Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 40: The Animal in the Pen

"Isn’t that basically all of Harken?" Ezra said, his lips close enough to brush against her throat.

Neve’s pulse was still racing, but now she’d looked away again.

She shoved him off hard enough that he rolled sideways and caught a mouthful of sand for the second time today. Neve stood up and wiped the saliva from her jaw without so much as a second thought.

"Before she bites the beast-keeper," Neve said, already walking. "Let’s go, brute."

Ezra spit the sand out of his mouth and followed after her. "Y’know, now that you can walk on your own now, you’re back to being a pain in the ass."

Neve didn’t even turn around; she was already picking up pace and leaving Ezra further behind.

’This lady has issues.’

The girl was hanging off the stone fence with both arms hooked over the top, chin on the ledge, watching the fins circle the pen below. The old beast-keeper had planted himself between her and the feed bucket with one eye on her legs in case she fell over and another on her arms should she lunge for the feed.

Neve walked up and the beast-keeper’s spine found itself. "Emerald Avian." He put his frail fist to his tattered robe.

"She’s with me," Neve said. The beast-keeper stepped aside and the girl was over the fence before anyone could tell her it was okay.

The girl landed in the shallow sand pit up to her shins and the three kelphins went quiet.

The dorsal fins went still and the clicking cut to nothing. One of them surfaced after a moment, snout pushing through the sand first, then the broad flat head and the ceramic-grey plating catching morning light.

"It looks like a tiny leviathan," Ezra said out loud.

Neve gave him a look. "You realize the one we encountered at the Ossalaka bowl was a youngling, right?"

The leviathan that he helped pull the metal splinter from was easily over a hundred feet long. The thought of a fully grown Sandsea Leviathan made him queasy.

"Kinda wish you didn’t say that."

On the other hand, the kelphin was ten feet long easily, and the eye that found the girl was dark and round in a way that reminded Ezra of Betty, though Betty could’ve swallowed this thing whole and never even given a shit.

"Why don’t you appraise it?" Neve asked, hand on her hip.

Ezra’s knees nearly gave out at her words.

’I must be hearing things.’

"The same way you did with the beetle, appraise it," Neve continued. She switched hips and looked him up and down.

"Don’t know what you’re talking about."

"You think I’m stupid? Everyone knows what you are now. Frontier Chef. You can use Appraisal like any regular blacksmith."

’So you weren’t kidding when you said crafted weapons need a blacksmith-equivalent write-off, huh?’

[ No ]

Ezra pointed his finger at the fin in front of the girl bobbing up and down, and let the word slowly exit his lips.

"Appraisal."

[ Kelphin — ★★★ ]

> Profile: Domesticated sand-swimmer. Lean meat, high cartilage content. Edible but culturally taboo in settlements that raise them. Echolocation organs are a delicacy in core settlements. Best consumed smoked or slow-roasted over low flame.

> Threat: Fast in loose sand, sluggish on solid ground. Jaw strength sufficient to sever a human femur with minuscule force. Clicking pattern accelerates before a bite. Pack hunter in the wild, docile when pen-raised.

The girl was sucking in air through her teeth, a respectable attempt at mimicking the kelphins’ clicking. Her arms flailed away at the sand, oblivious to the two other eyes now tracking every movement.

’And this girl’s been trying to pet it for days.’

The closest kelphin slid toward her without breaking the surface, just a ripple and a fin, and stopped close enough to reach. Then it brought its fin up and threw sand all over the girl’s face and she stuck out her tongue, gagging and throwing sand back in the same beat.

"They’re gentle when they’re not hunting," Neve said from the fence, voice low enough that only Ezra could hear. "Your skill say the same thing?"

"Somewhat. How tough is a femur?"

"No tougher than a Red Terracotta branch."

’That shit didn’t help at all.’

The kelphin was braver this time, swimming close enough that its head was in reach.

The girl reached out and put her hand on its snout. It clicked once and leaned into her palm. Her mouth opened and her purple eyes went wet.

She stayed like that for a while, hand on the animal’s face while another one made its way to her other palm.

The third one stayed behind, snorting out sand and circling with no particular rhythm.

"Still think she reeks of death, bird girl?"

Neve was quiet.

The kelphins clicked in unison and the girl clicked back. It was a sharp little noise from the back of her throat, unlike anything she’d been trying a minute ago. The two kelphins tilted their heads like they’d heard something decipherable.

Click, click, click.

"My grandmother told me about these." Neve was looking at the girl when she said it. "She said there were riders who moved through the deep desert on creatures that swam under the sand. I thought she was full of it. Tales to help the young sleep."

Click, click.

"’My little Nevera is too small to know how big the world really is,’ she’d say to me." Neve’s fingers found the pendant. "But now I might actually get to ride one. Ezra?"

Neve brushed his shoulder. "Are you okay? You look like you shat yourself."

Ezra blinked and his mind was no longer at the summit. His mouth was dry, and it had nothing to do with the desert.

"Yeah, I’m good. What did you say?"

"Forget it."

"It’s not a fish," the girl called from the pen, correcting an argument that formed in her head.

The girl had both hands under the first one’s jaw now and was scratching beneath the plating, and the noise the thing made was almost like a cat’s purr.

"We’re riding these tomorrow," Neve said.

Ezra looked at the animal, which was currently melting under a twelve-year-old’s chin scratch. "These things?"

"Kelphins. Sandskimmers, depending on where you’re from. Harken breeds them for desert crossings. Faster than Dune Pacers, rougher ride."

"Can you ride one?"

"No, but I’m sure Theron can. You and I are going to learn tomorrow or drown under the sand."

’So that’s three things that want to kill me tomorrow. My fucking luck.’

"The clicking," Ezra said, because it had been sitting in his head since the Appraisal. "It speeds up before they bite, right?"

"They click to navigate," she nodded. "Echolocation. Sand doesn’t have eyes, y’know."

’Did she just say y’know?’

[ Bzzt ]

Ezra scratched his chin. "The girl clicked back at it. Can we communicate the way you do with the furballs?"

Neve watched the girl in the pen, who was cross-legged now with the first kelphin’s head in her lap and the second one nudging her elbow. She kept clicking more to herself than the kelphins now.

"We should go," Neve said. "You have a lot of cooking to do and not enough hours to do it."

"You’re coming back to the kitchen?"

She bit her lip and looked up at him, shielding her green eyes from the overhead sun.

"Where else would I go, brute?"