Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

“Well it’s a biscuit for feck’s sake, or a ‘cracker’ as you benighted language-fossilized creatures keep calling it—” Kit hid his eyes briefly at the mention of the word “cracker”: the last thirty-odd hours had left him with a new set of referents for it that he would probably never forget. “—and with a biscuit the odds are better than ninety percent that it’s got wheat in it…”

“No, whole wheat.”

“Kind of malty tasting…”

“Like a digestive biscuit?”

“What’s a digestive biscuit?”

“It’s not like one of those. Flatter,” Nita remarked around the remnant of the ice cream sandwich she’d almost finished. “Also they put honey in them.”

Dairine stared at Nita in growing horror. “Wait. Wait. Who uses honey grahams for s’mores? Who uses them for anything?”

“I like them,” Nita said. “I eat them all the time. You haven’t noticed?”

“I never— I thought it was Dad—” Dairine’s mouth opened and closed as if in a fairly high-quality imitation of a fish. “You’ve been the one who keeps buying those? You actually like them? Oh God how are we even related?!” She looked around at the group and waved her hands in a gesture of generalized rejection. “Either I’m adopted or she is.”

“I not only have honey grahams,” Nita said, “but I have—” She looked faintly embarrassed. “Marshmallow fluff.”

Ronan looked mystified. “Powers preserve us, what’s that now? Something else I don’t need to know about.”

“No matter how you try, that will never be a s’more,” Dairine said, indignant. “Not on the best day it ever has!”

“We could give it a shot, though…” Nita said. “Wait five. I’ll be back.” She headed out toward the short-jump pad.

“Why are these so important?” Djam said. “Is the ritual something to do with the fire?”

“Well, not exactly—”

“It’s more of a tradition…”

Ronan sniffed. “Not everywhere, because I’ve never heard of it!”

“Some of our people, when they go camping,” Tom said, “make these as a sweet, a last-course snack. A sort of dessert.”

Some discussion of camping ensued, and the tradition of singing around campfires, and why there would be none of that tonight (“My voice is wrecked from shouting at my gates all day,” Ronan insisted, “so if you think I’m going to wreck it some more recreationally…!”). This was still in full flow when Nita reappeared with a box of honey grahams and a jar of marshmallow fluff.

“I can’t believe this,” Ronan said, taking the jar, opening it, and testing a fingerful of the contents. He made a very dubious face. “…And your people have this myth about ours having terrible teeth? How do any of you even have teeth when you eat shite like this? Honestly.”

“I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got,” Nita said. “Which—” She produced a long thick paper-wrapped bar from under her arm. “Is not too badly, under the circumstances.”

Djam’s nostrils flickered and his eyes went wide. “Wait. You have chocolate? How do you have chocolate?”

Kit looked over at Nita, and Nita looked at Ronan, and all three of them burst out laughing. “Oh no,” Djam said, fluffing up his fur in what Kit was coming to recognize as an ironic gesture, “I forgot, you’re from there! That planet!”

“Distant, Fabulous Dirt,” Cheleb said. “Fabled Home of Chocolate.” Hae gave Kit an amused look that suggested hae was quoting a commercial hae’d heard, probably at the Crossings.

“My sister,” Kit said, “is going into business with that one as an intergalactic cocoa dealer.” He jerked his chin at Ronan. “It’s going to be so interesting to watch…” Privately he hoped “dealer” was the right word, and not “smuggler.” But the boundaries were liable to blur sometimes in intergalactic usage, and doubly so where Carmela was involved.

“Sorry,” Cheleb said. “Amazed again. Can’t get over idea of people actually eating it instead of depositing in financial institution.”

“Okay,” Nita said, “fine, let’s stop discussing the investment value of the stuff for the time being! We can supply you guys if you need some. Meanwhile let’s get busy putting it in us instead of a bank.”

Graham crackers were broken out, and broken to size: chocolate was snapped into the proper-sized squares, Marshmallow fluff was applied to the crackers.

“And now what?” Ronan said, having watched this whole process skeptically.

“Well, we toast this somehow…” Nita looked frustrated.

“Here,” Kit said, and pointed at the fluffed graham cracker. “I was pretty good at this when I did it last…” The cracker obediently levitated out of Nita’s hands, soared out over the fire, and rotated so that it hung there fluff-side down.

The fluff fell off it and into the fire, where it instantly went up in a brief burst of flame, a scorched smell and a trail of black smoke.

Ronan burst out laughing. “Um,” Nita said. “Maybe the fluff needs to go onto the cracker a little harder.”

“Why do you even have that stuff?” Kit said to her under his breath as she started working on another cracker.

“I eat it on the graham crackers, okay?” Nita muttered. “And since some people put ketchup on their saltines, I wouldn’t make too big a deal about it if I were them.”

Kit grinned and said nothing further. Nita finished with that cracker and turned it over to Kit. “Here. Don’t wiggle it around so much this time.”

With great care Kit levitated this cracker too, soared it out over the fire, and only very gradually started to tilt the marshmallow-fluffed side toward the heat. The fluff started to run almost immediately, so that Kit had to keep tilting it back and forth. Finally it was threatening to melt off the cracker entirely, so Kit got it out of there and guided it over to Nita to have the chocolate applied and the second graham cracker squished down on top. Unfortunately, the fluff lost its heat almost immediately and the chocolate refused to melt.

Dairine snickered, triumphant. “That is the least effective s’more in the history of s’mores.”

“They’ve got a history?” Ronan said. “If this is anything to go by, I’d say it’s just about over.”

Nita threw Ronan a withering look and bit into the s’more. “It’s not that bad,” she said. But she was plainly making the best of a bad situation.

“All we need now is cocoa and scary stories,” Tom said, amused.

“If we’re having cocoa, I want some,” said a new voice, and Carl appeared out of the darkness beyond the stones in very similar hiking clothes to Tom’s. “Beats making my own.”

Over the various shouts of greeting, Tom gave Carl a wry look. “Don’t tell me you brought that with you?!”

“’Course I did,” Carl said, sitting down by Tom. “We’re a long way from home in a taxing situation. Am I not allowed to have comfort food? Think carefully before you answer, because I didn’t say a single word about your Triscuits.”

“You have cocoa? Have you got marshmallows?” came the immediate demand from several people sitting around the circle.

“Only the mini ones,” Carl said, looking regretfully at the campfire. “They’re no good for toasting.”

“No, not for toasting,” Nita said. “For s’mores. The marshmallow fluff doesn’t really cut it.”

“No, I see that.” Carl made a face. He stood up. “Well, it’s worth a try. Be right back.”

He got up and headed off for the short-transport pad, and quickly returned with half a bag of the tiny marshmallows. “This,” Dairine said, eyeing them, “is absolutely going to be one of those problems that only wizardry can solve…”