Sift was gnawing thoughtfully on the last remnants of a positively delicious bread roll that Martha had given her. The immature human had been doing a ‘deep clean’ on the family extreme-refrigeration unit when she had come across a ‘Yorkshire Pudding’ that had been made for a winter festival some years before. Despite it being ‘hard as a rock’ she had been certain of its safety, due to its being stored at well below the freezing point of pure water and had offered it to Sift because ‘you got the teeth for it’. Sift clenched her molars over the wad and swallowed a tongue-full of the taste. It really was too sweet, but only just a scale and she gave a pleased gurgle as she ran a critical eye over the project she was working on.
She wouldn’t say she had collected too much information on Mary’s advancing pregnancy, one couldn’t have too many data points fermenting in a good observational study, but she freely admitted that she should have begun sorting and labeling her observations sooner. The steady thumping of Rob, Sift had quickly picked up on the fact that only Mary was allowed to call her mate Snookums, provided a background as she began typing out the section labels with her claws. She was pondering if the morning sickness observations should go in a nutrient section, or a general medical section when Mary’s familiar step came up to her door, and the room shook with the powerful blows used by the humans to indicate a polite wish to enter.
“Come in!” Sift called out, swallowing down the last big of the bread roll with a gulp.
Mary came into the room, her usual pace offset by her changing center of mass as the growing little human took up space in her center. Sift rotated her body around and blinked up curiously at her friend. There were tears sparkling in the human’s eyes, a sign of stress, her face was stretched in a wide smile, and though Sift’s reptilian nasal nerves was not nearly as acute as an Undulates similar structures she could tell that Mary was giving off waves of pheromones indicating comfort and pleasure. Mary reached the center of the room and hesitated.
“Would you like a seat?” Sift asked, indicating the extra large beanbag she kept for human use.
Mary nodded and made as if to lower herself onto the seat, but at the last moment turned suddenly and danced around the room laughing.
“Oh I can’t sit right now!” the human said. “Do you remember that conversation we had about the baby images?”
“You mean how you were confused that you did not experience more emotion when your little one reached the state of development where it was pleasant to look at?” Sift asked.
Mary nodded vigorously, breaking out in a grin.
“Mother always told me that seeing your little one for the first time was supposed to fill you with all kinds of warm, fuzzy joy!” Mary said. “But honestly I just found looking at the scans a little boring. No color, the baby wasn’t doing anything interesting most of the time, and really, you can still see the bones better than the outside of the baby, and really,” Mary paused in her swaying around the room and rested a hand on her growing belly, with a somewhat rueful look on her face. “I just haven’t been getting much sentimental feelings out of this pregnancy. Not the way that Mother and the Aunties described it at least.”
“Every sapient mind process stimuli differently,” Sift offered. “I didn’t choke once on ancestral loaf at my wedding.”
Mary stared at her blankly a bit, but nodded as she chewed over the idea.
“True that,” she admitted. “But just now! Oh come here!”
Mary darted out of the room, waving for Sift to follow and Sift scrambled after her. Four low legs were not that much slower than two high-human legs but their complete lack of balance did give the humans an advantage in sudden changes in direction. She met Mary at a large window where the human was clutching the windowsill and beaming out at something.
“Look!” Mary said, pointing out the window.
Sift stood up on her hind legs and looked. From this angle the main thing she could see was a set of brightly colored woven and formed cloths, in very small sizes for humans to use. They had been strung out on a line to catch the benefit of the local solar radiation and the fresh air of the agricultural district.
“They will smell quite nice when you bring them in,” Sift observed.
“Those are my youngest Aunties,” Mary explained, her voice catching as she started to actively cry again. “The leftovers from her last baby. She packed them up and sent them to Mother, who sorted and mended, and washed them for me, but I was too tired to go pick them up today so Snookums, without my even asking, or even thinking about it, went and picked them up and hung them out just perfectly like that, and every time I walk by all the tiny baby clothes I just get-”
Mary’s voice cut off in a little choke and she produced a very small cloth to wipe the tears away from her eyes.
Sift glanced up at the human a bit sideways, fascinated by the way that strong emotion seemed to open every fluid producing gland in a human’s face. Apparently Mary considered that the end of the explanation because she just laughed softly and began swaying towards the kitchen, which smelled of some herbal tea. Sift pulled out her pad and began frantically taking notes. Was this powerful emotional reaction to the physical sign of community care really something odd? Or was Mary simply overthinking her own reactions again, something Sift had observe the human scientist to be very prone to.
“Come and have a cup of tea!” Mary called out.
Sift gave a grunt of assent and kept writing observations as she walked upright towards the kitchen. Perhaps she should ask Martha, the other resident female human wasn’t fully mature yet, but often had remarkable insights into her older sister’s thought processes.
