Amara (2/4), by Sophonisba [cake or death challenge]
-title- Amara (2/4)
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating/warnings- Suitable for general audiences, except for one word. Which he had an excuse for, really..
-spoilers- "38 Minutes," "Sanctuary."
-characters- Sheppard, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, others.
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. One of the other characters belongs to, um, Alliance Atlantis. Sort of.
-word count- 2965
-summary- In which our heroes wait permission to be let endanger themselves in the Ancient building, and talk about food a lot.
The first part of this (back when I thought there would only be three) is posted to this community here; for a brief story-so-far, this is their second visit to a planet with a very short rotation period, they came during a fair, and one of the planetary leaders (named Nyla) has shown them an Ancient building which the locals called Keii's Maze and use to select said leaders: she's promised to speak to her fellows about letting Sheppard's team have a look-see inside at the same time as everyone else.
Amara
(2/4)
The fair was still an odd combination of open and closed stalls. In one of the more open areas, still keeping its function as the town square, a young man stripped to the waist was juggling torches.
"Please wait here while I find the others," Nyla told them, and AR-1 obediently sat or took watch on the stone steps of the building that, on their last visit, had been used for the oligarchs' council.
"Does something seem odd about this to you?" Teyla wondered, sitting on the post at one side of the steps.
"What, like the way that the men are wearing long baggy pants and actual shirts while the women wear short skirts or chaps and the same sort of vests you like?" Sheppard had chosen the steps proper, although his gun was still right beside him.
"I thought that was random chance working in our favor for once," Rodney, having walked up to one of the stalls, said, fishing for his share of the bone tokens Nyla had lent them.
Sheppard waved expressively at the scantily-clad grandmother sweeping up debris at the opposite side of the plaza.
"Yes, well, that is the way our luck runs," Rodney said. "Two of those, please, and one of those." He turned back towards the others. "Probably when we finally do find the planet of naked blonde amazons they'll want to kill us for all being better-looking than they are. Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Um. Teyla. I, uh, meant -- here, I'll get you one too."
Teyla let the stern expression slide off her face as Rodney bargained with his chosen merchant, arms gesturing wildly.
"Amazons?" Ronon wondered.
"Women warriors. Um. They were supposed to live without men except for, um, y'know, kids and stuff -- "
"Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard is speaking of a legend from Earth," Teyla kindly glossed for him.
"Here," Rodney called, interrupting them. "This is what you need." He carefully made his way over to Sheppard, awkwardly clutching two drumsticks and two fried-dough-bread pieces wrapped in broad flat leaves.
"Thanks." Sheppard accepted one of each.
"So how are they?" Rodney handed the other frybread to Teyla.
"Well, this one -- " Sheppard swallowed -- "doesn't quite taste like turkey, but I'm not sure what it does taste like. 'S good, though."
"I knew it." Rodney triumphantly took a bite of his own drumstick. "And the fried dough? I hadn't realized they made grain sugar here... "
"The... oh, the elephant ear." Sheppard licked at it. "Actually, it seems to be crystallized honey." He took a bite. "And it tastes good, but distinctly orangish. Maybe a little grapefruity."
"I thought it smelled of it," Rodney mourned. "Sigh."
"What's orange and what's wrong with it?" Ronon demanded from the top of the steps.
"Orange is a fruit from their world," Teyla said, "from which is made the opaque yellow juice that the mess has served at breakfast."
"It's related to a lemon, but I don't think it is one..." Sheppard trailed off.
"It's like my Aunt Eunice." Rodney gingerly sat a foot or so away from his teamleader's loose-limbed sprawl. "First she was allergic to lobster, then it was lobster and crayfish, then lobster and crayfish and crab, then it was scallops -- and she loved scallops -- and then she started getting allergic to shrimp when she wasn't all that much older than I am now."
"I do not understand," Teyla said.
"I've been allergic to lemons as far back as I can remember, and a couple years ago I started getting allergic to limes too, and then to grapefruit -- not as badly, thank goodness -- and oranges'll probably be next, I felt horribly queasy the last time I had Mountain Dew."
"It might just taste of orange -- the elephant ear, that is," Sheppard offered, swallowing a bite of fried dough and drumstick together. "Are you allergic to lemongrass or lemon balm or whatever that Australian plant's called?"
