Avi opens the glass door to a convenience store and Tammy walks in.

The cashier’s desk is on their left, with a shotgun hanging on the wall behind it. Stretching across the wall to their right is a large glass window with a long bench beneath it. All the packaged food is stocked in the back, between the many tight isles.

There are dozens of humans of various species going about their business. Most are in the back, collecting their items, and a few are waiting in the checkout line. The store just opened for the day and everyone’s getting supplies before they head back out on the road. There are a few other restaurants that are now serving breakfast, but Tammy wanted a wide variety of food to bring back to the motel.

Tammy’s eyes are drawn to the back of the store. Each of the many isles is full of boxes and cans, and his lessons informed him that inside these boxes are his prize. Food! Preserved meats, dried fruits, premade meals, tin cans and cardboard boxes with labels he can’t read.

His bottom lip trembles and he holds back tears. After so long, he’s so close to eating. He’s so excited that he doesn’t even consider not being able to eat anything here either.

Avi walks to his side and playfully bumps him with her shoulder. He looks up at her, and she nods her head to the food with a calm and caring smile. The boy takes a deep breath to calm his nerves, then heads over.

His options are limited to the bottom three shelves thanks to his height, but it hardly matters. Tammy scrambles to grab box after box, taken from different sections to make sure there’s a variety, then hands them off to Avi. A large pile quickly begins to stack between her arms. Every box and tin can has a solid white label, with large black words written on the front. No pictures, diagrams, or nutrition charts.

After a few minutes of shopping, his stomach gurgles in desperation and pain. He grabs another box and looks to his wife to hand it off, but her chin is already resting atop a large stack. She can’t carry much more. He shakes his head, puts the box back onto the shelf, and Avi realizes that this means they’re done.

Tammy heads to the front section but leaves the isle too fast and runs into the thigh of a man.

“[Watch it, brat!]” He yells as he shoves his leg forward and kicks Tammy away, making the boy land on his butt.

Avi perks up, her eyes wide, and she clicks her teeth.

Tammy, fear running down his spine, gets up and jumps back into the isle, in front of his wife. He bows apologetically several times. But while Avi can’t move forward, her wide eyes memorize his face in a split second. Scraggly beard, patches of tanned skin, clumpy hair, five eyes, with four eyes in an upside-down V and the fifth in the center of his forehead, pug-like face, loose-fitting clothes.

The man snarls at Tammy but leaves the store soon after, having not bought anything.

Tammy sighs and tries to straighten his back. His small body trembling, he looks back at his wife. He can’t meet her eyes and looks sick, blushing and embarrassed. To Avi, he looks like he’s frustrated at how weak he is, but really it’s just the sudden, hostile confrontation followed by the panic that Avi might reveal her heritage. He crumples his mouth and grabs the pouch full of money, indicating he just wants to pay and go back to their room.

Avi bites her bottom lip hard, but steps forward to get in line. Nobody else in the store cares that a seven-year-old boy was just kicked. But Avi turns her head to look out the window. She watches the man cross a street and head into one of the motels. She knows exactly-

Tammy puts a hand on her arm, gripping her sleeve through the poncho.

She looks down at him, but he keeps his eyes forward. He’s shaking. Then his stomach growls once more and the boy winces.

Avi turns her head to the window, but the man is gone. She doesn’t know what room he went into, and they’ll never see him again. With a deep frown, she faces forward.

For just a second, she feels the need to wrap her tail around Tammy’s waist for support. Thankfully, they tied her tail down, and her inability to move it reminds her that it’s supposed to stay hidden.

The two wait in line for a time, and Tammy’s heartrate slowly returns to normal.

When it’s their turn, the cashier sighs at the amount of food in Avi’s arms. Tammy takes each box one by one and puts it on the counter, where the receptionist tallies it up on a calculator. A lot of the numbers are lazily put in wrong, so they have to pay a little bit more.

“[The total comes to 84.]” The man says with unfocused eyes.

Tammy reaches up to put the pouch on the counter, then steps back so the cashier can see his face. “I…” He speaks slowly and deliberately, with a warble to his voice as if he’s speaking a language he isn’t fluent in. “Do not know… math. Coin? Good?”

