Advent Challenge (2/14)
Title: Ten Flavors
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: E 10+
Characters/Pairing: Terezi, Dave, John, Jade (Minor TerezixDave)
Word Count: 1193
Summary: Terezi's adventures in licking red things. Written for adventchallenge.
One of the first things Terezi learns about being on Earth is that human beings have an incredibly strong aversion to being licked. Her four don’t seem to mind so much-Rose always manages to wriggle out of it somehow, John and Jade just laugh it off, and her very own coolkid, Dave, just takes it stoically, the same way he deals with everything else. Other humans, though, tend to get really unhappy.
Really, though, Terezi thinks glumly as she takes off running, that lady’s brats (delicious, delicious brats, but annoying little wrigglers nonetheless) really needed the cleaning she gave them. There was no need to call the cops.
(Those sirens sound deliciously cherry, though. Maybe she’ll have to sneak back for a taste.)
--
She does. They’re every bit as good as she’d hoped. And listening from the safety of a bush as the cops puzzle over the odd sticky teal stuff their car is practically coated in is just the icing on Terezi’s extravagantly scarlet cake.
--
Humans like to celebrate. Some of them seem a little silly to Terezi (throwing a party to celebrate your Wriggling Day? Really?) but others are downright wonderful. The thing they call Fourth of July is in the latter group.
It’s late at night and the sixteen of them are laying on Dave’s roof, waiting for something. So far, all of the children have been frustratingly obtuse about what, only promising that it would be “really cool.”
The city all around them is acrid and sour, turning her nose. She can’t smell the stars here, but Dave assures her they’re shining brightly-or as brightly as they ever can past the smog, at least.
She giggles and sticks her tongue out, feeling the night air swirl around her. Then, suddenly, there’s a loud boom, breaking the sky open and rattling through her head, and she tastes something. There’s a bright sharp burst of red hanging on the edge of her senses, then slowly fading away with a delicious sizzle.
The air fills with excitement so thick she can smell it as her friends gasp and shriek.
“Eek!” Nepeta yelps, laughing.
“I told you it would be cool!” John says from somewhere to her left.
“Oh,” Terezi says, licking her lips. “What was that?”
There’s another pop, green this time, then white and red and blue, rolling in on top of each other in a delicious banquet of bang and fire and smoke.
“Fireworks.” That’s Dave, voice as monotone as ever, but she can hear the smile anyway.
--
Terezi can taste the hints of maroon in Aradia. She’s a robot now, her metal heart pumping artificial blue blood (Well, she hopes it’s artificial. Terezi doesn’t want to think about where Equius would have gotten real blood that shade.) but there’s still a faint hint of her old color showing through. Her natural color.
So Terezi follows Aradia around through the Veil, laughing and pestering her and wondering what it would be like if she took just a little nibble.
--
“Terezi!” Jade snaps, half laughing as they both stand over the kitchen sink. “Stop that!”
“What?” she mumbles back. “Ish good!”
“Well, yeah.” Jade reaches over and rips the packet out of Terezi’s mouth. “But you’re supposed to add sugar and water. You can’t just eat all the powder out of the Kool-aid mix!”
“Humans sure are weird,” Terezi says with a sigh.
--
It’s not like Terezi’s never had fruit before. They had it back on Alternia-apples and rawsts and orans and cherries-but they were tough and sour and even the delicious redness some of them had couldn’t quite make them tasty.
Earth is different. Here, apples are crisp and sweet and cherries are impossibly tender, with hard little cores called pits you can crack open with your teeth. (Although John did seem a little surprised when she mentioned that, so maybe that’s not something humans do?)
And there are other red Earth fruits too. They have strawberries, which are shaped funny and carry all their seeds on the outside, raspberries, which are so tiny but tart and so, so tasty, and plums, which have dark purple skin on the outside but can be either red or yellow on the inside so you have to lick them first to make sure you don’t accidently eat the less tasty kind. And others too, peaches and papayas and pomegranates, so many different kinds it could take an eternity to eat them all.
Terezi thinks she might just have to become a vegetarian.