"Yes, yes, it could, but I'm hardly about to test that outside of a nice safe infirmary, am I?"
"Point taken."
"I mean, I could risk a nasty, painful, gasping death, increasing my vulnerability to all forms of citrus in the process, or I could have the drumstick. Which smells delicious."
"Point *taken* -- what do you suppose they put in the glaze?" Sheppard said thoughtfully, hand hovering over one of his vest pockets.
"It tastes kind of barbecueish, maybe of apricots -- " Rodney froze suddenly. "Teyla," he said, holding the drumstick out to her. "What does the glaze taste of?"
Teyla slid to her feet, stepped over, and daintily bit off some of the glazed outer portion of the drumstick.
"Of rose hips and spices," she said calmly, "and perhaps of some sort of plum."
"An apricot is a plum, except for the part where it's an apricot," Rodney said more cheerfully.
Ronon held out a hand.
"Hey! Get your own! I want some left!"
Ronon shrugged expressively.
Teyla handed her fried dough to Rodney, who held it at arm's length, and strode over to the food stall herself. Shortly thereafter, she returned with a little basket containing three drumsticks, a larger piece of fried dough than hers or Sheppard's, and an unidentifiable oblong something deep-fried on a stick. She handed the basket to Ronon and pulled the mysterious fried object out by its stick.
Ronon nodded in acknowledgment.
Teyla nodded in return and came down the steps, pausing to retrieve her fried dough. She took another bite of it and then a tentative nibble of the item on the stick.
"Well?" Sheppard drawled, swallowing another bite of drumstick.
"The batter also tastes of... orange," Teyla said, calmly.
"I was afraid of that," Rodney said, looking at the whatever, white spongy flesh showing in the hole made by his teammate's teeth. "What is that thing, anyway?"
Teyla looked at them for a moment, assessing, judging, and then she said "Fried varnak beetle on a stick."
She held it out to Sheppard.
Sheppard blinked, slowly.
The other three held their breath. It hung there, for a few seconds, for an eternity, while the dribs and drabs of fairgoers swelled once more.
And then he leaned forwared and sank his teeth into it, ferociously, tearing off a large chunk and chewing it fiercely.
He swallowed, half-burped, and said "Tastes like lobster. In orangish batter."
"Makes sense," Rodney said thoughtfully. "They're both arthropods."
"Would an iratus bug taste of shellfish, then?" Teyla squatted on the step two below Sheppard and Rodney.
"Wouldn't it be, I don't know, poisonous?"
"Well, one would need to remove the enzyme glands first, of course."
Sheppard grinned at them, lopsided and facile. "I solemnly swear that, should we ever be in a situation where, firstly, we encounter them again, secondly, Medical deems them fit for human consumption, and thirdly, someone else cooks the thing, I will eat the goddamn iratus bug. No matter how much barbecue sauce I need to hide the taste with."
"Good," Teyla said, swallowing more of her varnak-on-a-stick.
Sheppard nodded and had more of his drumstick.
"These are good," Rodney said, wolfing down his own. "I might need to get another one."
"You'll choke if you eat that fast," Ronon observed.
"Hello, hypoglycemic? I trained myself out of my gag reflex years ago."
"Does not the food bring more nourishment when properly chewed?" Teyla and Sheppard traded bites of varnak and drumstick again.
"Well, uh, yes, normally it does, but you know how it goes, sometimes you don't have time to chew properly before the crash and that's why I learned how not to -- "
"McKay." Sheppard rolled his eyes. "We had dinner two hours ago."
"Two hours and thirty-seven minutes," Rodney corrected, "and that was before we went hiking."
"That wasn't hiking, that was a walk in the park."
"Funny, I don't remember parks being generously supplied with giant bugs."
"Gentlemen." Teyla managed to imitate both Elizabeth's inflection and body language, should Elizabeth Weir ever have had occasion to do so with a fried arthropod on a stick in one hand and a fried dough in leaf wrappings in the other.
Ronon snorted, and went back to steadily plowing through his own food.
An hour or so later, when the sun was high enough to almost eliminate shadows anywhere other than direct shade, Nyla finally reappeared, trailing several oligarchs and both her daughters.
"I thought they went to bed," Rodney greeted them.
"We couldn't sleep," Meeza said.
"It's noisy," Jazny whined. "Last year we didn't sleep at the fairgrounds."
