10

An invitation to dinner

At four o’clock that afternoon, Jon woke up feeling groggy. Rubbing his eyes, he stepped outside with Cyan, stretched, and realized that he had napped for eight hours.

“I guess I’d better stay here for another night. Let’s get cooking!”

While tidying up his grill, he noticed another design had been drawn into the sand in the middle of the beach nearby some washed-up rocks.

“Oh, she’s been busy…”

Jon strolled over for a closer look, and once again Andrea’s voice startled him. She was squatting on the wet rocks to the left of the drawing, observing Jon observe her artwork.

“My sister wants to invite you over for dinner, so if you’re interested, then…”

Her voice trailed off and she looked down.

“Your sister?”

“It’s tepesh*.”

Jon scratched his head. The name sounded impossibly familiar. But from where?

“Your sister’s name is tepesh?”

Andrea sighed, exhausted by the necessity of elaborating.

“My sister’s name is Lea.”

“Oh, I thought—I thought I heard you say tepesh…”

He felt stupid, but Andrea suppressed a smile, and that comforted him somewhat.

“Tepesh is an ancient Co word. It means hospitality.”

“Oh, tepesh…”

Now he indeed remembered learning that as a child in Cultural Studies class.

“You fed me breakfast, so… this is tepesh.”

Jon understood.

“You live nearby?” he asked.

Andrea pointed toward Yep with her metal pole.

“This way.”

By that time, the village was twinkling like many little stars had fallen there. Jon put Cyan on a leash and followed Andrea into town.

Yep is hilly compared to the flat roads of Sandwich. Houses are modestly sized and unadorned. One begins to admire the severity of the Co aesthetic over time, but it is jarring at first. Windows do not have flowers in them. Houses are set to mirror-mode, reflecting the sea, hills, and sky, and nearly camouflaging them but for subtle tints of color. Trees in the streets glow warm and pinkish.

Despite this, the uniform houses and shops nestled into the lap of hills come together to form a village that is unexpectedly cozy.

Gate chimes marked the pathway leading toward Andrea’s front door. These are a relic of a time when Co houses really did have gates and fences, but now the gate chimes hang on a stick.

Anyone who comes home or visits will brush their hand along the chimes in a gesture that says, “I’m here” or even “I’m upset and visiting you.” The pressure one uses to ring the chimes may indicate in what mood the visit is paid. It is simply another way the Co people have contrived of avoiding small talk and getting down to business.

This tendency has given Co people a reputation for being rude and unsociable, but the truth is they simply love to get past the superficial.

Indeed, Andrea said nothing the entire time it took for them to reach her house. Jon followed her into the front yard and touched the chimes as she had done, which rang softly.

In the yard was a small garden with broccoli, spinach, lettuce, and carrots growing. A woman Jon’s age was kneeling there and digging in the dirt with a hand shovel despite the darkening sky. Beside her, a young boy was jumping rope and counting down from forty.

“Thirty-nine… thirty-eight…”

Lea Graf stood up as Jon approached, pulling off her gardening gloves. Cyan pulled on the leash in an effort to be pet sooner, but Lea did not pet her. She waited until the dog sat quietly before laying a hand behind Cyan’s ear and rubbing.

“Thank you for feeding my sister this morning,” said Lea in a friendly but abrupt tone. “She’s always running down to the beach without eating anything.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Oh, I didn’t mind. It was actually kind of nice to have someone to eat with.”

The boy stopped jump roping and stared openly at Jon, full of curiosity. Lea, his mother, glanced back at him.

“I didn’t hear you get to zero.”

The boy started jumping rope again.

“Seventeen… sixteen…”

“Andrea tells me you’re from Mo. We’re having hot pot tonight, so you’ll enjoy it.”

“That sounds lovely.”

Lea was clearly implying that hot pot must have been a favorite dish of Jon’s, as people from Mo were famous for sitting around a hot pot for hours, eating and not moving, but she had not explained so much as it was perfectly obvious to everyone listening.

“Is it okay that I brought my dog?”

“Yes, but would you leave her in the back garden? It’s walled and won’t get very cold.”

“Of course.”

Putting in his Eye, Jon surveilled the interior of the house but found it to be rather empty compared with Mo abundance. The only projections were of a clock, a calendar, and a bird-watching manual that displayed species detected in a vicinity of two hundred feet. Few walls and sparse furnishings left it feeling wide and open. Nothing was purely decorative, and pragmatism ruled.

And yet, the house was not uninviting. The furniture it did have was large and firm, but comfortable. Jon got the impression that people were not often sitting, however. Not, at least, until they and a list of things to do were both exhausted.

The hot pot was placed on a low table, which they all kneeled around on soft cushions and with blankets over their legs. Jon thought it seemed like their long-awaited and only rest after a productive day.