The cashier gives a disgusted groan that requires no psychic powers to translate, and Avi threateningly clicks her teeth in response.

The man shoves his hand into the pouch and grabs and handful of coins of various denominations. The total he pulls amounts to 114. “[There, it’s paid, get out.]”

Tammy gives an awkward smile, then hurriedly towers the boxes back into Avi’s arms.

After grabbing the money pouch, they leave the store and silently head back up to their motel room.

****

“Gyah!” Avi yells as she dumps the boxes of food onto the bed. “What they heck was that guy’s problem?!”

Tammy jumps on the mattress and picks a random box. “He seemed annoyed to be doing his job. Maybe he was having a bad day?”

“No,” Avi crosses her arms and tries to swish her tail, but it’s still tied down. “The other guy.”

“O-oh, that one.”

“Yeah! I should kill him! Rip his throat out!”

Tammy shakes his head, “let’s… just drop it. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know who we are.”

Avi paces back and forth in the empty room, circling the bed in a U shape.

Tammy ignores her and rips open one of the boxes, pulling out a small plastic wrapper. Inside the clear film is a long, rectangular sandwich. A meatball sub, with red sauce and cheese. The boy can’t keep himself from drooling, and his shaky hands fumble to undo the wrapper.

Avi takes a break from her pacing and stands next to him as he finally frees the sandwich. Just as he’s about to take his first bite, Avi grabs his wrist to stop him.

“H-huh?” He says, stomach roaring for sustenance. His eyes are wide and his pupils constricted, he’s desperate to eat. “I-is there a problem?”

She leans in closer and sniffs. “Smells… really bad. But it’s edible.” She releases his wrist, “I don’t want you getting poisoned.”

Tammy barely hears her. His stomach cries out, and he takes a large bite.

The bread is hard, the sauce is poorly made, the cheese is artificial, and the meat is a mystery concoction made from the leftovers of a factory floor. Some gurant in some city owns a monopoly of factories that create this sort of pre-packaged food, and they would never even consider cutting into their profits by going for a slight increase in quality. There’s probably traces of rats that fell into the vat of goo that got turned into the sauce. Human hair no doubt fell into the mix somewhere along the line. Either slightly-cancerous spray was used to take mold off the bread yeast, or the mold was allowed to stay if it was in small enough quantities. There’s a faint metallic taste that could come from any number of sources, but it probably originates from rusty machinery.

Tammy swallows, then begins to tremble.

“Tammy?” Avi reaches forward and puts a hand on his shoulder.

He sniffles, wipes his eyes, then quickly scarfs down another bite. Then another. He can’t even savor the taste, he’s just so happy to fill his belly.

“It’s just like the treats I used to get in the orphanage!” He chokes out between the tears and hiccups.

“Oh, so it worked!” Avi yells with a smile.

Tammy takes another bite, and as he pulls the sandwich away, Avi bends down to steal a bite.

Her smile quickly fades. “Oh…” She says, chewing it thoroughly. “This… is garbage.”

Tammy shakes his head. He’s too busy stuffing his face, so he can’t put forward a more eloquent defense.

Bone-tail tongues are incredibly sensitive and are specifically designed to analyze the compounds of everything they eat. This allows them to break their food down into these base compounds, then reform them into serums. As Avi chews, there’s a deep scowl on her face. “This has… very poor nutritional value,” she says. “I guess I can see why you were so malnourished when I met you, and why so many people in the empire are so short. There are various components I don’t recognize, they might not even be organic, and there are other organic compounds that aren’t food. I don’t know what this taste is, but it reminds me of a tumor. Wait, isn’t there supposed to be cheese? I’m not tasting any cheese in here so… what the heck is that? What are you putting in your body?”

Tammy swallows the last bite, and brings Avi in for a firm, loving hug.

“Th-thank you, Avi.” He sniffs. “Thank you, thank you so much!”

She can’t swallow the garbage in her mouth, but the surprise of his hug causes her to gasp and nearly inhale it. “F-f-for-“ her beet red face twists into a smile, and she remembers to reciprocate the hug, wrapping her arms around his back, “for what?” She manages to say.