"Last year Mama wasn't oligarch," her older sister snapped, "and it's an honor, it makes us special!"
"Girls," Nyla said, sounding rather like Elizabeth herself. She smiled at Rodney. "Thank you for worrying."
"Oh, I -- " Rodney began.
Teyla kicked him in the ankle. Gently.
"It was nothing," he said hastily.
"So," Sheppard said, smiling, open and friendly.
"These are them?" one of the other oligarchs said. "They don't look like much."
"Now, Father," another one said -- presumably using the title in some sort of figurative way, as she and he both appeared to be in their late middle age. "They can't help being foreigners."
"Hmph."
"We have been enjoying the delights of your fair," Teyla said.
"I haven't had elephant ears since I went to a fair on our world," Sheppard said, waving a hand at the leaf-wrappings currently holding the other wrappings, the stick, and the drumstick bones.
"Elephant -- oh, the leaf-fry?" Nyla said. "I'm sorry, I would have offered you some had I known -- I'm afraid I didn't think to, I'm not particularly fond of tangelo."
"Tangelo?" Rodney repeated in English, incredulous.
"Apparently tangelo means tangelo, yes," Sheppard said dryly.
"She said 'citruma,'" Teyla said. "They used to grow near the northern range of my people. I have seldom had them, but I remember that they tasted something like your orange."
"We get them in trade from the Toreans," said yet a fourth oligarch. "They've grown them in little copses for a thousand years."
"But the tangelo is a recent hybrid, Earth only just invented them last century," Rodney argued.
"Did you?" Teyla said.
"You were just saying that oranges and lemons and grapefruit were all hybrids," Sheppard rolled his eyes. "If the Ancients brought whatever they hybridized from here, they could perfectly well have been cross-bred into tangelos here first, since apparently they have, and Earth only just recently reinvented them."
"Unvented," Ronon corrected suddenly.
"If you're quite finished?" the older female oligarch said.
"Hmph!" her companion repeated.
"Keii's Maze is open to vision quests at the end of the summer," the man who'd volunteered tangelo information said. "At times outworlders, too, have been permitted to undergo its ordeals."
"They passed the first one," Nyla repeated.
"You did?" Meeza said, looking rather more impressed.
"The fact remains," the older man said, "why should we let you try the others?"
"Why do you want to?" the older woman asked.
"Such knowledge is valued -- " Teyla began.
"Because it's there," Rodney said impatiently.
"How do we know that you'll use whatever knowledge you gain wisely?" the other oligarch said.
"Well," Sheppard said, "how do you know that your own people will use it wisely?"
"What's that in the corner?" Ronon asked.
Everyone looked.
"It's a trick of the light," the older woman said.
"It's getting brighter, Mother," the older man said.
"It... looks... familiar..." Sheppard began slowly.
"Oh my God," Rodney said. "I think it's an Ancient."
"An Ancestor?!" Teyla and Ronon both said at once.
Everyone in the little plaza had fallen silent now, as the glowing piece of air grew almost too bright to look at and slowly began floating toward the steps where AR-1 sat, wisps trailing behind it.
"Ancestors," breathed the younger male oligarch.
"Well, yes," Nyla told him in a piercing whisper.
"Do you suppose it's Keii?"
"There are eight hundred million Ancestors, Father. Why should it be Keii?"
"I heard it was eighty thousand," Ronon muttered.
"That's the way they look when they're almost on our plane but not quite," Rodney said in an oddly ordinary voice. "I -- oh, great, does this one have a thing for you too, Major?" He jumped to his feet and stepped in front of Sheppard, arms outspread.
"McKay," Sheppard hissed, not even bothering to correct his rank.
The maybe-Ancient passed by them, nearly enveloped Teyla where she once again sat on the post, and then solidified into a long and furry form, standing on one of the steps on its hind legs as it whuffed into Teyla's ear and wagged its tail.
"Ah! Please!" Teyla gasped, half-laughing, in surprise and wonder. "Thank you, but no!"
"It looks like a hruknor," Ronon said, tense, "but without the mane."
"It is a Dog," one of the Amarans said. "I have seen Dogs upon other worlds."
"Why would one of the Ancestors take the shape of a Dog?"
"The Ancestors alone know why the Ancestors do anything!"
