Starfish

Two

     "You're going to eat that?" Athe asked pointed to Nina's tray, laid with slices of seared yellow sea worm on a bed of some sort of grain, grilled water runner, and a bowl of green and yellow plants stewed in some kind of salty sour broth. "The kitchen will make you some human food if you ask."

     Nina shook her head. "They made Dreen food for us when I was learning the language, it's not that different from what I grew up eating. It smells better than what the instructor made!" She smiled at Athe, who shook his head. Nina's tray was covered in condiment cups as big as soup bowls, Dreen servings and tableware being too large for humans. But the variety impressed Athe, as did Nina's appetite. "This is delicious," she said, slurping slippery tangles of seaweed through the sour broth as was proper, indicating that the food was so good she couldn't wait to eat it quietly. She speared pieces of a red vegetable on a skewer and took a bite, its crisp skin bursting between her teeth like a ripe tomato and filling her mouth with savory juice and hundreds of tiny seeds. "Fantastic!" The grilled water runner, a lizard-like creature with sand-colored skin and pink flesh, tasted like fresh white tuna and pork, black scorch marks adding a delicious smoky flavor. The yellow sea worm – the non-toxic variety – had been charred on one side and sprinkled with Dreenai sea salt, which was sweeter than Earth salt but helped to break down the tough worm meat.

     "This is like sea cucumber back home," Nina said. "My nanna used to make this with mushrooms and rice." Nearby Dreen watched, fascinated, by the human's gusto as she put away all but a few bites of the yellow sea worm. "I had no idea humans could eat so much," Athe commented. He had eaten easily enough food to completely fill six or seven humans' stomachs to bursting.

     "I don't know about the other humans you've met, but I can eat. Especially after diving. Are there any good diving reefs around here? Doctor Ardus didn't say much about what Dreen do for fun."

     "Well," Athe said, toying with a piece of some yellow fruit that looked like a squash but smelled like carrots and was drenched in a green chutney that, when he offered some to Nina, tasted like sweet chili sauce with a hint of tartness. "I doubt he thought you'd be interested, the other humans mostly keep to themselves in their apartments on campus."

     "Why's that?" Nina wiped her mouth with a napkin the size of a t-shirt. "I mean, we're on an alien planet, why would anyone want to stay at home?"

     Athe looked around at the other tables. The other Dreen had lost interest in Nina's eating and were talking among themselves, but every so often a pair of green or yellow eyes would flash her direction and someone would whisper behind a hand or a napkin. "Doctor Ma'atanoa, surely you know about the...problems Dreenai has had with some humans. Namely, the incident at the Dreenai port of entry?"

     "Oh," Nina's expression fell, "right... Well, we're not all like that," she said, glancing around at the other tables. Some of the Dreen looked away, and Nina felt a sadly familiar stab in her chest. "Most of us are good people. It's just...humans have always had that problem, where a few of them make a lot of trouble for the rest of us." She twisted her napkin in her lap. "I don't know if it's a species thing or if it has something to do with what stage we're at in our civilization. I've never felt the urge to hurt anyone, no matter what they look like, so I don't think it has anything to do with my species. Maybe it's just an evolutionary thing." She shrugged. "I mean, we still haven't outgrown the whole skin color thing, as stupid as it is."

     Athe made a perplexed face, his flat nose-bridge wrinkling. "I've heard of this. Humans have such a bizarre outlook... You're all the same species, aren't you? If you were to," his pores briefly flashed pink, "if you were to have sexual intercourse with, say Doctor Yang, you could become pregnant, could you not? Even though Doctor Yang is of a different color than yourself?"