--
Except maybe not. Because it turns out that humans aren’t the only Earth beings with delicious red blood. Perhaps (or would it be purrhaps?) Nepeta was on to something with her whole “Eating meat raw” thing, because wow. Yum.
--
Terezi almost misses watermelons completely.
They’ve had one laying out on the counter for a while, a hard core of unappealing green that Terezi just sort of ignores. Late one morning, though, Terezi trips over a towel someone left laying on the middle of the kitchen floor. (The thing was pure white and fluffy cotton-not her fault she couldn’t smell it.) She tumbles against the counter, grabbing at it for support, and her face hits the watermelon hard. And stays there.
Because underneath those solid green stripes she can taste something else. Something warm and juicy and pinkish-red, dotted with black and begging to be tasted.
When Dave walks into the kitchen an hour or so later, it’s to the sight of Terezi sitting on the floor, laughing, covered in seeds, and surrounded by chunks of torn-up watermelon rind.
“Come on, coolkid! Have some breakfast with me,” she says cheerfully.
And, well, what the hell. He does.
--
Fire is dangerous.
It’s a stupidly simple concept, one even the most useless of lusii knows to teach its wriggler. Virtually everything in a hive is organic and incredibly flammable, and once a blaze gets going it’s almost impossible to stop. Terezi never even had a lusus and she still knows this. But.
But, well, there’s a certain beauty to it, a beauty she never got to see before she lost her eyes. She loves the sharp acrid tang of smoke and the way just being near it sends shivers of red glancing across her taste buds. It’s lovely and wonderful and it’s going to kill her if she doesn’t stop, but addiction is a terrible thing.
So Terezi sits outside her hive, one end of a smoldering branch clasped in her hands, and wills herself to go dump it in a nearby puddle. (She doesn’t move, though.)
--
On Alternia insects were a daily staple, an ingredient in everything from soups to breads and back again. But apparently eating bugs isn’t really a thing that humans do, because when she opens her mouth and shows John the red and black delicacy (ladybugs, they’re called, even though there’s nothing too ladylike about them) she’s got trapped under her tongue he looks like he’s going to be sick.
“I…guess it’s better than cake?” he says uncertainly.
Terezi grins and offers him an ant.
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: E 10+
Characters/Pairing: Terezi, Dave, John, Jade (Minor TerezixDave)
Word Count: 1193
Summary: Terezi's adventures in licking red things. Written for adventchallenge.
One of the first things Terezi learns about being on Earth is that human beings have an incredibly strong aversion to being licked. Her four don’t seem to mind so much-Rose always manages to wriggle out of it somehow, John and Jade just laugh it off, and her very own coolkid, Dave, just takes it stoically, the same way he deals with everything else. Other humans, though, tend to get really unhappy.
Really, though, Terezi thinks glumly as she takes off running, that lady’s brats (delicious, delicious brats, but annoying little wrigglers nonetheless) really needed the cleaning she gave them. There was no need to call the cops.
(Those sirens sound deliciously cherry, though. Maybe she’ll have to sneak back for a taste.)
--
She does. They’re every bit as good as she’d hoped. And listening from the safety of a bush as the cops puzzle over the odd sticky teal stuff their car is practically coated in is just the icing on Terezi’s extravagantly scarlet cake.
--
Humans like to celebrate. Some of them seem a little silly to Terezi (throwing a party to celebrate your Wriggling Day? Really?) but others are downright wonderful. The thing they call Fourth of July is in the latter group.
It’s late at night and the sixteen of them are laying on Dave’s roof, waiting for something. So far, all of the children have been frustratingly obtuse about what, only promising that it would be “really cool.”
The city all around them is acrid and sour, turning her nose. She can’t smell the stars here, but Dave assures her they’re shining brightly-or as brightly as they ever can past the smog, at least.
She giggles and sticks her tongue out, feeling the night air swirl around her. Then, suddenly, there’s a loud boom, breaking the sky open and rattling through her head, and she tastes something. There’s a bright sharp burst of red hanging on the edge of her senses, then slowly fading away with a delicious sizzle.
The air fills with excitement so thick she can smell it as her friends gasp and shriek.
“Eek!” Nepeta yelps, laughing.
“I told you it would be cool!” John says from somewhere to her left.
