Interlude 4, Part 2
“Hmm. Needs more salt.”
“Not mac and cheese again, please! For the love of SimEarth!”
“If you're bored of mac and cheese, which we've not actually had since last week, then how come you're not bored of nectar yet?”
The bickering of these two. It's worse than having toddlers in the house.
Abbie shoves the mac and cheese in a bowl and sits down next to Sam, where he's still drinking his nectar.
“You don't have to have any if you don't like it.”
“I didn't say anything!”
You wouldn't believe he was her father by the way they act together sometimes. Of course, the fact that they appear to be the exact same age doesn't help. Appearances lie, though, which is fairly obvious considering that she has great-great-great-grandchildren who are celebrating their young adult birthdays in a few hours (and you can add an extra great on for him) and she doesn't look a day older than her young adult birthday herself.
Anyway, you didn't expect appearances not to lie. This is what you might call the afterlife.
Sam opens his mouth again.
“I'm glad you do all the cooking, though.”
“Thanks.” She's slightly surprised at the compliment.
“Yeah, when you went off the other week Ben cooked. It was terrible. It tasted worse than that time I ate fifty flame fruit and...”
“That story's disgusting. Please stop.”
They sit in silence for a while.
“What are we waiting for anyway?”
“October.” She sighs. “And I told you that just before you went to the shop for another bottle of nectar.”
He looks at his watch. “That was almost two hours ago! I didn't realise there were months up here anyway. Time doesn't pass normally, blah blah blah.”
She sighs again.
“Anyway,” he continues. “Why can't someone else wait?”
“Because Lexa and Hazel actually do stuff. Ben's lost in the bottom of some library somewhere and after last time I'm not being the one to fish him out. And I can assure you, I don't think I want to be waiting here either, but somebody has to make sure you don't accidentally leak something confidential by falling asleep on your keyboard or something else monumentally stupid.”
“I told Naomi we should have had dinosaurs instead of children.”
Luckily, Abbie is saved from responding by the doorbell.
“You're not October.”
“Who on the Moon are YOU?” The unexpected visitor and Abbie are both as shocked as one another.
“I could very well ask you the same question.”
“Kristofer CrumpleSteel,” he says. “October's husband, if my October is the same as your October.”
“She is. Nice to meet you in the flesh instead of through a monitor.” Abbie pauses. “I'm Abigail CrumpleSteel, October's great-great-grandmother, and that moron over there is Sam, my father.”
“Moron? I'm going to go and get more nectar.” He attempts to pull an offended face and manages to look blanker than usual instead. “Kris, want some?”
“No, thanks.” Kris can't help but think he needs all of his senses unhampered by nectar right now. He'd been surprised enough when he'd found himself being pulled towards the odd building as the scenery changed around him, and even more so when he felt a compulsion to ring the doorbell. And now, this. Two crazies who looked barely older than his son, who were expecting his wife, who claimed to be distant relations. And yet he believed that they were, even though some other part of his brain was arguing and saying it was impossible. Wasn't it?
Maybe it was a dream.
“Sorry, not a dream,” said Abbie.
Had he said that out loud?
“What am I doing here?”
“Actually, I don't know the answer to that either,” she said, and the look on her face showed she wasn't lying. “We didn't think anyone other than the bloodline could even access this place, not yet anyway. I'll have to make a mental note to talk to Lexa about that.”
“Lexa's here too?”
“How do you know... oh, of course. She's your mother-in-law. Bet that was fun.”
Kris was still trying to come up with a suitable answer to that when a horrible crashing noise came from the next room.
“Not again. Look, help me get Sam out of whatever he's fallen into this time, and I'll fix any security breeches he might have caused when injuring whatever poor bit of furniture it is, and then we'll have a cuppa and I'll give you the basics. I can't tell you much, mind, but seeing as you got to this place at all you must have a role to play. Agent BlackWidow can be grumpy at me if she likes, but now you're here you might as well know the gist of things, as it were.”
Kris didn't really feel like he had any option but to follow her.
