Into You [Lion]

[Cheesigator]

If it had been anyone else who said something like that to her, she'd have smacked them right across the face. Hell, her first reaction even though it was Slate was to do exactly that; but before she could react proper, her heart skipped a beat when she realized he'd called her pretty.

Pretty? Did he really think so?

Oh, Fire, help her now she was turning into a fucking moron.

"O-Oh shut up, you'd react the same if you had any girl in your bed," She snapped back with a huff, secretly hating it when he untangled their legs and left her by her lonesome on the bed anyways.

She felt cold and a little bit empty as she watched him step away. How rare a night had that truly been? She hadn't even had much of a chance to properly enjoy it; here in a moment, gone in a flash. She pursed her lips, ears flicking down until he turned to look at her with that robe on.

Hungry? Actually, yeah come to think of it--

"You do know how to cook an egg right?"

A flare of offense and indignation broiled up in her chest as she followed his lead, opening her mouth to retort but the feeling of his tail around her ankle making her stutter and catch herself for a second as she stepped after him anyways.

"I--!! Of course I know how to cook an egg! Duh, who doesn't know how to do that? Fire, Slate, step aside let me show you how it's done." She sneered as she scooted past him, the tight space of the tent making her hips brush against his as she knelt down by the basket of eggs as Slate turned on the oven, and suddenly she realized her grave mistake.

No, no she did not know how to make eggs.

She didn't cook at all--never had to. She just ate what the rest of the clan did, or what the elders shared for breakfast.

What the hell was she supposed to do with an egg and an oven?

She snatched a brown little egg from the basket and stared at it in the palm of her hand for a moment like she thought it was going to burst into flames or something, before looking at the oven and then the egg and yeah her face was now as pink as her scales. Again.

Again.

"Uh," She stammered, extremely eloquently.

Her tail curled awkwardly around her folded legs as she refused to look at Slate, instead handing the egg over to him.

"Nevermind, you can do it. I don't, uh, feel like it."

[Lion]

He had a feeling she'd blanche at the thought of doing actual work. It was a little pathetic but at the same time he couldn't help but be endeared by her Innocent foolishness. She was so impetuous and he admired how much little thought she gave in doing, well, anything. But there was a point where he wasn't going to let her leave this tent without learning something useful that she might need later on in life.

"Oh no, skeeto. You're gonna learn how to at least cook an egg. Give me 3 more like it." He gave the eggs back to her and flipped a heavy worn skillet over the stove. The fire crackled underneath, eager and ready to spread its heat. He rummaged around a sealed barrel and pulled out a roll of butter that he slathered the surface of the skillet with and tucked it away back into sealed barrel.

"So we're just gonna crack these eggs over the pan now that's it's all greased up and ready to go. Then we'll grab some fresh spices and sprinkle those over the surface. Go on and try crack an egg as the pan heats up. Don't worry, you won't get burnt. I'm right here."

[Cheesigator]

The moment Slate started to imply that it was high time she learn how to do actual work (other than her actual job as a navigator, which she was the best at mind you) she immediately scrunched her nose up at the thought. She started to whine a little but a tiny voice in the back of her head did admit it was kind of well overdue for her to learn something like this.

She'd been kind of a princess of their tribe so other than her serious time dedicated to learning from the elders on how to be an effective navigator and how to read and recognize stars, she really didn't have very much else expected of her. It seemed it was mostly her duty to just look pretty and produce lots of equally pretty babies, outside of stargazing. And while it was nice to be pampered and treated well there was a part of her that was still very naturally curious about the things the others did in the tribe that she couldn't partake in.

She glanced over at him and huffed a bit as she did as he told, grabbing a few more eggs and watching him slather the pan with butter.

"Why does it need to be greasy?" She asked in all seriousness as she glanced from the eggs in her hand to the edge of the pan.

She'd seen other tribe members cook once or twice, they just kinda smacked the egg really fast over the edge of the pan right? How hard could it be? So she set the other two eggs to the side, held the handle of the pan in one hand and positioned the egg carefully in her left. She bit her lip as her brows furrowed with concentration... Nice and quick, just like the others..!

