Chapter 9 - Nursing

he went to the garage, the hatch was open now and she was lying down on the border of the pool, she was trying to stand on her 4 remaining tentacles but she kept falling, her spear seemed to have fallen inside the garage, she was eyeing him cautiously when she saw him, but he pointed at the wall.

"Rose, show what I'm thinking on a screen on the wall" and a screen appeared, showing him helping her stand up and walk, then he slowly approached and did just that, opting not to go for a princess carry, she would be too close to his neck, and if she was heavy and he couldn't carry her it would be embarrassing, they arrived at the bathroom where he helped her into the bathtub while keeping her severed limbs and bandaged then with some intelligent bandages Rose had printed, they were thin biodegradable versions of his diving suit, the body would absorb them and use as a structure for cells to grow and regenerate, just the protein structure, and also covered in a bit of snail poison so she didn't feel the pain, she seemed better at that moment and was more relaxed in the hot water, she kept looking at him focusedly.

"Okay, I'm feeling awkward, I will give her time"

he gets out of the bathroom

"lock the bathroom door and tell me if she wants to get out okay?"

[okey, she seems to be relaxing and falling asleep]

"well, she won't drown in the bathtub so there's no risk for her, by the way, what prey did she get?"

[seems to be an armored fish, similar to a 'Dunkleosteus' in your memories, it's in the garage, it's heavy and leaving a blood trail, that's probably what attracted the crab]

( https://images.app.goo.gl/gz2S8kvSdqQedpq47 )

"couldn't she just leave it and run?"

[it took her a lot of time to hunt it, she was probably unwilling to give up]

"well, let's check it out, I should gut it and put it on the freezer"

at the bottom there it was, full of spear wounds and 4 meters long, he could barely move it.

"do you have a crane here?"

[yes] a crane came out of the ceiling and the cable descended into the water, tying up the fishtail and putting it on top of a bucket where he gutted the fish, he noticed some parasites on the guts.

"okay we are definitely not eating sashimi out of this" then he got an inspiration and poured the guts and parasites into a big bucket with ionized water without any minerals at all.

[are you trying to use osmosis to kill them?]

"yes"

[that won't work, it will just destroy their eggs, but the adult one will survive]

"Okay then I will cook these guts until they break down to slurry and use them as fertilizer at least, it would be good bait if I was fishing from the surface too"

[not like you could fish anything out of the water even if the fishing pole could hold it]

"true" he put the metallic bucket covered and left it there cooking at medium heat, boiling it for 8 hours or so would turn everything onto a paste that he would use as fertilizer mixed with the mud.

he went back to the garage and separated the armor plates from the fish head, and separated the meat from the spines, he would first freeze the meat and then maybe salt it like with salted Cod, he took the meat and put it inside the truck-sized freezer room, then he put some filtered seawater into a cooking pot at high heat to extract the salt, he kept adding more water until it was a white dense paste and waited for it to lose all its moisture, he took away half to be used for cooking and added a bit of clean fresh water to make a paste, and set the pot aside, he then cut some clean looking pieces of meat from the fish and added them to the salty paste, covering the meat completely, any parasites would die in those outrageous saline levels, he would let it dry in the su-...

"Rose, do you have a food dehydrator?"

[yes, there's one in the kitchen]

one wall on the far left opened.

[put the pot inside and it will extract all the moisture]

"convenient, I should have asked first..., I haven't done this before so I'm not sure of the steps, but it shouldn't be too hard, now for the second experiment I will need defrozen clean meat so I will do it tomorrow, first I will dry the meat a bit and then I will cover it in salt and see how that goes letting it dry, how's Inky doing?"

[she seems to be looking around the bathroom and is taking things out of her backpack like seashells and string, she seems to be making a necklace]

"might be a gift for me, anyways, she must be hungry so I should make her something, first I will cut some kelp algae into fine stripes and boil them, now on a pan we add some finely cut fish and crab slices and cook them both until they crumble and are a bit golden brown, then we add a bit of fish skin to a different pan so it releases the oils and we add the seaweed boiled stripes so they get a bit crispy, and a bit of crab sashimi by the side, wish I had rice or mayonnaise but this will do, sadly the skin is too tough to eat even after frying it, maybe if I boiled it first, well, I will also leave something ready for dinner"

he then puts some of the fishbones cut into pieces along with a big stripe of skin and left it boiling at low heat, then took 2 plates and 2 forks and went to the bathroom.

That being had helped her and this hot water felt really nice, also her wounds stopped hurting, she wanted to return the favor, so she decided to make him a necklace with some of the pretty shells she had picked yesterday, using a sharp piece of bone to make the holes in the shells.

She always liked making necklaces, they always came different so it was fun, she had made some other before, for her mother before she died, orphans weren't uncommon in her tribe, but the rest of the people gave her food once in a while and she hunted on her own when she was too hungry so she was fine being alone, this was the first time in a long time someone cared so much for her though, so she would make it extra cutter, she used a sea snail as the main piece and clams, abalone and smaller conchs to the sides, making her best one so far,

( https://images.app.goo.gl/51i55A3kAKFMfuWj9 )

she was happy so her fin ears couldn't stop flapping and her eyes narrowing a bit inspecting her master piece, then she heard a knock on the door and hid her necklace since it was a surprise, a couple of seconds later the creature came with 2 plates, she started flapping her ears again, the creature put the plates on a table and gave her one, putting that shiny thing for eating on her hand, then picked one himself and started eating, seeing him eat she ate too, they ate silently in the bathroom, she looked at him intently and tried imitating his posture and way of eating, the food was tasty, the green stripy things were crunchy, the mashed meat was easy to eat too, and the thin meat slices by the side were tasty too, when she finished, she licked the plate clean still hungry but satisfied, he then took her plate and put them on the table, she used that moment to take out her necklace, he would like it right?, she had put a lot of effort on making it!, he showed his teeth 😁 for some reason when she offered the necklace, but she didn't see any sudden movements so she relaxed, then he seemed to bow his head, 'does he want me to put the necklace on him?', she straightened a bit and put the necklace over his head, he seemed to like it as he was showing his teeth again while seeing the necklace, she flapped her ears seeing that, then he moved his ears with his hands, then pointed at her ears and then to his teeth... 'do his race show their teeth when they are happy?, that's weird, then what about this'.