“For… helping me get this. It’s been so long since I could eat something. You never gave up trying to cook for me, and then you went so far just to find me food. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Oh! Well, haha, of course, Tammy.” The initial shock of receiving affection has faded, and she’s managed to compose herself. Acting like a giggling idiot would ruin her carefully cultivated, mature image. “I couldn’t just leave my husband to suffer like that.” She tries to play it off like it’s no big deal, of course she’d help him with this.

Tammy takes several deep breaths, then quickly rips open the next box. It’s vaguely reminiscent of what people would call cereal. It doesn’t have much of a taste, but as Tammy starts shoveling the flakes down his esophagus, it’s better than the slops he’s been subjected to since joining the Barabba Tribe.

Avi goes outside to spit out the fake meatball sub over the railing, then returns to Tammy, who’s already on another box. “Wow, you were really hungry.”

All he can do is nod while shoving his face with crackers.

Avi takes one out of the box and tries it. “Hmm. Well, there’s nothing inedible here, at least. But besides the hint of cockroach, it’s just bread and flour. Completely bland. Uninteresting.”

Tammy swallows. “C-cockroach?”

“Yeah.” She swallows. “Just a touch though. It’s kind of like… like the people who made it didn’t know there was a cockroach inside, or they didn’t care. It’s not enough for me to think it was done on purpose.”

Tammy looks down at the cracker in his hand, thinks for a moment, but keeps eating anyway.

Avi smiles, then tears open another box and wrapper. She holds it out so Tammy can swiftly move on. It’s dehydrated noodles, formed as a crunchy, dry square. Tammy takes it and bites into it as if it’s a chip. Neither of them have a way of knowing that these noodles are supposed to be cooked in boiling water.

Avi takes a bite and crunches it around her mouth. “Hmh. So bland. There are barely any ingredients.” She frowns, the gears turning in her head. “Hey, Tammy.” The boy looks up but keeps eating. “We had this whole idea of your species having sensitive stomachs, or something… but there’s nothing about this food that’s particularly… soft? Easy to eat? It’s not special in any way.” She sits on the bed, looking into her husband’s eyes as he swallows the last bite of crunchy noodle. “Do you think maybe you just like bland food, without much flavor?”

“I’m… not sure.”

“Since, like, this has no spice, no seasoning. Besides the hint of stuff that was probably unintentionally added in, which I assume you can’t taste anyway, there’s like four ingredients. That meatball sandwich you ate only had a dozen or so. But a normal Barabba dish is supposed to have hundreds of ingredients.” She quickly opens another box, inside is a premade fruit pie. It was the most expensive item they bought, not that they were able to see the price. She bites into it, and frowns, “ignoring the inorganic crap, this would actually be really easy to cook at camp.”

Tammy’s eyes light up, “you could make this?!”

“Yeah,” she says calmly. “I know exactly what they were intending to put inside, so it would just take a little trial and a little error to figure out how it all fits together. But each thing you’ve eaten, I remember. I could make all of it, and even improve it, probably, since we’d have fresher ingredients.”

Tammy’s bottom lip trembles, and he leaps onto Avi, pulling her back onto the bed and hugging her warmly. “Y-… you’re the best!” Is all he can squeak out.

The goofiest smile marks her face, and she quickly rips off her tail binding so she can return his hug with arm and tail.

****

The two walk to another store for pen and paper, then return to the room. Avi is sitting on the bed while Tammy is lying on the floor. His stomach is against the concrete while his legs are in the air, rocking back and forth.

Avi takes a single bite of the next meal. “The important ingredients… eugh,” she shudders.

“What’s wrong?”

“I once tried eating a bullet, and it had this flavor. So I don’t know if there’s gunpowder in this, or maybe lead, but I don’t want you swallowing this.”

Tammy frowns, “j-just a bite?”

“No,” she says sternly, “I’m not even going to swallow this. But there’s a dozen intended ingredients besides that.” She goes on to list the ingredients necessary for a grilled cheese sandwich. Tammy, who’s spent the last few months learning the bone-tail language, can write well enough. There are several typos, and his handwriting isn’t the best, but it’s still better than what Avi can write.

“Hey,” Tammy raises an eyebrow, “how do you know what’s an intentional ingredient?”

She smiles proudly and raises her chin, “since I’m actually kind of smart! Anything inorganic is out, anything in very small mixtures, like the cockroach from earlier, probably wasn’t meant to be there. I’m also taking into account your long list of banned ingredients and disregarding everything there. I guess all that trial and error wasn’t a waste after all!”

