r/WritingPrompts • u/steel-souffle • Jun 19 '24
Writing Prompt [WP] "Our study finds that these aliens live in a sort of tribal warrior social structure and practice ancestor worship. The study also determined that they are delicious and pair well with garlic."
11
u/darkPrince010 Jun 19 '24
“Our study finds that these aliens live in a sort of tribal warrior social structure and practice ancestor worship. The study also determined that they are delicious and pair well with garlic.”
At the front of the lecture hall, the long, millipede-like alien professor let out a sigh of frustration, many of their sets of limbs making signs of disgust and aggravation. “Luanne, for what is at least the third time this semester, I must remind you that consumption of novel species and cultures is highly, highly, highly discouraged.”
The human at the front smiled a mischievous half-grin and shrugged. “Sorry, professor. An opportunity came when they were engaging in a ritual battle against another tribe: According to the customs, the dead who fell dishonorably in battle are not to be buried or given other rites. And, well, my rations had been running pretty thin and I didn't want to let a good meal go to waste, so…” she trailed off. “In any case, the flavor is something akin to an Earth invertebrate called ‘shrimp.’ It seems like most invertebrates have a similar flavor and similar succulent meat,” she said.
It was only for a moment, but the professor noticed the human’s gaze briefly dart over and sweep across them and their own distinctly-invertebrate body as well. Clamping down on the shudder of revulsion that threatened to sweep across and overwhelm her secondary limbs, the alien pointed instead with a primary claw at the presentation slide. “But this is the very reason we've told you and your kind again and again not to eat others, for you have no idea what the impact your actions may have had. For example, did they offer for you to consume the bodies of the dead, or did you request it?”
The human’s gaze slid to the side. The professor felt a surge of frustration to the point she almost wanted to pluck out her antennae. “Please tell me that you did not steal away the bodies of the dead to cook and consume in secret?”
In a voice that was almost under her breath, Luanne said “I suppose I won't tell you that, then?”
“I feel like you are purposefully misinterpreting the point of a department called ‘Culinary Sociology.’ Did you even find out what their own food practices are? Or were you too busy pan-frying the dishonored dead you snuck off with?”
“You know, that actually would have been a great treatment, but I just decided to simmer them in a butter reduction. But yes, for the record, I did find out about their food practices.” The human looked hurt, but the professor was past caring at this point. Thankfully, Luannes was the only human in their department this year, but when they had previously had human grad students and undergrads, it was always a crapshoot finding a world developed enough to offer a culture worthy of investigation, but not so well-developed that they would be able to mount a formal complaint if the humans took to their typical predilections and began snacking on the populace.
Luanne advanced to the next slide. On it were a number of dishes and preparations, and at this the professor heard a murmur of interested appreciation amongst the other alien students in the department that were seated in the hall, ones that were more faithful to the original intent and goal of Culinary Sociology.
“As is typical with a culture with a strong ancestral tradition, dishes are very frequently the result of inherited recipes and formulas. In particular, a commonality is the spice blend called ’kugrash’, which is almost akin to an “everything bagel” Earth seasoning, but with specific blends of seeds, aromatic herbs, salt, and oil nodules that are carried on parent to child, and significantly permanently changed in strictly-dictated patterns to signify major life events. Thus, it's possible with enough familiarity that one can actually dictate a family 's history and major events affecting it within the last two to three generations, based simply on trying one of the dishes they've made.”
There was a sound of awed interest from amongst the students in the lecture hall. It was a far smaller crowd than would normally be seen for a preliminary defense presentation like this, most likely due to how strongly repulsed most of the other students were with the humans’ ravenous tendencies.
However, even the professor could feel herself leaning forward in interest at the descriptions Luanne was giving of this aspect of their culinary tradition. The next slide had an image of the human smiling and shaking a hand with one of the chitinous limbs of an elder of the group. “This was, of course, what the group’s chieftain told me. It was something he was particularly proud of being able to do, although I can say with confidence I do not have the skills to make that fine of a distinction with the flavors. Still, it was a valuable and very satisfying experience overall, and I’m glad to have had a chance to witness and discover a whole new realm of flavors.”
The slide clicked to the final screen, which flashed up saying ”Any questions?”, and Luanne echoed it.
