RP: Lazarus [Lazarus] - The long walk back

"Its called a burger, it is comprised of ground meat, seasoned and cooked as a patty. Upon the patty are native veggies, and some fruit, along with a hefty slathering of duq sauce. Uh, and those are fries, they're made from a brown-skinned tuber, fried, and salted." Miles explained, before he pulled out his own burger, with a plain white wrapper, which was half-way transparent due to the grease from his burger. Without hesitation, Miles unwrapped his burger before taking the bun off, then going about placing additional sauces, including mayo, mustard, ketchup, duq sauce, and a local variant of horse raddish.

Aiesu took a small timid bite, her features widening in confusion. She was trying to get this new culinary experience over as quickly as possible -- reaching for her glass of water and finishing it on the spot.

"Its so rich and heavy... Its sickly. How do even eat this stuff?" she said, feeling nauseous as she plopped the burger back into the bowl, disappointed with the gift.

"With vigor and gusto." Miles stated, as he put the top back on his burger. He grasped it in both hands, sure to place pressure upon what would be the 'back end' of the burger to pinch it shut to keep the contents from spilling out as he worked on consuming the food item. Then, he did it, he took that savage bite, digging his teeth through bun, plant-matter, and meat, as he took in a mouthful of the wild blend of flavors, and began to chew, grinding the mess of sustenance between his teeth, as varying chunks of his meal rolled over his tongue, stimulating nerve endings, sending signals to his brain which fired off a wide range of hormone responses and neural transmitters all of which said one thing; 'Food, good'.

He followed up the bite with a fizzy clear drink he had purchased as well, which tasted of Nepleslian lemon, and Lorath lime, it was tart, but wonderfully delicious in its contrast to the heavy flavor of the burger.

Aiesu soon left for the kitchen - the sound of the fridge-door as she set the gift away for later, returning about a minute or so later with a pint sized glass full of some beige creamy looking milkshake. She settled down where she was and took a thoughtful sip.

"Are you always so..." she leant forward, watching the savage way in which Miles ate. She left her words to his imagination.

Miles was between bites of his burger, and had just washed down a mouthful with a quantity of his soda. "Brutish? Indulgent? Inelegant?" Miles suggested, as he picked up a napkin and wiped his lips clean of the mixture of sauce and grease. "Cultural disposition." he stated simply, as he used a couple of fries to go about slathering up some of the greasy saucy wreckage which was left upon the burger wrapper. "Life for Nepleslians is often too short to be spent going about on tip-toes, concealing what we truly intend and feel."

"Ah..." Aiesu tried to crack a smile. "So you end up sharing it with everyone whether or not they actually want to see it? That's really noble of you, Mr. Nepleslian" she said, cradling her glass between both hands and taking a long slow drink. "The fact you eat that stuff is probably you live half as long as we do" she chuckled to herself.

"So what did you mean by earn?"

"Ah-ah, you have to wait for when the time comes." Miles spoke, shaking his head lightly before he went about taking another bite of the greasy mess wedged between buns. With that, he forced Aiesu to wait for him to finish chewing that bite before he would continue. "Though, I can say, I'll start small with what you'll be expected to do, but over time, I guarantee I'll be placing higher tasks between you and your dose, more so if you start developing a resistance and need to be stepped up."

"...You're actually getting a kick out of this, aren't you? Teasing a poor addict" she stared flatly, jabbing him with her elbow. "You've got your vices, let me have mine. Stupid rat looking bastard."

She remained jovial, if only because she knew she could get her own if she had to, even if it meant synthesising it from precursors or chewing duqs.

"A bit." Miles spoke honestly, even as he flinched at the elbow jab, especially since her elbow was modeled after her original; thin, bony, pointy, not exactly fun to be jabbed with. "Even though you say I'm stupid looking, I'm smart enough to be ahead of the game of a poor poor addict." There was that smile there again, that cunning smile, that hinted at being coy.

What was not spoken, was the fact that there was a missing filter pump, an absence of pyridine hydrochloride, and an assortment of other missing items which Miles had come across while purging Aiesu's dorm room of her stashed drugs, he knew to deprive her not only of the product, but of the means to manufacture... it made him think on what it would be like to raise a Nepleslian child, which produced a laugh from him before he sipped his soda.

Aiesu took another sip of her concoction, swilling it in her mouth with cool somber thought as she felt the warmth finally arrive at her extremities, banishing the cruel unwanted cold that gripped her like ice. In her mind, those extremities sat in different positions from her new synthetics, making her nearly drop her glass as she re-oriented her senses; being hugged by some warm friendly ghost of phantom memory.

A clicking sound of back teeth tickled Miles' ears. Then, something caught her eye.

The way the light flittered through her blinds in the kitchen with such intensity and the way it scattered stripes across the small room and out into the main living space formed a squared pattern that rounded as the drapes hung over the blind to soften its edges curled into a soft curve at the bottom in a shape: Not quite the letter Y or the letter D.

A quiet sound, not quite laugher, rustled in her throat in a way that Miles hadn't seen before as she nodded toward the play of light.

"Shimapan" she rumbled, taking another sip as she felt the light reaching her new feet, wrinkling her toes like the fingers of a newborn -- sat next to him who sat in her office chair, towering over her.

This would take some getting used to.