Tammy gulps, “m-my banned list?”

“Yeah.” She folds one leg over the other, then gets to work opening another box. “From when I was trying to figure out how to cook for you, and you kept giving me corrections on things you don’t want added.”

“…s-so… there were things from my banned list in the foods I ate just now?”

“Small traces, yeah.”

The poor boy goes pale. “Like what?”

“…” She purses her lips. “I kind of feel like I shouldn’t tell you.”

He brings a hand to his mouth, “was it… d-… did I eat human flesh?”

She thinks for a moment.

“A-Avi?!” He cries in desperation, rising to his knees.

“Um, no, you didn’t. No human meat. Except for stuff like human hair or fingernails, and some dandruff, but I don’t think that counts. That being said… I feel like you should stop this line of thought, given how you reacted last time.”

A small touch of relief passes over him. He’s not a cannibal. But then a needle of doubt hits his brain. “How I reacted last time?” He looks down and nervously grips his chin and mouth, leaning back to sit on his calves. “I’ve reacted poorly to a lot of things over the last year. What was it? It wasn’t human meat-“

“Tammy.”

“-I don’t feel like it would have been alcohol-“

“You should really stop.”

“-psychedelics again? Would I notice if I’m under their influence?”

“Tammy, seriously.”

“There were plenty of things I disliked, but what did I have a strong reaction towards?”

Avi hops off the bed and lands with a thud, then grabs Tammy’s face and forces eye contact. “You need to stop. This won’t end well, just calm down. If you’re going to obsess over it, I can tell you, but I won’t recommend it. It’s in quantities so small you wouldn’t be able to notice anyway. You should drop it.”

Tammy, his face smooshed between her hands, pouts. “…I really want to know.”

“You don’t,” Avi says with clear red eyes.

“Please tell me.”

“Pretty much everything had small bits of mouse poop mixed in.”

“Aaaaaagh!” Tammy covers his face and cries. “That’s disgusting!” He yells, his voice muffled. “The gurant put that in their food!?”

She releases his face. “It’s almost certainly not intentional.”

“Eww! Eww-eww-eww-eww!” He falls to his side.

Avi crouches at his side and puts a supportive hand on her husband’s shoulder, “you should have listened to me.”

“That’s..! It’s inside my stomach now! It was on my tongue!”

“Yup. And unlike me, you actually liked the flavor.”

He screams into his hands and flails his legs.

“I told you you didn’t want to know.”

“I know! But not knowing was worse than knowing!”

“Was it? But knowing seems like it’s pretty bad.”

“It is!”

Avi pats his head and ruffles his hair. “Want to try and write ingredients again? Once I give it a taste test, I’ll only let you eat it if there’s nothing there that breaks your list. Okay?”

Tammy takes a deep breath, lets it out with a deep sigh to steel his nerves, and lets go of his face. “Okay…”

“Do you want me to lie and just say there’s no mouse poop, so you feel better about it?”

His face turns red and he recoils, “wha-?! Well don’t put that idea in my head! Now I’ll be suspicious of everything!”

“Oh, right. If I was going to lie, I should have just done it.”

The pair stays inside the motel for the rest of the day, writing down recipes. For the first time in almost a year, Tammy’s hunger has been sated, and for the first time in his life, he feels full. The only time they leave the room is to use the bathroom, or to buy water. Tammy was so focused on food that he didn’t think about drinks.

“Wait,” Avi opens the bottle of water and takes a sip. She shakes her head, then spits it out. “Nope, you can’t drink this.”

“Why?”

“I’m pretty sure this water was repackaged from, like, a sewage system. It’s like they took rusty poo water and tried to clean it but did a really bad job of it. So no, you can’t drink it.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for stopping me.”

“Of course!” She puffs out her chest, imagining herself as the guardian of her husband’s stomach. She starts chugging the foul water and gets to work making a water serum, dripping a steady stream into a bottle for him. She mad Tammy really sick a few months ago because she made a 100% pure-water serum, and the beating Emiri gave her for almost committing manslaughter taught her body to remember the necessity of adding minerals and nutrients to the solution.