Who: Claire and Peridot What: Peridot is thwarted from taking the kitchen apart and asks Claire too many questions. When: Earlyish in the week, morning. Where: Kitchen Warnings: TOO MANY QUESTIONS -- Claire Language? Status: Complete
Peridot had never spent much time among humans. Her interactions had been limited to Steven, Steven’s dad and Connie. Though she had been to a fair once, she did not speak to the humans there. Being in the hotel was radically different from Earth in that she was among so many of them in such close proximity. They simply could not be avoided.
And they were very fond of their toilets. Apparently inquiring about them had been a sensitive issue. Peridot wondered how many of them might have been imprisoned in a bathroom at some point in their lives. She would have to inquire about it later.
Instead, Peridot had found another source of raw materials ripe for cultivation! Peridot did not actually know about eating, her barn had no kitchen. Peridot, a creature that did not naturally eat or sleep, found the large space to be very curious. To her, it looked more like an armory, filled with knives, prodding utensils and large bashing instruments.
But it was the oven Peridot was most interested in, and so what was there to do but dismantle it?
“This cramped compartment space leaks energy everywhere. I find its construction highly inefficient. Why even give this tiny room a power source?” she grumbled. Her voice cracked only once.
Claire forgot breakfast that morning, so by lunchtime she was encroaching the fringes of hangrydom, and rather than submit Cas or Dean or anyone else to the hellbeast that she could be when her blood sugar crashed, she headed down to the kitchen in search of something she didn’t have to spend too much energy on to prepare.
Maybe a sandwich, or crackers and canned cheese, celery with peanutbutter and a handful of raisins each. Kid-food was easy and always pleasant, but maybe she’d wash it down with a beer.
Whatever she settled on evaporated from her mind, however, when she saw what looked to be a leprechaun talking to itself in front of the oven. Claire stopped in her tracks, blinked- thing was still there. She rubbed her eyes. Still there.
“Okay-” she huffed, finally settling on the idea that it was real. Probably a creation of the hotel, for all she knew. “I don’t think the oven is gonna answer you.”
“Yes, it is incredibly primitive. Whoever designed such a tiny room was deeply stupid. Unless it is for the pets humans sometimes carry with them. Perhaps they need to be kept warm.”
Peridot opened the door to the oven and closed it, as though testing it before opening it again and pulling out all of the pieces she could reasonably get her hands on.
“Their pets do scream a lot,” Peridot observed.
“Hey- stop!” Claire wouldn’t have cared about random destruction of property if it didn’t possibly impede her ability to have hot meals for the rest of the week. She lurched forward, wedging herself between the leprechaun and stove. “It’s not a room- it’s an oven, and we need that.”
Sometimes Claire wondered what her life was supposed to be, if not constantly weird.
“You cook food in it. Where the hell did you come from, anyway.”
“Yes. I have heard of this food.” Peridot shuddered. The concept of eating and digestion was gross. “Organic life forms such as yourself were very poorly designed and constructed.”
Peridot stared up at Claire, thinking.
“Show me this cooking,” Peridot said.
Claire might have been annoyed if this had been the first time someone insulted her for being ‘organic’ life- but it wasn’t. Not even close. She huffed at the demand- which is exactly what it was- but couldn’t find much of an excuse that required less energy than actually cooking a meal. Which is why she was here in the first place.
“Sure- why not.” Her tone was flat as her look, but she still moved toward the fridge, calling back quickly- “Only if you promise to stop taking the kitchen apart.”
Peridot growled. It was, unfortunately, cute. So was the squeak of protest that followed afterward: “Ugh! There isn't anything to do in this stupid place! No one will even let me dismantle their prison facilities to create my morp installations. I have nothing to build, nothing to do and Steven did not get Camp Lonely Hearts on DVD!”
After her small tantrum, Peridot gave up. “Fine, human. Shatter me with boredom. Show me this cooking and I will not improve the various inefficiencies of your food storage area.”
Small green arms crossed over her small green chest and the gem made an effort to huff.
God, this was a trip. Claire was half-convinced this was a dream produced from drinking too much coffee too close to going to sleep, but that would’ve actually made sense. Nothing made sense here, so obviously the little green woman had to be real.
So Claire started the process of making not one, but two grilled cheese sandwiches.
“While I’m doing this-” she started, buttering the bread slices over the heating griddle. “Tell me what a morp installation is, and maybe I can suggest something to dismantle for it.”
Peridot had climbed onto the countertop, pulling her knees to her chest to watch the chemical reaction of the heat applied to the bread as it sizzled.
“A morp is short for meep-morp. Lapis Lazuli and I invented them after Steven introduced us to music. It is like a song, without sound. You look at them. I find them very relaxing to create since I am no longer required to design and engineer kindergartens or other important gem installations.”
Peridot sniffed at the cooking sandwich.
