"Popcorn! It's been so long!"
"You heat the seeds until they...explode? This is a treat-food? Humans." -- Anon Guest
"Empty calories. Bland and harmless on its own. They take up the flavour of whatever you put with them." Human Meis grinned, still fondling the seemingly harmless orange-yellow seeds in their care package. "The process of making it might be bad for you little squishies, but the finished product? You might like it. I'll do you some caramel corn an I'll have the butter."
Companion Fraith boggled at hir Human. "You are certain this Deathworlder food does no harm?"
"I'll maximise food hygeine for you. It'll be basic starch and sugars, but you might want to spit out the shells. Or cut them off. Nobody's invented shell-less popcorn yet. I might make a robot to sort out the easy ones for you. Actually, I should start on that now."
Thus, it took four weeks for Human Meis to deliver the promised popcorn. They looked like weird blobby shapes in hues of yellow and orange, which rattled around in the offered bowl. Meis' bowl was full of less shiny yellow blobs of roughly the same configurations.
This was Deathworlder food. Fraith had hir doubts, and carefully scanned it.
Astonishingly, it read as safe.
Fraith gingerly picked out one and risked eating it. Simple sugars. Simple carbohydrates. Unbelievably pleasurable to experience. And not sharp.
Meis had kept their promise about sorting out the shells.
"I was careful to keep the caramel thin for you. Shards of sugar. Don't want that do you?"
Fraith remembered that some Havenworlders used sugar as building materials, and weaponry. The idea of biting into something that could cut hir mouth gave hir a great appreciation for Meis' ability to think that far ahead. "No," ze said. "No, I did not."
[Photo by Georgia Vagim on Unsplash]
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