USS Traveller
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The Goat (Curry) Scene

Posted on Thu Aug 26th, 2021 @ 1:33am by Captain Remas McDonald & The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra & Lieutenant Mar Megara MD

1,056 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: S2:2: Something Missing Something New
Location: Porkies BBQ, Traveller Rec Deck
Timeline: February 2390

The blue and red children of Shadi and Mazarian were polite and defferential to a fault. They ate with vigour, but with grace and manners becoming of older children than their days of life could attest. The blue female ate with a knife and fork, industriously dismantling her food where her red coloured brother used claws and powerful jerks of his arms to pull chunks of meat free.

The Grey one...well. Sometimes the apple falls from the tree and rolls a bit.

Other times it lands in the branches.

Somewhere beneath a pile of ribs that Porkie, the propriator, had brought forth from his kitchen lathered in a thick sauce, was the Grey one. No sooner had the plate touched the table that he had dived in, head first, and truly horrendous chomping and snapping sound could be heard from within.

Remas, who had come along to make sure security wasn't called, looked over at Meg with a look that spoke volumes.

"That one is my favorite," declared Meg, gazing fondly at the pile of ribs as it jerked sporadically while the little grey one chomped at the meat. "He does not care what anybody thinks; he is hungry and he is eating."

"He is getting sauce over everything!" the blue one said, stabbing the fork with not inconsiderable force into the bone of her rib she'd been pecking at. "Mother please reign in our sibling, he demeans us with his antics."

"Hey there, ya'all need anything?" Porkie asked, waddling his porcine form over their table. Small dark eyes, stubby nose and a head of fuzzy blonde fur, Porkie came from a people who had been bred and designed to be better organ donors. The experiment had been a raging success for the civilisation that made them, right up until the cryptozoologic virus jumped from their creation to them and wiped them out. Leaving the genetically engineered live stock to evolve within the cradle of another civilisations ashes.

Hogs Villie was not the name of the planet, but they found it funny all the same.

"More sauce? Ribs?" Porkie asked, looking at Meg and Remas. "Rain slickers?"

"No more sauce until you eat the bones!" Shadi chided. "Otherwise your limbsss won't regenerate like your brothers'."

"Maybe he was meant to be a Klingon," commented Meg idly, watching the Grey one continue to toss bits of meat and sauce everywhere. "There was a mixup and somewhere, a Klingon child is eating politely with a knife and fork."

"Meant to be a milk-drinking Klingon?!" Shadi gasped. "MY spawn?! Say that again and I will invoke an honor duel!"

“Will you please stop finding offense in everything I say?” Meg replied. “Drinking milk is not the end of the universe.”

"THEN-!" The pile of ribs erupted, and the Grey one stood as tall as his stumpy form could and pointed a denuded bone at Meg. "-STOP REFERRING TO ME AS A LACTOSE DRINKING SOFT SKIN! I AM A PROUD WARRIOR BORN OF THE BROOD MOTHER OF ALL DRAGONS! AND I HUNGER!"

"Have we perhaps thought of names?" Remas said, one eye closed from the blob of sauce now covering it.

Shadi stopped cold at that. "Names?" she repeated aloud. "Oh, yesss... we can't do the Rendering on a Starfleet vessssel, can we?" Her claw ticked against the scales on her chin as she thought. "I wonder if Mazarian has any family naming traditionsss that won't see us court-martialed?"

“You could give them temporary names for the time being,” suggested Meg. “And official names later."

"Agreed," Remas said. "I didn't get my name until I was twelve and I grew into it. Not the way its done else where, but it worked for the Rish."

"Let's ask them," Shadi said. "They're actually talking, which is something Saurians don't do for a few more weeks yet."

Remas happily smiled at the happy images of a silent two weeks...

"GUT WRENCHER! OH! OOH!!! SPINE TWISTER!!! NO! NO!! BLOOD DEVOURER!!!!" the grey one, though more a muddy brown covered in BBQ sauce, jumped up and down on his plate in excitement. He then began to list, in no particular medical order, a new of ways in which his name could also be an impractical method of death. Apples sometimes roll away from the tree, but on the odd occasion, they land in the boughs.

"Mazerite," the blue one said, delicately biting onto some of her ribs. "It seems only fitting as he is my sire, and it is a good name."

"NOT AS GOOD AS LIVER RENDER!" said the starting point of a rib based ICBM that flew into the cheap seats.

Shadi clapped her scaly hands together with glee. "Yaaasss! Mazerite was the fallen star that gouged our planet and cast down the sun for a generation! The Blood Goddess forged her diadem from it. Yasss, a worthy name!" Looking at the pale one who would not be remiss as the steed for the Horseman of Death, Shadi grinned earhole to earhole. "Jewel of my craw, until you win your own name in gloriousss combat, I name you Viscera, for your great hunger shall be sated with the blood of your mighty enemies." For the quiet third hatching, Shadi looked uncertain. "What will we call you?" She scratched her chin wondering what to call the unremarkable whelp before jumping for joy with an epiphany. "I know! Dewclaw! It will serve you well even if you never win another in your generation's Ravaging."

"Dewclaw..." said Dewclaw, not exactly jumping up and down and chanting his name like his brother Viscera was doing. Mazerite was looking at the two of her siblings who had not chosen their own names, and there was a quiet smirk in those blue eyes.

"The dewclaw is so feared that it isss removed from slaves," Shadi said, "so wear the name with pride!" She squinted one eye in thought. "Though it alssso gets caught in clothing more often than not, but we can just ignore that part."

"Dewclaw..." he said softly, trying to bring himself around to accepting it.

"As mother said, it is a fitting name for a clever and resourceful soul," Mazerite said. Viscera tried to say something encouraging, but the sound muffling properties of BBQ was well known across civilised space.

 

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