“Why do you apply heat to that? Does it help your organic body digest it better if it more closely matches your internal temperatures?” Peridot touched the hot griddle with her finger to test the temperature, and did not appear to be harmed by it.
Claire pieced apart the cheese slices as the bread sizzled, thinking about what the leprechaun could tear apart in order to make what sounded like some sort of laser light show.
Maybe she was coming up blank because she was really hungry.
“It makes the bread crispy,” she said, raising her brows a little at the lack of reaction from skin touching hot grill. Okay, so… she’d remember that. “And melts the cheese. Makes it taste better.”
“Three hundred and twenty degrees.” Peridot lifted her finger and inspected it. “I see. And taste is important to maintaining your organic processes? Yes. Interesting.”
Peridot had already thought up of several ways she could improve the griddle for mass production of heated food. She would have to experiment and get input from the rest of the organic lifeforms in the hotel prison.
“Well, I strongly suspect I know why I am here. I am a very powerful and dangerous rebel, wanted by Homeworld Authorities. Why have you been captured and placed in this hotel?” Hotel being, what Peridot assumed, another kind of jailing system.
Claire eyed the little being while flipping the bread pieces together. Her initial reaction would have been somewhere between sarcasm and incredulous humor, but after her time here at the hotel…
God, she hated having to take practically everything seriously.
“Probably some similar reason,” the young hunter confessed, making a face at the sandwich as she flipped it again, until the sides were golden. “I’ve pissed off something a hell of a lot more powerful than myself, apparently.”
Peridot nodded. “I have done that before. It is terrifying. When my diamond wanted to destroy the earth with a geoweapon, I called her a clod. To her face. Well, over a holocommunicator device. I do not think I have angered anyone more powerful than her but perhaps I am wrong.”
She considered the human in front of her.
“What is your name and classification? I am also curious if there is any significance to the selection of your external image modifiers.” Peridot reached over and gently tugged on the sleeve of Claire’s shirt. “I find human image modifiers amusing, particularly shorts.”
Image modifiers? Claire watched her strange conversation partner with a mix of begrudging intrigue and caution, especially as she tugged at her sleeve.
Oh… she meant clothes.
Not that much else she said made much sense- though a lot of it was starting to remind her of the things Stevie sometimes said. Lots of gem-talk, anyway.
“My name’s Claire,” she went with it. “I’m a hunter. ...and I wear these clothes because… I like them?” Wow, that really was a hard question.
“Yes!” Peridot squealed. “Humans do things because they like them. It’s one of the things that makes Earth so complicated. Like mirrors that refract light improperly to make distorted reflections at fairs. It’s completely pointless!”
At least the small alien looked pleased, then thoughtful. “What does a hunter do? I have not heard of this classification before.”
Claire had to admit, that was a pretty succinct explanation. She hadn’t really thought about it before.
“I hunt things that hunt humans,” she offered as simply as she could, scooping the sandwich off the grill and onto a small plate. “Also, I feel like I should add that we also do things we have to do- not necessarily because we like them.”
“Like eating?” Peridot asked. Eating was a strange one, however, because Claire had mentioned taste. Taste was a concept that Peridot did not fully understand. “Or using a toilet?”
Peridot scratched her chin thoughtfully. “What hunts a human? If it hunts humans, how are you, a human, able to hunt it back?”
“Sort of-” Claire wasn’t about to go into the finer points of comfort foods with what had to be some kind of alien. She definitely wasn’t describing the needs of waste management.
“The things I hunt, most humans don’t know exist,” she sighed lightly, carrying her plate over to the small table across the kitchen. “I can hunt them because I do know they exist. And funny enough, a lot of those things are actually here, in the hotel. But… not exactly. Not like I know them.”
“I see. So you seek to defeat your opponents through tactical advantage, like a ruby.” Peridot nodded. “Or perhaps a quartz. Will you hunt the creatures in this hotel so they do not hunt you?”
“Only if they start causing problems.”
It was difficult to speculate beyond that, and Claire didn’t want to. Some of the things in the hotel might possibly be way out of her league, but at least she had Cas and Dean. She busied her mouth with eating.
Peridot narrowed her focus on Claire’s eating, watching with intense scrutiny. “Ew. That is just … I understand what you mean when you say humans must also do things they do not like. I suppose the opposing textures of crisp bread and melted cheese give you something else to focus on so that you do not have to pay attention as it slides through your body.”
Peridot shuddered slightly.
“Yeah- that’s gotta be it,” Claire responded flatly, while eating. She wasn’t in the mood to argue the point.
Peridot struggled briefly to climb back down the counter, her feet landing on the floor with a soft plop. What other foods could heat be applied to, she wondered? Clearly this also required investigation. Entering the walk in fridge, Peridot came back with a carton of eggs. She did not know precisely what eggs were, but there was a picture of chickens on the carton and she knew chickens were hilarious creatures that liked to cross roads.
Peridot removed one of the eggs and placed it on the grill.