“Oh,” Terezi says, licking her lips. “What was that?”
There’s another pop, green this time, then white and red and blue, rolling in on top of each other in a delicious banquet of bang and fire and smoke.
“Fireworks.” That’s Dave, voice as monotone as ever, but she can hear the smile anyway.
--
Terezi can taste the hints of maroon in Aradia. She’s a robot now, her metal heart pumping artificial blue blood (Well, she hopes it’s artificial. Terezi doesn’t want to think about where Equius would have gotten real blood that shade.) but there’s still a faint hint of her old color showing through. Her natural color.
So Terezi follows Aradia around through the Veil, laughing and pestering her and wondering what it would be like if she took just a little nibble.
--
“Terezi!” Jade snaps, half laughing as they both stand over the kitchen sink. “Stop that!”
“What?” she mumbles back. “Ish good!”
“Well, yeah.” Jade reaches over and rips the packet out of Terezi’s mouth. “But you’re supposed to add sugar and water. You can’t just eat all the powder out of the Kool-aid mix!”
“Humans sure are weird,” Terezi says with a sigh.
--
It’s not like Terezi’s never had fruit before. They had it back on Alternia-apples and rawsts and orans and cherries-but they were tough and sour and even the delicious redness some of them had couldn’t quite make them tasty.
Earth is different. Here, apples are crisp and sweet and cherries are impossibly tender, with hard little cores called pits you can crack open with your teeth. (Although John did seem a little surprised when she mentioned that, so maybe that’s not something humans do?)
And there are other red Earth fruits too. They have strawberries, which are shaped funny and carry all their seeds on the outside, raspberries, which are so tiny but tart and so, so tasty, and plums, which have dark purple skin on the outside but can be either red or yellow on the inside so you have to lick them first to make sure you don’t accidently eat the less tasty kind. And others too, peaches and papayas and pomegranates, so many different kinds it could take an eternity to eat them all.
Terezi thinks she might just have to become a vegetarian.
--
Except maybe not. Because it turns out that humans aren’t the only Earth beings with delicious red blood. Perhaps (or would it be purrhaps?) Nepeta was on to something with her whole “Eating meat raw” thing, because wow. Yum.
--
Terezi almost misses watermelons completely.
They’ve had one laying out on the counter for a while, a hard core of unappealing green that Terezi just sort of ignores. Late one morning, though, Terezi trips over a towel someone left laying on the middle of the kitchen floor. (The thing was pure white and fluffy cotton-not her fault she couldn’t smell it.) She tumbles against the counter, grabbing at it for support, and her face hits the watermelon hard. And stays there.
Because underneath those solid green stripes she can taste something else. Something warm and juicy and pinkish-red, dotted with black and begging to be tasted.
When Dave walks into the kitchen an hour or so later, it’s to the sight of Terezi sitting on the floor, laughing, covered in seeds, and surrounded by chunks of torn-up watermelon rind.
“Come on, coolkid! Have some breakfast with me,” she says cheerfully.
And, well, what the hell. He does.
--
Fire is dangerous.
It’s a stupidly simple concept, one even the most useless of lusii knows to teach its wriggler. Virtually everything in a hive is organic and incredibly flammable, and once a blaze gets going it’s almost impossible to stop. Terezi never even had a lusus and she still knows this. But.
But, well, there’s a certain beauty to it, a beauty she never got to see before she lost her eyes. She loves the sharp acrid tang of smoke and the way just being near it sends shivers of red glancing across her taste buds. It’s lovely and wonderful and it’s going to kill her if she doesn’t stop, but addiction is a terrible thing.
So Terezi sits outside her hive, one end of a smoldering branch clasped in her hands, and wills herself to go dump it in a nearby puddle. (She doesn’t move, though.)
--
On Alternia insects were a daily staple, an ingredient in everything from soups to breads and back again. But apparently eating bugs isn’t really a thing that humans do, because when she opens her mouth and shows John the red and black delicacy (ladybugs, they’re called, even though there’s nothing too ladylike about them) she’s got trapped under her tongue he looks like he’s going to be sick.
“I…guess it’s better than cake?” he says uncertainly.
Terezi grins and offers him an ant.