author:

rating: PG13

wordcount: 974

summary: Tangerine goes off in search of food, and she finds it.

It hadn't taken her long at all to figure out that the building she was in had to be humongous. Obviously it was some sort of palace, or fort, or other kind of stronghold. As such she knew that they had to have an equally humongous store of food stuffs squirreled away somewhere. It was just a matter of finding it. If there was one thing at which Tangerine was exceptionally good at, it was locating her next meal, a talent which grew exponentially more precise the greater the amount of time between her present condition and her last meal. She wasn't sure exactly when her last meal had been, except that it had been much longer than she cared for, and as such when her overly-sensitive nose caught a whiff of some unexplained and yet decidedly edible aroma she went off in search of it without a single thought for her present company.

Halls the size of houses led to rooms the size of small (and large) town squares. Everything was clean, and quiet, and there were more strange doors like the one the Alfalfa lady had opened. Some of them slid out of her way without a fuss but, more often than not, they wouldn't budge and remained stubbornly blocking her path. The more she had to backtrack the more frustrated - and hungry - she got.

Eventually, however, her nose led her straight into a gigantic room that was much too large to have been built by humans. Possibly Ogres or Giants, but definitely not humans. Not on this side of the divide anyways, and beside, it was made all out of metal like everything else. Tangerine couldn't help but to think that who or whatever had built this place had been very very stupid, because only an idiot built their entire fortress out of something as conductive as metal. Ignoring the fact that any wandering fey could have melted it right out from under its guard, there were the storms that tended to pop up unannounced and invite themselves to supper.

Maybe, Tangerine thought to herself, that's what happened. Maybe everybody who'd lived in this gigantic place had been flash fried by the last storm and their remains picked over by the local wildlife. It made sense. Kind of. But Tangerine was soon distracted by the seemingly endless stacks of crates that filled the room. They were made out of metal, but they were still crates, and they had the human word for food stamped all over them.

IMPERISHABLE

She grabbed the closest one and went to work trying to pry the lid off. She couldn't. It wasn't nailed on, it wasn't even nailed together, and she was only vaguely aware of which end went 'up' and which end 'down.' This awareness was aided by the large arrow emblazoned on the side. Obviously this arrow was meant to point towards the ground, and so that was how she put it down. She couldn't even find the gap between the lid and the rest of the box.

There was food, right in front of her, and she couldn't have it. Her eyes started to well up with tears and she sniffed and rubbed at them and redoubled her efforts. "Open open open open," she chanted as her face grew red with exertion.

It didn't budge.

Finally she gave up and collapsed on the floor next to it. Her belly rumbled ominously at her, clearly making its opinion known, and she narrowed her eyes down at it and scowled.

"Well I'm trying aren't I," she demanded.

To which it replied with another sullen grumble.

"Eeeeeehm," she whined, and flopped onto her back. High above her there was nothing but towering darkness. No stars, no moon, no nothing. Just dark. She kicked out at the box, then jerked upright to stare at it as the thing popped open... and a bunch of silvery bag things poured out of it.

"Funny looking food." She poked one with her toe and, when it didn't move to attack, prodded it more vigorously. Once she was quite certain that the food wouldn't be trying to eat her she moved closer and picked one up by the corners.

There was something inside it, roughly the size of her fist and slightly squishy, but the shiny outside was cool and kind of flimsy against her finger. She bit it, made a face, and spat it back out. Her teeth felt funny, all on edge like when she accidentally bit down on a fork. She picked it up again and shook it.

Academically Tangerine was aware of things like wrappers and packaging but she was aware of those things in the same way that she was aware of most of the things confined to Mdango, which meant that she wasn't consciously aware of them. Besides, she had a much better analogy already ready in the front of her mind.

"How do I peel you?" She held the package up by one corner and squinted one eye at it, the tip of her tongue pressed between her lips.

The only thing to do, she eventually decided, was to try and cut the peel off. She drew her knife out of her boot and went about her business. After much trial and error she had a shredded bit of silver wrapper and a pile of crumbs. She sniffed them, then shrugged and scooped a handful into her mouth.

They did not taste very good, but she was way too hungry to care. Besides, she had to hurry up and eat and bring the Alfalfa lady some. It was a universal truth that food improves anyone's mood, especially when they're already hungry. But, first, she had her own tummy to worry about.

She picked the knife back up and eyed the pile speculatively.