"Looks more like a wolf to me," Sheppard said thoughtfully.
"Huh," Rodney said. "You might be right. Funny, I always thought it was unicorns that laid their heads in maidens' laps."
"Uh," Sheppard said, watching the Ascended-given-form shudder in canine ecstasy as Teyla scratched behind its ears. "Teyla doesn't exactly, uh, qualify, remember?"
"What is a wholph?" Ronon asked.
"Wolves are the ancestors of all dogs -- how can you have a word for dog and not for wolf?" Rodney demanded. "The Ancients had a word for wolf, it's uh, uh -- "
"Lupos," Sheppard said helpfully.
"Has Anthro and Linguistics been trying to steal you away again?"
"Hey, some of them are nominally my people."
"Will the Ancestor let us pet him?" Jazny asked boldly.
"Jazny!" her mother said.
"Swift-shine-of-fang-in-the-morning-dusk-on-the-windblown-snow says," Teyla said quietly, head slightly tilted much as she did when attempting to hear Wraith as anything more than a presence, "that he is what the people of the Mother-earth would call 'Ascended' and a First Esquire Houseleader among his house but that he is not an Ancestor the way that some members of his House or Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard are, and that certainly you may pet him, and that he would very much appreciate it should someone offer him fried varnak on a stick."
One of the small boys among the crowd promptly advanced and held out his half-eaten one. The wolf turned and snatched it off the stick, swallowing it in one gulp.
"He thanks you and would like more," Teyla said, as Sheppard was saying "It's a pack, not a house, when you're talking about wolves or dogs."
"Wait," Nyla said slowly, staring at Sheppard. "Ancestor?"
"Uh," Sheppard said eloquently. "Uh, um, some of us have Ancients as distant progenitors, and we, uh, have a means of telling how much of the nature of the Other Ancestors someone has inherited, and, uh, somepeoplehavemorethanothers."
"He has the most out of all of us," Rodney said dryly, "enough that random Ancients mack on him -- "
"Chaya wasn't 'macking on' me, she was lonely," Sheppard said indignantly.
"Do I look like I want to hear it? I don't want to hear it."
"I haven't heard this story," Ronon said.
"It is strange, but the people of our new home have a dislike of mentioning times when they behaved foolishly," Teyla said serenely.
Sheppard looked at his feet. Rodney looked at the unlit lanterns on a rope across the square.
"But why," the older female oligarch asked, "should Swiftgleam-in-the-morning -- Swift-fang-gleaming -- "
"Swift-shine-of-fang-in-the-morning-dusk-on-the-windblown-snow has consented, in the past, to be known by a suitably dignified name-sound of humans," Teyla commented, her smile echoing her new companion's teeth-baring lupine grin. "If there is one that one of your, ah, 'packleaders' has no more need of, perhaps."
"How about Einstein?" Sheppard spread his hands.
"Bringing up that movie again?"
"I actually wasn't -- really, I'm starting to think you're the one obsessed with it!"
"Why," the oligarch ignored them, "should an Ancestor of Dogs choose to walk among us here?"
The wolf rubbed his head against Teyla's knee. She gazed intently at him for a long moment.
"If you had the choice," she said at last, "would you drift from star to star and world to world seeing wonders upon wonders from afar but never touching nor reaching them, or would you share good company and eat fried varnak on a stick?"
"Fried varnak on a stick," said Sheppard.
"Fried varnak on a stick," said Ronon.
"Fried varnak on a stick," said the oligarch.
"All the secrets of the universe would be -- well, but I'd rather unlock them myself and be able to use them, so I'd probably take the varnak if you fried it in something else. Or a drumstick. I could really go for another drumstick."
"Yes, but your first choice was for the secrets of the universe," Sheppard said.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Then it's a good thing we're flying Church of England Airlines, isn't it?"
"Excuse me, but. What?"
"You know. Eddie Izzard."
"What's an eddyizzer?"
"Philistine," Rodney said, deeply and heartfeltly. After a quick glance at his other two teammates, one of whom was busy attending a wolf and the other eyeing the wolf warily in case it should go for someone's throat or something, enlightened or not, he added "Haven't Anthro and Linguistics been teaching you anything?"
"Oh, you know they only love me for my in-depth knowledge of Late Modern Ancient I picked up from that thing you don't want me to talk about."