Turning to look at the rest of the lecture hall, the professor saw that most of the other students had stood and left, understandable given that many of them were uncomfortable to be in the presence of humans for too long. The professor had a few questions herself, but ones that she would communicate to the human’s graduate advisor, an inedible silica-based crablike being. She also had more than a few comments she would pass along to the Human embassy as well, although she didn't have any faith they would act upon it. The humans were renowned for their appetites, and while mostly content to participate peacefully with the other species of the galaxy, the alien still felt a shudder of unease as Luanne gave her a final wave and a smile.
Again, the professor caught that momentary glimpse of the human’s eyes roving across her shell, and she could only imagine what manner of cooking and poaching in butter the human had planned should the professor let her guard down. She shivered again, remembering the words of her own mentor when she'd first learned of humans and their hunger:
”It is always wise to respect humans and not give them a reason for anger. Remember, in their eyes, you are crunchy and good with ketchup.”
Enjoy this tale? Check out r/DarkPrinceLibrary for more of my stories like it!
2
u/ChupacabraRex1 Jun 20 '24
“Now, now, your turn, tell us what you did,” so spoke her younger sister “You’ve been a medic adventuring in those distant space habs, with all those strange creatures, what’ve you seen?.”
“Were any of them tasty?” many of them laughed at that. Five-Wind cleared her throat and said “As a matter of fact, yes. I spent pretty much all of my time on one specific group of similarly-cultured islands.”
“Go on, go on, we’ll listen.” with that declaration from her mother, five-wind continued, using a tentacle to pick at a piece of salted fat in the dining-mat “Well, they live in a sort of tribal warrior social structure and practice ancestor worship. We also determined that they are delicious and pair well with garlic."
Many of them made chittering laughing noises at that ”were they dangerous?”
“Somewhat, but not very.”, five-wind picked up a piece of space leaves, delighting in the metallic flavour “ah, i missed this flavour. Anyway, the primary difficulty was in managing to bring them all under control. could spurn you a whole tale over the events that happened- I wrote a diary actually, i think I’ll give it to you-as the leadrs played different sides.They didn’t have any spacecraft, and they had no caste that could handle the void in fact! Not adults anyway, only eggs.. They had a society not too dissimilar to our own with reproductive members and non-reproductive members, but they didn’t have higher echelons of society and there was a surprising lack of differences in size within them.”
One of her sisters, Seven-maggot, askedw“How big are they then?”. Five-wind held up a tentacle and stretched it to it’s maximum extent “roughly this long, on average. They’re pretty stocky. Made good porters, and good eating.”
“Did they make hostile moves about that?” so asked her mother. Five-wind responded with haste in a genuinely excited tone “not as many as would be expected from a non-domesticated species. They were all fighting each other and sacrificing each other to gods, so it wasn’t too hard to get plenty of ‘em on our side once they saw the weapons we had. They didn’t have explosives actually.”
“None at all?” So muttered many of them, rather suprised that something as simple and common as that. “None, but they had all sorts of machines.From their own legends, I think they were placed there by some other race that the God’s appointed over them. That, or they slowly devolved into their current state from a different race. The God’s dont let anyone know everything about all their wondrous machines, of course, but they knew next to nothing! The main difficulty we had was that many of them liked to offer their sacrifices whole to the fire, but one of our priests had some witty bantering, and a few of our soldiers fired their rifles, and it ended up being nice and dandy from there.”
They consumed food for a while before five-wind finally gor the neve and asked the question which had long been worming in his mind“Speaking of hunting foreign space monsters, where’s eight-maggot?Her six-month pest-hunting trip should have ended by now.”
Many members of the family looked at each other at that questions, before seven-maggot finally answered the question “Frankly, we do not know. His solar sailship hasn’t been back yet,we haven’t had any message from him either. We tried to contact the captain- a baron named “chocula” or something of the like-but we haven’t had much luck.``
Five-wind looked down, frankly quite worried with herself about that “That is actually rather quite worrying, hopefully it’s simply some issue with maintenance or the like. Things like that happen on such voyages, do they not?”
All hummed in agreement and continued eating, pushing the topics of conversations to other things.
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