She swung her hand with far too much force and the entire egg pretty much exploded with only about half of it making it into the pan along with some eggshell and the yolk. The other half slid down the underside before she could comprehend what was happening and dropped into the flames. She let out an audible croak as she looked from the pan to her hand which was now covered in gooey egg whites.

"I... But I just did it like everyone else?? What?!"

[Lion]

Yes, Slate, it was a serious question.  He nearly balked when being asked why the pan had to be greased. And he would have answered it too had she not taken the initiative to begin the cooking process like he'd instructed her talk. She didn't know how strong she was did she?

He cackled when she looked back at him at the eggsplosion. "Man I've done that before. It's ok. I think what you meant to do was crack to gently on the edge." He fished out the bits of shell first because he didn't feel like crunching his eggs. And shucked off the remains to the side.

"Let's try again." This time he grabbed her hand and wrapped his fingers over hers, taking one more egg and gently rapping the side against the pan's edge. A small fissure appeared, much finer than the firebomb she'd unleashed on his tiny stove. Then he gently took his other hand and coaxed the two broken halves of the egg apart. Some yolk got on her fingers as he still held his hand over hers and then let her go.

"It's okay to get a little dirty. Just clean your hands on something. Then try the next egg yourself."

[Cheesigator]

Slate's cackling made her flush bright red with embarrassment, her ears swiveling downwards in shame as she realized how utterly stupid and helpless she was. Everyone else could do it, they made it look so easy, why couldn't she??

She braced herself fully for his jeering, waiting for him to call her a dolt and ask how she even remembered to breathe or something, but it never came. Her shoulders relaxed a little as the other Kulshedra wrapped his hand carefully around hers and she watched, fixated with full concentration on the motion and the amount of force he applied to it.

She was determined to get this right, she couldn't possibly fuck up a second time. She was used to being praised for everything she did, not the opposite, so she was fully focused on fixing this.

She flicked some drops of egg into the pan, the sizzling sounds loud in her ears as she pucked up the third egg and grimaced a little. Right, okay, gently now...

She tapped it lightly against the edge of the pan, and while a small hairline crack appeared, it apparently wasn't enough to open it. Holding her breath as she concentrated, she tapped it again, just slightly harder, and as soon as the crack appeared she lurched to keep the egg suspended over the center of the pan so half didn't end up in the fire again. She coaxed her carefully maintained nails into the edges of the seam and split it; it didn't come clean into two perfect halves like Slate's had, but the egg plopped successfully into the pan with no eggshell bits in it!

She pulled her arms back, setting the empty shell with the others and was beaming. Okay, that wasn't so hard! She'd just been a little too eager to be fast like the others, was all!

"You didn't answer my question." She said, looking up at him with her triumphant smile still plastered on her face.

"And do you know how to cook other stuff?"

It occurred to her then that while they knew each others' personalities like they knew their own scales, she didn't know a whole lot about him past what she'd observed in the years he'd been in the tribe. How he interacted with the others, the kinds of faces he made, what kinds of jokes he liked, the food he didn't eat and even a rough idea of his sleep schedule (but to be fair she knew all that about most of the other tribe members too, there weren't many of them.)

She wanted to know other things about him, maybe even things the others didn't know--and she didn't know why that made her heart skip a beat.

[Lion]

"There you go! I knew you could do it," Slate beamed when her egg successfully plopped into the buttered pan. The sizzle and smell made his stomach rumble. He was hungrier than he thought but her presence somehow distracted him from realizing it until now. She was so cute trying to figure out how to successfully crack it without making a mess, or an ass of herself.

"You did a good job." He nodded and took the eggshell pile, tossing it into a compost bin that he'd give out to the soil at some point. OH right, she had asked him a question. But she always did. She was so full of curiosities that he didn't know which ones to answer first.  Right, though. Buttered pan.

"Well, we grease it up to keep the eggs from sticking to the metal. These skillets are notorious for making things cling to them. And the butter gives the eggs a nice savory flavor. Speaking of which, we should add our spices. It'll make everything tasty-ier." He smiled at her and went about producing fresh spices like some oregano and pepper that had ground from a mortar and pestle.

"If you open that container next to the pepper, there should be some salt in there. Go ahead and take a pinch of each one and sprinkle them over the eggs. Then we'll cover them and let the insides cook a bit before we serve them on our plates. This is fun isn't it?"