Rodney threw a drumstick bone at him.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating/warnings- Suitable for general audiences, except for one word. Which he had an excuse for, really..
-spoilers- "38 Minutes," "Sanctuary."
-characters- Sheppard, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, others.
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. One of the other characters belongs to, um, Alliance Atlantis. Sort of.
-word count- 2965
-summary- In which our heroes wait permission to be let endanger themselves in the Ancient building, and talk about food a lot.
The first part of this (back when I thought there would only be three) is posted to this community here; for a brief story-so-far, this is their second visit to a planet with a very short rotation period, they came during a fair, and one of the planetary leaders (named Nyla) has shown them an Ancient building which the locals called Keii's Maze and use to select said leaders: she's promised to speak to her fellows about letting Sheppard's team have a look-see inside at the same time as everyone else.
Amara
(2/4)
The fair was still an odd combination of open and closed stalls. In one of the more open areas, still keeping its function as the town square, a young man stripped to the waist was juggling torches.
"Please wait here while I find the others," Nyla told them, and AR-1 obediently sat or took watch on the stone steps of the building that, on their last visit, had been used for the oligarchs' council.
"Does something seem odd about this to you?" Teyla wondered, sitting on the post at one side of the steps.
"What, like the way that the men are wearing long baggy pants and actual shirts while the women wear short skirts or chaps and the same sort of vests you like?" Sheppard had chosen the steps proper, although his gun was still right beside him.
"I thought that was random chance working in our favor for once," Rodney, having walked up to one of the stalls, said, fishing for his share of the bone tokens Nyla had lent them.
Sheppard waved expressively at the scantily-clad grandmother sweeping up debris at the opposite side of the plaza.
"Yes, well, that is the way our luck runs," Rodney said. "Two of those, please, and one of those." He turned back towards the others. "Probably when we finally do find the planet of naked blonde amazons they'll want to kill us for all being better-looking than they are. Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Um. Teyla. I, uh, meant -- here, I'll get you one too."
Teyla let the stern expression slide off her face as Rodney bargained with his chosen merchant, arms gesturing wildly.
"Amazons?" Ronon wondered.
"Women warriors. Um. They were supposed to live without men except for, um, y'know, kids and stuff -- "
"Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard is speaking of a legend from Earth," Teyla kindly glossed for him.
"Here," Rodney called, interrupting them. "This is what you need." He carefully made his way over to Sheppard, awkwardly clutching two drumsticks and two fried-dough-bread pieces wrapped in broad flat leaves.
"Thanks." Sheppard accepted one of each.
"So how are they?" Rodney handed the other frybread to Teyla.
"Well, this one -- " Sheppard swallowed -- "doesn't quite taste like turkey, but I'm not sure what it does taste like. 'S good, though."
"I knew it." Rodney triumphantly took a bite of his own drumstick. "And the fried dough? I hadn't realized they made grain sugar here... "
"The... oh, the elephant ear." Sheppard licked at it. "Actually, it seems to be crystallized honey." He took a bite. "And it tastes good, but distinctly orangish. Maybe a little grapefruity."
"I thought it smelled of it," Rodney mourned. "Sigh."
"What's orange and what's wrong with it?" Ronon demanded from the top of the steps.
"Orange is a fruit from their world," Teyla said, "from which is made the opaque yellow juice that the mess has served at breakfast."
"It's related to a lemon, but I don't think it is one..." Sheppard trailed off.
"It's like my Aunt Eunice." Rodney gingerly sat a foot or so away from his teamleader's loose-limbed sprawl. "First she was allergic to lobster, then it was lobster and crayfish, then lobster and crayfish and crab, then it was scallops -- and she loved scallops -- and then she started getting allergic to shrimp when she wasn't all that much older than I am now."
"I do not understand," Teyla said.
"I've been allergic to lemons as far back as I can remember, and a couple years ago I started getting allergic to limes too, and then to grapefruit -- not as badly, thank goodness -- and oranges'll probably be next, I felt horribly queasy the last time I had Mountain Dew."
"It might just taste of orange -- the elephant ear, that is," Sheppard offered, swallowing a bite of fried dough and drumstick together. "Are you allergic to lemongrass or lemon balm or whatever that Australian plant's called?"
"Yes, yes, it could, but I'm hardly about to test that outside of a nice safe infirmary, am I?"
