practically sung in her soul.

It was why she was acceptable for the isolated backwards mountain folk to represent their contribution to the colony effort.

They trusted her soul even if they were not too keen on her latest life’s choices.

And here so far from home the crowd murmuring and getting ready to eat felt like home in a way that she had not even thought she would miss.

Not realized she had been missing.

This was not the cozy close knit feast of friends they had done for an anniversary of their departure.

It was not the strange rites and actions of the aliens.

It was not the somewhat eerie and yet long since familiarized imitation of a classroom that Elsie performed for them.

Here in what supposedly was the heart of deepest and most profound wilderness she felt a sensation of home.

The food was thick in the air and she tasted a steam of searing, browning, flesh and thick milky sauces. Vinegars and sweetness, strange peppery nuances and soft fragrances of green and aromatics.

She was not sure what any of them really meant.

She was riding the knowledge of socializing with officials at fancy dinners and town meetings from decades before her time.

From before any of her times.

It all looked practically normal as far as foods went.

The elders were openly appreciative.

Mouths gaped, eyes tracked dishes as they were brought close on cylinders that practically were dripping in what she could only call herbs and spices.

It was like mobile gardens, or wreaths and harvest poles. But decorated and festooned with steaming glazed fruits and meats.

Topiary and feast in one.

They arrived with artful grace at the beckoning of the staff.

Unfolding and unfurling like a disjoined serpent out and through the canopy of tables and the branching seating places.

Filling in the gaps.

A pillar of mouth watering food for every place at the storied artifact of a ‘table’ she and the others were perched around.

The Eldest Hospitalitor had arrived with the pillars and then rumbled and as he spoke she could hear the words of others at ‘seatings’ near by and yet echoing out all around her as he was echoed or at least accompanied by the rhythm of all the other white jacketed pale tan members of what she presumed were his staff.

“It is with the pledge of the honor of I. Whom is yet Eldest of Hospitilators that it is declared the feast of welcome begun! For the esteemed guest of the Courtesan and Pylo, so have we prepared hearts of Nohla hunted by the Middle canopy of Tikali-tohkra-na. Stuffed with the pulp of the youthened shoots of Uruk.”

A gesture to the deep fleshy purple bulbs that almost seemed to shine with its glaze and some kind of mix of what looked like chopped turnip or perhaps carrot and a spongy bread. It smelled almost like bacon, mutton and some kind of sweet beet had managed to become a single meat.

“Further were the beasts of Dergothresh’ dead roots scoured for their flanks and choicest cuts. Seared and hollowed with shreds of the charred and smoked woods of Oh’na spice of highest purity. A cache of the treasured stores of my forefather himself opened and unsealed for this day so they might season your palette.”

A gesture and her attention seemed to make the billowing steam of the fresh seared vibrantly pink flesh wash over her. There was something sharp and at once savory and almost minty and refreshing in the smoke.

“And also are the husked and watered flesh of yuchto enriched in the vitle sauces and renderings of fine highest canopy salts of three separate trees!”

That was where the vinegary smell was coming from. It was rather pungent but not worse than some wine reduced sauces. But there was also freshness to it she could not quite recall in anything she had ever had before. Also so many fresh green smelling things and a crisp almost mountain stream hint of water.

And then with two last flourishes the figure gestured between two things that honestly Omega was a bit unsure of.

On one hand the impression she got of it was quite a lot like a battered and fried dough-nut with some kind of particularly flaky coating.

But on the other it smelled rich and subtly fishy and buttery.

The second was for the life of her little but a strange kind of bush with what looked to be perfect little globes of water suspended on slender stems.

“And for a cleansing savory we have Anethiliwharm, skinned and seared by the best honed sun lenses in a mist of Ox dust and vapors of Rue. To be followed by the supping of truest vitalizing water for a first dessert. Filtered from the heart woods of Kahrkauloindi chosen for its inherent nuance and the sweetest seasonings.”

There was a lot of fuss over it, made all the more confusing by the strange choice of translation.

Omega finally spoke up glancing between the Hospitilator and Pylo.

“Water for desert?”

Pylo nodded her head in the terran fashion with a little smile and the Hospitilator gaped his maw slightly in a manner that was his own affirmative nod.

“Indeed Omega of Pylo’s care. A fine and decadent finisher for the first course before the arrival of the preparatoria anvil flakes and the great elder loafs.”

Quarti laughed and bellowed out happily.

“Smells Delicious! How much more of the yarping wording speeches til we can dig in and start guzzling?!”

Omega flinched a little but that seemed to bring the weird clockwise to counter clockwise winking from everyone around.

It was laughter, good natured and gentle.

Expressions of friends.

One of the elders nearby even opened their mouth wide enough they could swallow omega and proceeded to open their four eyes from INSIDE their mouth!

And blinked them in rapid circles of winking eyes.

She.

Omega could tell thanks to Pylo it was the friendliest and most ‘open’ and kind of laughter. Unguarded and jovial, like a deep unrestrained belly laughter in a human.

But the discontinuity of seeing that apparently these aliens could watch their own food while they were still chewing it?

It made her kind of woozy.

Which she suspected might actually be hunger when Quarti jammed an almost painfully hot purple ‘heart’ as big as her head right into her palms.

“Come on den bluebelle ball! Scrunch up! Told truth be rudest not to!”

The flesh was sticky with glaze, soft and tender and smelled like bacon and beets. Vivid purple, and beets, that can't be a coincidence, probably some chemical similarity involving iron there?

Everyone was watching her.

EVERYONE.

She brought the awkward thing to her lips and took a bite.

Oh.

That was good!

She was so caught up in the flavor Omega almost missed the near total chaos that erupted in a cascade of raucous noise as the feast proper finally began.