He did not find the food to be anything worth calling home about. In general, Co cuisine is light and simplistic. The heavily seasoned foods of Mo had spoiled Jon’s tastebuds so that he could not appreciate the exquisitely refined flavors for which Co chefs are famous. To put it briefly, cooking in Co is to enhance a food’s natural taste, not change it. But the more Jon ate, the more he learned to enjoy it.

After nearly an hour of eating, he felt stuffed and put down his spoon.

“I don’t think I can eat another bite,” he said, grinning.

The boy on Jon’s right used a spoon to search in the bubbling pot for meats.

“There’s only a little bit left…”

“I’ll explode if I eat any more.”

The boy fished up another white mushroom and dropped it into Jon’s bowl.

“Don’t waste food.”

“Erik,” said Lea, “you know it’s rude to use the fork you eat with to serve somebody. You use the serving fork.” Turning to Jon, she went on: “Sorry for that. I have a strict rule in this house that no food goes uneaten, but the rules for guests are different than the rules for you. You know that, Erik.”

Jon ate the white mushroom, then rubbed his stomach.

“So what made you start drawing in the sand, Andrea?”

“I ran out of paper one day.”

He waited for her to continue speaking, but she did not.

“Are you in school?” he asked.

Andrea shook her head.

“She never liked school much,” said Lea in her stead, “but she got good grades and kept out of trouble. It was hard for her to make friends because she didn’t do sports.”

“I never did any sports either,” said Jon, grinning, but nobody replied and he felt stupid. “Anyway,” he went on. “If you’re not in school, then you’re probably working?”

“I make money drawing,” said Andrea, still eating and staring at the bubbling pot.

“Oh, really?”

She nodded.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you do that?”

“I record videos and put them on the Field. People started watching, and they liked it. So I drew more. Then they started pitching in money every month.”

“Now that you mention it, I’ve heard of other young artists making money that way.”

“My dad has a job in Ulm, and he wanted me to go to school or work there, but this has turned out well, so…”

Jon asked more questions and received many laconic answers, but he eventually came to understand that their mother spent a part of every year with their father in Ulm, a Co city northwest of Yep, so in the meantime, Andrea lived with her sister, a single mother.

“We may be taking a trip to Purkmenster next year,” said Lea. “Andrea’s working on an exhibition with a gallery there.”

“For your sand designs?”

Andrea hesitated before answering.

“It would be easier to show you.”

As she stood up, Erik protested. They had not yet finished eating the meat. Lea smirked at him.

“Very well,” she said. “Finish eating first, then Andrea will show us her work.”

Jon forced himself to eat one final slice of beef as well before they all stood up, and Andrea led everyone to the backyard where Cyan was scratching her own head with a raised foot.

“You really never played any sports before?” asked Erik as they stepped outside, and the smart glass doors slid closed behind them.

“Never in my life,” said Jon.

“Then why aren’t you fat?”

Jon laughed.

“Uh, well, I guess I’m a little chubby, actually… But it’s probably because I’m always riding my bike.”

“My friend says Mo people are lazy.”

Lea glared at her son.

“Excuse me?”

“I said that…” He must have realized that he ought to not finish that sentence because he went silent.

“Whichever friend of yours said that must be so perfect that he has time to sit around pointing fingers at others. I wish I was so perfect as to have that luxury.”

Erik seemed to be exercising his brain in an effort to understand what his mother was telling him.

“Do you like it when Co people are called dumb and violent?” Lea went on.

“No.”

“Well, remember that next time you want to accuse strangers of being lazy.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Andrea had ascended a hill in the backyard and stood waiting for them to finish.

“Ready?”

“Go for it,” said Jon.

A projection materialized in the air over their heads. It was an exact replica of the design that Andrea had drawn into the sand yesterday. It emitted light and rotated in the empty space of the backyard like a three-dimensional wheel.

Jon thought of the transparent cells he had seen before under a microscope, or the strange creatures of the deep sea that glowed in sunless depths, except this was perfectly symmetrical and unlike anything in nature.

“Andrea told me you’re planning to ride your bike around Icomo,” said Lea.

Jon had almost forgotten anybody else was there.

“I think it’s a very nice idea,” she said.

“You do?”

“People need to do things more for the simple pleasure of doing them.”

Glancing up at the luminous projection, he understood that Andrea’s impulse to draw had been much like his impulse to embark on this adventure. He was doing it for the simple fact that it was making him happy.

Jon went to join Andrea on top of the hill and looked down at the projection. Cyan observed them all curiously, unable to see it.

“Do you want to see another one?” asked Andrea.

“Absolutely!”

A moment later, the projection dematerialized and was replaced by another of the same kind, but of a pattern utterly different and without repetition.

“It’s amazing how you translated your drawing into the Field like this,” said Jon.

Andrea nodded.

“Maybe this way, it will last forever,” she whispered, but more to herself than to Jon, and he knew finally that the ‘stony-heartedness’ of Co was a myth born out of ignorance.