"Point taken."
"I mean, I could risk a nasty, painful, gasping death, increasing my vulnerability to all forms of citrus in the process, or I could have the drumstick. Which smells delicious."
"Point *taken* -- what do you suppose they put in the glaze?" Sheppard said thoughtfully, hand hovering over one of his vest pockets.
"It tastes kind of barbecueish, maybe of apricots -- " Rodney froze suddenly. "Teyla," he said, holding the drumstick out to her. "What does the glaze taste of?"
Teyla slid to her feet, stepped over, and daintily bit off some of the glazed outer portion of the drumstick.
"Of rose hips and spices," she said calmly, "and perhaps of some sort of plum."
"An apricot is a plum, except for the part where it's an apricot," Rodney said more cheerfully.
Ronon held out a hand.
"Hey! Get your own! I want some left!"
Ronon shrugged expressively.
Teyla handed her fried dough to Rodney, who held it at arm's length, and strode over to the food stall herself. Shortly thereafter, she returned with a little basket containing three drumsticks, a larger piece of fried dough than hers or Sheppard's, and an unidentifiable oblong something deep-fried on a stick. She handed the basket to Ronon and pulled the mysterious fried object out by its stick.
Ronon nodded in acknowledgment.
Teyla nodded in return and came down the steps, pausing to retrieve her fried dough. She took another bite of it and then a tentative nibble of the item on the stick.
"Well?" Sheppard drawled, swallowing another bite of drumstick.
"The batter also tastes of... orange," Teyla said, calmly.
"I was afraid of that," Rodney said, looking at the whatever, white spongy flesh showing in the hole made by his teammate's teeth. "What is that thing, anyway?"
Teyla looked at them for a moment, assessing, judging, and then she said "Fried varnak beetle on a stick."
She held it out to Sheppard.
Sheppard blinked, slowly.
The other three held their breath. It hung there, for a few seconds, for an eternity, while the dribs and drabs of fairgoers swelled once more.
And then he leaned forwared and sank his teeth into it, ferociously, tearing off a large chunk and chewing it fiercely.
He swallowed, half-burped, and said "Tastes like lobster. In orangish batter."
"Makes sense," Rodney said thoughtfully. "They're both arthropods."
"Would an iratus bug taste of shellfish, then?" Teyla squatted on the step two below Sheppard and Rodney.
"Wouldn't it be, I don't know, poisonous?"
"Well, one would need to remove the enzyme glands first, of course."
Sheppard grinned at them, lopsided and facile. "I solemnly swear that, should we ever be in a situation where, firstly, we encounter them again, secondly, Medical deems them fit for human consumption, and thirdly, someone else cooks the thing, I will eat the goddamn iratus bug. No matter how much barbecue sauce I need to hide the taste with."
"Good," Teyla said, swallowing more of her varnak-on-a-stick.
Sheppard nodded and had more of his drumstick.
"These are good," Rodney said, wolfing down his own. "I might need to get another one."
"You'll choke if you eat that fast," Ronon observed.
"Hello, hypoglycemic? I trained myself out of my gag reflex years ago."
"Does not the food bring more nourishment when properly chewed?" Teyla and Sheppard traded bites of varnak and drumstick again.
"Well, uh, yes, normally it does, but you know how it goes, sometimes you don't have time to chew properly before the crash and that's why I learned how not to -- "
"McKay." Sheppard rolled his eyes. "We had dinner two hours ago."
"Two hours and thirty-seven minutes," Rodney corrected, "and that was before we went hiking."
"That wasn't hiking, that was a walk in the park."
"Funny, I don't remember parks being generously supplied with giant bugs."
"Gentlemen." Teyla managed to imitate both Elizabeth's inflection and body language, should Elizabeth Weir ever have had occasion to do so with a fried arthropod on a stick in one hand and a fried dough in leaf wrappings in the other.
Ronon snorted, and went back to steadily plowing through his own food.
An hour or so later, when the sun was high enough to almost eliminate shadows anywhere other than direct shade, Nyla finally reappeared, trailing several oligarchs and both her daughters.
"I thought they went to bed," Rodney greeted them.
"We couldn't sleep," Meeza said.
"It's noisy," Jazny whined. "Last year we didn't sleep at the fairgrounds."
