Gor would have settled with a burrito any day, but this wasn't too terribly bad. Nonetheless, he was quite pleased that he wasn't starving -- his decision to eat a late dinner, a pre-dinner dinner, had obviously been a good one.
He glanced sideways at his siblings enviously, wishing he could exist purely for the food and forget everything else. He knew that was unfair -- it wasn't as though they were robots with off-switches -- but these sorts of things had always been more difficult for him to stomach.
Had it been just the four of them, things would have been awkward enough. But it was the sort of awkward that was only empowered if you acknowledged it. If, instead, you focused on shrugging your shoulders a lot and pretending nothing Bad had ever happened, the awkward eventually went away.
This awkward was more inescapable. It was insidious, creeping around the room like a ninja. The reason had had chosen the floor was two-fold: this way, he could turn slightly -- or she could turn slightly -- so that he could try to pretend she wasn't present. That would help a little; it was only women who were paying attention, flaunting their feminine wiles, that really made Gor incapable of speech.
He risked a glance up from his plate, delighted to see that Zoe was busy putting her armload on the counter. His tongue still refused to cooperate a minute, and Gor had to coax it into working. "I, um, uh..." First word. Good job. Bowing his head over his plate, he simply concentrated on getting out a full sentence. "W-w-watched the sun." One whole sentence. "I-I wanted to measure the progression and direction--" He was picking up speed, voice becoming less choppy and more fluid as he explained. "--of the sun throughout the day in quantifiable time periods in order to establish a documented pattern and to perhaps create a linear model to help us predict time and direction using the sun's new orbit."
He sighed heavily but quietly to himself. There, that hadn't been so bad.