[Witches' Horses] Chevalier de Grammont
Title: humans are weird.
'Verse/characters: Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont, Sinclair
Prompt: 20C "chocolate"
Word Count: 223
Notes: When poked with sticks, dormouse_in_tea and coastal_physics picked the prompt and suggested "frosting" as well. This is the last of the requested pieces for this section of universe.
"All right," she said, dropping the gravity in her second belly considerably to help in the loading process, "I agreed to small, light cargos, because they fit the stories we're letting spread about me. But why are we transporting food?"
Her human drew a great heaving breath of air, panting--she increased the level of oxygen in the air mix, started stockpiling the carbon dioxide he was giving her--then reached up, let a mouse run out of his sleeve and into one of the holes Martin had installed for her.
She trapped the mouse, read the information on it. "We're transporting food," she said after a moment, "because they're paying for it in what amounts to equivalent measure in pure hydrogen. What are they doing with it, making it essential to your mating processes?"
He laughed then, until he fell over, lay gasping for air among the boxes he'd been stacking and locking into place.
"Think of it as a rare earth, nag," he said after he recovered, "one needed to build certain components that are important to standard functioning."
"But what are they--"
"Look up 'frosting', Grammont. 'Cakes'. 'Weddings', especially in the subheading 'Boyars and Tsars'." He stood up, took a deep breath, frowned, took another. "Oxygen's up a little high."
She adjusted it without thinking, while she annexed a news mirror and started compiling information.
'Verse/characters: Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont, Sinclair
Prompt: 20C "chocolate"
Word Count: 223
Notes: When poked with sticks, dormouse_in_tea and coastal_physics picked the prompt and suggested "frosting" as well. This is the last of the requested pieces for this section of universe.
"All right," she said, dropping the gravity in her second belly considerably to help in the loading process, "I agreed to small, light cargos, because they fit the stories we're letting spread about me. But why are we transporting food?"
Her human drew a great heaving breath of air, panting--she increased the level of oxygen in the air mix, started stockpiling the carbon dioxide he was giving her--then reached up, let a mouse run out of his sleeve and into one of the holes Martin had installed for her.
She trapped the mouse, read the information on it. "We're transporting food," she said after a moment, "because they're paying for it in what amounts to equivalent measure in pure hydrogen. What are they doing with it, making it essential to your mating processes?"
He laughed then, until he fell over, lay gasping for air among the boxes he'd been stacking and locking into place.
"Think of it as a rare earth, nag," he said after he recovered, "one needed to build certain components that are important to standard functioning."
"But what are they--"
"Look up 'frosting', Grammont. 'Cakes'. 'Weddings', especially in the subheading 'Boyars and Tsars'." He stood up, took a deep breath, frowned, took another. "Oxygen's up a little high."
She adjusted it without thinking, while she annexed a news mirror and started compiling information.