"Last year Mama wasn't oligarch," her older sister snapped, "and it's an honor, it makes us special!"
"Girls," Nyla said, sounding rather like Elizabeth herself. She smiled at Rodney. "Thank you for worrying."
"Oh, I -- " Rodney began.
Teyla kicked him in the ankle. Gently.
"It was nothing," he said hastily.
"So," Sheppard said, smiling, open and friendly.
"These are them?" one of the other oligarchs said. "They don't look like much."
"Now, Father," another one said -- presumably using the title in some sort of figurative way, as she and he both appeared to be in their late middle age. "They can't help being foreigners."
"Hmph."
"We have been enjoying the delights of your fair," Teyla said.
"I haven't had elephant ears since I went to a fair on our world," Sheppard said, waving a hand at the leaf-wrappings currently holding the other wrappings, the stick, and the drumstick bones.
"Elephant -- oh, the leaf-fry?" Nyla said. "I'm sorry, I would have offered you some had I known -- I'm afraid I didn't think to, I'm not particularly fond of tangelo."
"Tangelo?" Rodney repeated in English, incredulous.
"Apparently tangelo means tangelo, yes," Sheppard said dryly.
"She said 'citruma,'" Teyla said. "They used to grow near the northern range of my people. I have seldom had them, but I remember that they tasted something like your orange."
"We get them in trade from the Toreans," said yet a fourth oligarch. "They've grown them in little copses for a thousand years."
"But the tangelo is a recent hybrid, Earth only just invented them last century," Rodney argued.
"Did you?" Teyla said.
"You were just saying that oranges and lemons and grapefruit were all hybrids," Sheppard rolled his eyes. "If the Ancients brought whatever they hybridized from here, they could perfectly well have been cross-bred into tangelos here first, since apparently they have, and Earth only just recently reinvented them."
"Unvented," Ronon corrected suddenly.
"If you're quite finished?" the older female oligarch said.
"Hmph!" her companion repeated.
"Keii's Maze is open to vision quests at the end of the summer," the man who'd volunteered tangelo information said. "At times outworlders, too, have been permitted to undergo its ordeals."
"They passed the first one," Nyla repeated.
"You did?" Meeza said, looking rather more impressed.
"The fact remains," the older man said, "why should we let you try the others?"
"Why do you want to?" the older woman asked.
"Such knowledge is valued -- " Teyla began.
"Because it's there," Rodney said impatiently.
"How do we know that you'll use whatever knowledge you gain wisely?" the other oligarch said.
"Well," Sheppard said, "how do you know that your own people will use it wisely?"
"What's that in the corner?" Ronon asked.
Everyone looked.
"It's a trick of the light," the older woman said.
"It's getting brighter, Mother," the older man said.
"It... looks... familiar..." Sheppard began slowly.
"Oh my God," Rodney said. "I think it's an Ancient."
"An Ancestor?!" Teyla and Ronon both said at once.
Everyone in the little plaza had fallen silent now, as the glowing piece of air grew almost too bright to look at and slowly began floating toward the steps where AR-1 sat, wisps trailing behind it.
"Ancestors," breathed the younger male oligarch.
"Well, yes," Nyla told him in a piercing whisper.
"Do you suppose it's Keii?"
"There are eight hundred million Ancestors, Father. Why should it be Keii?"
"I heard it was eighty thousand," Ronon muttered.
"That's the way they look when they're almost on our plane but not quite," Rodney said in an oddly ordinary voice. "I -- oh, great, does this one have a thing for you too, Major?" He jumped to his feet and stepped in front of Sheppard, arms outspread.
"McKay," Sheppard hissed, not even bothering to correct his rank.
The maybe-Ancient passed by them, nearly enveloped Teyla where she once again sat on the post, and then solidified into a long and furry form, standing on one of the steps on its hind legs as it whuffed into Teyla's ear and wagged its tail.
"Ah! Please!" Teyla gasped, half-laughing, in surprise and wonder. "Thank you, but no!"
"It looks like a hruknor," Ronon said, tense, "but without the mane."
"It is a Dog," one of the Amarans said. "I have seen Dogs upon other worlds."
"Why would one of the Ancestors take the shape of a Dog?"
"The Ancestors alone know why the Ancestors do anything!"
"Looks more like a wolf to me," Sheppard said thoughtfully.