“Am I doing this right?” she peered at Claire.
Claire kept an eye on the strange little being as she (it was female, right?) wandered out of the walk-in with a carton of eggs. In the back of her mind, she already had an idea of what was going to happen, yet somehow she was still surprised enough to almost choke on her latest bite.
“Uh- no. Not exactly,” she said, getting up to scoop the unbroken eggs off the hot surface. “Here- you sit there-” the young hunter pointed at the spot Peridot had been perched while she made the grilled cheese. “Leave the cooking to those of us who know what we’re doing- at least until you have a better idea.” Claire reached toward the butter she left out, plopping a dollop on the grill with the butter knife. It sizzled and melted. “You don’t eat anyway. Don’t waste food.”
Peridot climbed back onto the counter and she looked closely at what Claire did, watching the small patch of melted butter as it started to bubble. “Is it because I did not use the heating lubricant first?”
“That’s part of it.” Claire tapped the egg against the counter ledge and used both thumbs to split it over the butter-puddle.
Peridot’s mind was blown seeing the egg crack. Organic life was so strange and complicated. Some organisms could fly, others could not. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of it. “...Do chickens crack open like that, too?” she asked.
Claire made a contemplative face she hoped the little green lady didn’t know how to interpret.
“Not really,” she decided to answer, pushing in the cooking edges of the egg-white with the spatula.
“Then why are there chickens on the box?” Peridot asked. She did not understand Earth at all.
On the box? Claire squinted quizzically at the being, then naturally glanced at the carton of eggs.
“Oh... “ Of course there were cartoon hens on the egg carton. “Chickens lay the eggs. Don’t ask me how or why- I don’t know the mechanics.”
Peridot looked from the carton, to the cracked egg, to Claire. “So chickens were designed for eggs to be used as food for humans. Who is the engineer responsible for chickens? Are they the only organic life forms that lay eggs? Do you lay eggs?”
“I definitely do not lay eggs,” Claire remarked flatly, flipping the egg over.
“Chickens are birds. Humans are mammals. Other birds lay eggs, reptiles and fish lay eggs. This is like a whole lifetime’s worth of studying kinda-subject.”
“Yes, human lifetimes are very short. It is no wonder your technology and knowledge base are so limited.” Peridot stared at the grill, then back at Claire. “...How much do humans eat?”
“In general or per sitting?” Claire ignored the thing about short lives and technology. They were already on one complicated subject.
“Your life forms are very fragile and complicated,” Peridot observed. “Where do you house your consciousness after your physical forms are exhausted or severely injured?”
Claire scooped the egg off the grill and made sure to turn the whole thing off before setting the snack on the same plate she had the sandwich on. Once again, the green thing was on the receiving end of a strange look.
“Consciousness and physical forms are pretty much a package deal,” she said. “Body without a mind doesn’t work- same goes for the reverse.”
Peridot blinked, “So where do you go to obtain a new organic body when something happens to your current one?”
“Well-” Claire huffed a soundless, colorless laugh. “Except for here-” and some other circumstances that she was not going into right now. “We just die.”
“...what?” Peridot stared flatly at Claire. She was trying to process if it was a joke or trick. Peridot blinked a few times. The longer she stared, the longer she was unable to maintain a flat expression. Claire might as well have told her puppies died, for the expression Peridot was morphing into.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIE?” her voice squeaked in protest. “How long do you live? How do you continue as a species with such tiny lifespans! What happens when you die? How long is that? Like five hundred years? That’s so short! Who was the clod that designed you!”
Peridot buried her face in her knees where she sat curled up on the counter top and began bawling loudly: “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE SOON AND I JUST MET YOU.” Soon was relative. Peridot was thousands of years old, but to her less than a century was not very long at all.
That was not the reaction Claire was expecting at all.
“Um.” What the hell did she do now? Looking around the otherwise empty and now uncomfortable kitchen for anything other than the bawling alien-thing on the counter, Claire realized how truly unprepared she was for this conversation.
Where the hell was Stevie…
“Look it’s… it’s a lot more complicated than that, okay?” She tried, vaguely. “Really complicated- like, too complicated to explain, because I don’t even understand it. You know, you really should talk to my … Castiel. You should talk to Castiel about it.”
Peridot’s voice came through in a series of pathetic and sad whimpers: “Who is Castiel?”
That was also complicated.
“He’s from my world,” Claire explained after a blink or two. “But he’s much older, and knows a lot about these things.”
“Okay,” Peridot continued to whimper and cry, curled up in her ball. How cruel was the hotel for making her live among so many humans, only to watch them die? Peridot was not prepared for that level of socialization with such a short lived species. Especially when they made TV shows she liked, and songs, and toilets. They really were a remarkable species, even more so than chickens, who were hilarious and laid eggs.
In the middle of her sobbing Peridot failed to notice when Claire crept out of the kitchen.