Chapter 20
Shrooms and Shushfief
Once Fallcet was out of sight, Jenna rushed to the kitchen. There, she found Misha standing at the dishwasher, loading the counter tray.
“Where’s Smoothie?” Jenna asked urgently.
“Oh, she went to her room when Ixy told her that Fallcet was coming to the kitchen. Ixy called me and I pretended to be the chef. It was easy. Smoothie had already made the bubbles for the fluits, so all I had to do was pretend to be the cook and cook his damn mushroom for him.”
Jenna exhaled in relief. “You’re a lifesaver. Thank you. Does Smoothie know he came in here with a mushroom?”
“I don’t think we could have hidden it from her. She went upstairs because Sardius told us ages ago that we had to keep her a secret and Ixy kept that up for us once she started, but I don’t think we could hide what I had to do. I had to look like his request was normal and fine for me to do something like that, but… it was really gross. It looked just like Smoothie. It was like cooking her baby.” Misha started crying and swearing violently under her breath.
Jenna rushed to her, put her arms around her, and patted her pink yarn head. “Shh… You did the right thing. It was hard, so hard to do. We all had to pretend it didn’t bother us so we didn’t give her away.”
“That man is gross, Jenna. You weren’t really thinking about marrying him, were you?”
Jenna stuck out her tongue. “No. Besides, he’s gone. We kicked him off our planet.”
“Yeah?” Misha stuck her tongue out too. “I bet he’ll be back.”
Jenna didn’t think he could come back without her permission, but then she supposed anyone could come to Octavia Prime. It was just whether or not he could come to her palace. Jenna groaned. “We should have microchipped him before we released him back into the wild. That way we’d know if he was going to be anywhere near us and avoid him.”
Misha looked at her funny. “That’s completely illegal.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be. Do you want to come upstairs with me to talk to Smoothie? I bet she could use a few people in her corner.”
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Misha nodded and together they went up and knocked on Smoothie’s door. “Can we come in? It’s just me and Misha.”
“Please wait while I confirm with Ixy,” Smoothie’s voice came from the other side of the door.
Once she’d confirmed, the door clicked open on its own.
It was Jenna’s first time inside Smoothie’s room, even though she had slept in the room next to hers for months. It looked like entering the inside of a child’s tent. The walls had all been covered with fabric. The ceiling looked like a circus tent with the fabric bunched together in the center. It was all white with yellow lights. Little yellow mushrooms were everywhere. If Jenna flipped her thinking, it was like sitting in the middle of a mural of people, when you were the only person in the room. The decorating was intended to make someone feel less lonely, but paradoxically only made them more so.
Smoothie sat on a huge pillow in the center of the room.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” Smoothie said stiffly, the place on her body where she spoke from was still a mystery. Jenna had never seen her mouth. “I’m completely fine,” the Shushfief reiterated.
Jenna flared out her skirt and sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “Not to doubt you, but if I said those words, it would be because I absolutely was not fine.”
“No, I really am absolutely well. Ixy talked me through the first hour or so, and then she played a recording of one of my old conversations with Sardius for me. He and I were always close.”
Jenna smiled wanly. She remembered how Sardius had said that he liked Smoothie and how he was the one who negotiated her high salary. “Did that make you feel better?”
“Oh, yes. It was much more comforting than talking to Ixy. No offense to Ixy. She’s really nice to me, but there was something so calming about Sardius. Like he’d faced all the battles in the world and come off conqueror. I miss him.”
“So do I,” Jenna said.
“It’s just lonely being a Shushfief here sometimes. There is fungus everywhere. Absolutely everywhere, Jenna. But most of them are not sentient. What you’re doing is very important Jenna, but I wish there was someone as diligent as you to mediate between the Shushfiefs and… anyone.”
Smoothie’s thoughts were interrupted by Misha’s fidgeting.
Misha had been lingering behind Jenna, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. When it seemed like they were finished talking, Misha got down on the floor and said to Jenna, “Can I talk to Smoothie alone, please?”
From the despondent look on her stylist’s face, Jenna guessed that Misha needed to ask Smoothie to forgive her for what she’d done in cooking the mushroom for Fallcet. Misha looked seconds off of bursting into tears and if Misha wanted to do it privately, Jenna would give her all the space she needed.
Jenna nodded and got off the floor.
Stepping into the hallway, she closed the door behind her and went down the stairs into the main hall.
Ryatt was standing there. He was still wearing his army-like clothes, but the coat was undone, showing a layer of black undershirt, and his exposed throat. “I need to talk to you,” he said, the look on his face was hard.