"Huh," Rodney said. "You might be right. Funny, I always thought it was unicorns that laid their heads in maidens' laps."
"Uh," Sheppard said, watching the Ascended-given-form shudder in canine ecstasy as Teyla scratched behind its ears. "Teyla doesn't exactly, uh, qualify, remember?"
"What is a wholph?" Ronon asked.
"Wolves are the ancestors of all dogs -- how can you have a word for dog and not for wolf?" Rodney demanded. "The Ancients had a word for wolf, it's uh, uh -- "
"Lupos," Sheppard said helpfully.
"Has Anthro and Linguistics been trying to steal you away again?"
"Hey, some of them are nominally my people."
"Will the Ancestor let us pet him?" Jazny asked boldly.
"Jazny!" her mother said.
"Swift-shine-of-fang-in-the-morning-dusk-on-the-windblown-snow says," Teyla said quietly, head slightly tilted much as she did when attempting to hear Wraith as anything more than a presence, "that he is what the people of the Mother-earth would call 'Ascended' and a First Esquire Houseleader among his house but that he is not an Ancestor the way that some members of his House or Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard are, and that certainly you may pet him, and that he would very much appreciate it should someone offer him fried varnak on a stick."
One of the small boys among the crowd promptly advanced and held out his half-eaten one. The wolf turned and snatched it off the stick, swallowing it in one gulp.
"He thanks you and would like more," Teyla said, as Sheppard was saying "It's a pack, not a house, when you're talking about wolves or dogs."
"Wait," Nyla said slowly, staring at Sheppard. "Ancestor?"
"Uh," Sheppard said eloquently. "Uh, um, some of us have Ancients as distant progenitors, and we, uh, have a means of telling how much of the nature of the Other Ancestors someone has inherited, and, uh, somepeoplehavemorethanothers."
"He has the most out of all of us," Rodney said dryly, "enough that random Ancients mack on him -- "
"Chaya wasn't 'macking on' me, she was lonely," Sheppard said indignantly.
"Do I look like I want to hear it? I don't want to hear it."
"I haven't heard this story," Ronon said.
"It is strange, but the people of our new home have a dislike of mentioning times when they behaved foolishly," Teyla said serenely.
Sheppard looked at his feet. Rodney looked at the unlit lanterns on a rope across the square.
"But why," the older female oligarch asked, "should Swiftgleam-in-the-morning -- Swift-fang-gleaming -- "
"Swift-shine-of-fang-in-the-morning-dusk-on-the-windblown-snow has consented, in the past, to be known by a suitably dignified name-sound of humans," Teyla commented, her smile echoing her new companion's teeth-baring lupine grin. "If there is one that one of your, ah, 'packleaders' has no more need of, perhaps."
"How about Einstein?" Sheppard spread his hands.
"Bringing up that movie again?"
"I actually wasn't -- really, I'm starting to think you're the one obsessed with it!"
"Why," the oligarch ignored them, "should an Ancestor of Dogs choose to walk among us here?"
The wolf rubbed his head against Teyla's knee. She gazed intently at him for a long moment.
"If you had the choice," she said at last, "would you drift from star to star and world to world seeing wonders upon wonders from afar but never touching nor reaching them, or would you share good company and eat fried varnak on a stick?"
"Fried varnak on a stick," said Sheppard.
"Fried varnak on a stick," said Ronon.
"Fried varnak on a stick," said the oligarch.
"All the secrets of the universe would be -- well, but I'd rather unlock them myself and be able to use them, so I'd probably take the varnak if you fried it in something else. Or a drumstick. I could really go for another drumstick."
"Yes, but your first choice was for the secrets of the universe," Sheppard said.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Then it's a good thing we're flying Church of England Airlines, isn't it?"
"Excuse me, but. What?"
"You know. Eddie Izzard."
"What's an eddyizzer?"
"Philistine," Rodney said, deeply and heartfeltly. After a quick glance at his other two teammates, one of whom was busy attending a wolf and the other eyeing the wolf warily in case it should go for someone's throat or something, enlightened or not, he added "Haven't Anthro and Linguistics been teaching you anything?"
"Oh, you know they only love me for my in-depth knowledge of Late Modern Ancient I picked up from that thing you don't want me to talk about."
Rodney threw a drumstick bone at him.