​

 Clouds of steam laden with delicious smells did their best to fill the workspace before they were whisked away by vent systems that were just a hair’s touch under-powered for a kitchen feeding a crew of giant mammals. Quilx’tch brushed a paw over his upper mandibles and shook a few drops of condensate off of his talon, resisting the unsanitary urge to taste the liquid. Instead he used a different paw to lift the lid on his simmering pot of broth and lifted out a test with a third. It was a perfectly adequate broth, but something a bit sweeter was more what he thought the rest of the crew of Trisk would appreciate in their bowls this night. Quilx’tch turned the heat down under the broth, taking it down to just below a simmer and padded lightly to the edge of his raised workstation.
Below him wide platues of cooking surfaces spread out, marked with warning colors specific to his species. “This space is likely to have tanks of boiling water dropped on it.” Read one of the counters. “Earth Fruit is Round and can be up to twenty times your mass.” Declared another. This one was marked with a very simple warning glyph, in the color of blood that translated to “it rolls”. Quilx’tch gave an amused click as he noted the number of surfaces in his visual range that were marked with that particular warning. Finally he spotted what he was looking for. One of the human cooks was reducing the orange tuber they so often favored to what were small shreds even by Trisk size conventions. Quilx’tch calculated the quickest route over the spider walks to the human’s work station and trotted happily through the delicious fog until he could wave his apron for the human’s attention.
The human, one known to Quilx’tch only as “Cookie Green”, glanced up at him and bared his large teeth in a friendly greeting. Cookie, of course was a traditional fond alteration of the title, cook, and made sense in a Shatar sort of way. However as the man’s family name was not green, he did not favor ‘greens’ in the vegetable sense in his recipes, and was distinctly not a color the humans would consider green his designation remained a mystery to Quilx’tch.
“Can I do something for you Quick?” Cookie Green asked.
Quilx’tch swiped another drop off of his mandibles before replying, and the flick to get it off of his talon caused Cookie Green to smile wider in amusement. A sentiment just as puzzling as the human’s name but Quilx’tch brushed that off as well. He had a crew to feed and a pot just below a simmer with the macro-nutrients in a delicate state. Observations on cultural reactions could wait.
“Could I request this apron full of your shredded carrots?” Quilx’tch asked, loudly to be heard over the din of the room.
“Didn’t know carrots were good for you spider types,” Cookie Green said in surprise as he lifted more than the required amount, pinched between three fingers on one hand and held them out so Quilx’tch could position his apron under the mass and catch it when it dropped. Quilx’tch felt his fur puff out in shock and his mandibles twitch in concern.
“They are quite safe,” Quilx’tch assured the human. “And the sugars are delicious when properly extracted. Pardon me Cookie Green, but the end of your middle digit is bleeding!”
The human uttered a low word that Quilx’tch was fairly certain was a common swear word and immediately pulled his hand up to his eyes to inspect the blunt ends of his digits.
“Coulda’ sworn that was healed enough not to split again,” the human rumbled in annoyance. “Still, looks like to caught it before any of the blood escaped the crack and the scab. Thanks Quick. I’ll just go put a quick clear-seal on this and get back to work.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?” Quilx’tch demanded.
“Stings a bit,” Cookie Green admitted, “at least it does now that I noticed it. Would have really stung if I added the citrus juice to the salad before I sealed it. So thanks there. Saved me some pain.”
“I am quite pleased to hear that,” Quilx’tch said, relieved that the human was taking his safety, or at the very least the integrity of his kitchen, seriously. “But how did you get that injury there, did you cut yourself on a knife?”
Quilx’tch was trying to imagine at what angle the human could have been holding a knife of any kind in the kitchen to get such a shallow, to the thick-skinned humans, cut on his dominant hand. However Cookie Green shook his head.
“Not sure,” he said. “But I wasn’t even in the kitchen when it happened. Never been hurt in my kitchen by my tools. I was just out visiting the seal-snake, Old Toby, you know he’s one of the last of generation one still alive?”
“Ah, did he give you a play bite?” asked Quilx’tch a bit hesitantly. The injury did not really seem consistent with that either.
“Old Toby?” Cookie Green asked with a laugh. “With what teeth? Nah, I was scritching him behind the … well they don’t really have external ears but in that general area and his tracking tag, one of the old style, brushed up against my finger, and something on it, couldn’t see through the fur gave me this slice. Bugger of a thing a slice on the end of a finger. Doesn’t like to heal quick and if you are even a little careless just splits apart and undoes three days healing.”
The human heaved a tremendous sigh, used his uninjured hand to wipe condensate off of his eyebrows, and flicked the water off of his hand without laughing Quilx’tch noted thoughtfully, before turning away from Quilx’tch with a wave.
“Gonna go seal this now, hope the carrots are what you needed.”
Reminded of the task at hand Quilx’tch turned and trotted back to his own pot of broth, marveling at humans who were so casual about loosing three days worth of outer membrane healing, but putting it aside. His broth did need more sugar, which the carrots would provide, and Cookie Green clearly considered the slice of no importance.