Trader Xosta: Jellia: Greetings, cousine! I have come back! I am snipping your mother as well, but I have a gift for you. Not a gift in the normal sense, although I am sure you deserve it. But, having researched your culture here and yourself, I have brought back food. Different types of meat, in particular, for you to experiment with. Of course, it is my hope that you will find things that will sell here, and tell your Ska-dreka as well, but my main hope is that you and your kesh-mates will enjoy it.
“Oh, En-drek!” Jellia said, rolling over in bed. “My cousin, the one I told you about from that newer colony, has sent me a shipment of meat. To try!”
“You will have to invite your kesh-mates to a dinner,” he said.
“After I experiment and find the best ones.”
“Surely not. Invited them for the experiment itself. Then you will get multiple points of view as to the success… or failure… of a given recipe or taste.”
“Oh! That sounds fun!”
“In fact, I can pick the consignment up, if you wish. Would you like to invite your cousin to the tasting party?’
“Oh, I don’t know… he has some rules about who he can see and all.”
“Send me his snip address and I will arrange it. Now, we need to get you off to school…”
Jellia was in school, working on some very interesting soil results that seemed to be contradictory, when her wrist went off with a snip, from her en-drek.
En-drek: Jellia: “Tasting party arranged. For cultural reason will need to be at port, and everyone invited should have a ‘relationship’ with you. I have done a quick relationship match, and include the chart below. I believe that all of your friends qualify… as do I, your mother, etc. When issuing the invitation, please include the words, “As me… third cousin once removed via marriage… I am inviting you to a tasting party with my…”
Jellia stared. Stars and comets, how odd. Her friends would scream!
She went back to her work, her mind whirling…
Jellia: En-drek: How many can I invite?
En-drek: Jellia: I have a reserved a hall with cooking facilities that easily seats fifty, but as long as some people are wandering around or helping cooking etc we should be able to invite many more than that. He is bringing his en-drek-a and three kesh-u. I will be inviting two couples and their kesh-u from my workplace, so you can easily invite fifty including kesh-u
Fifty! Well, a lot of the Kesh-u-i would no doubt help her cook…
“Kesh-u-i, gather round!” Jellia yelled when she made it to lunch and had her tray. “Do I have an invite for you lot!”
She soon had a dozen kesh-u-i (and a couple of curious kesh-u, which would not have happened on Ephemera) sitting around her with their trays, or standing in a circle around her table. “So, quick summary, I want to invite a whole bunch of kesh-u to a tasting party… a cooking and tasting party… tonight at the port. So snip me if you want to come, and tell me how many you will be coming. I can handle at least fifty.
“But I really want to tell you the story of how this all came about! You see, unbeknownst to me, my ska-drek-a had some relatives that went to form a new colony…
Jellia hurried into the room, thanking the stars that her final period teacher, hearing the story, had let her off. It wasn’t like she was behind in class! “Hello, Dear,” her en-drek said, coming up and giving her and intimate kiss. He waved at the counters. “I have the samples, and was beginning to lay them out. They are, as you said, mostly meat, but there are a couple of root vegetables as well, which I have been researching…”
Jellia listened to him with one ear while she went over and started looking at things herself. Well, there was enough of this one meat to make a chili dish, which she wanted to get started early…
“Cousine,” she heard, a good hour later. She had several dishes cooking already, and was staring doubtfully at what looked to be a very tender… almost too tender… piece of meat. She would have to…
She turned and was suddenly being embraced in no particular mode by a young woman… well, not that young. Cousine?
Then she saw, over her shoulder, Trader Xosta talking to en-drek… “Oh, are you his en-drek-a?” she asked.
“Yes. Oh, we are so glad to meet you!”
Jellia suddenly realized that the ‘we’ meant her new cousine and the three kesh-u at her feet and the one on her back. So she quickly kissed them all, cousin to cousin. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to keep cooking,” she said, turning back to her counter. “What is this called?”
“That… oh! Oh… that is so expensive!”
“Is it? What is it?”
“Oh, we call it ‘Tender Back Steak’… we have this large, slow moving, herbivore that largely lives in the jungle. Don’t under cook it, but cook it gentle.”
“Perhaps in a sauce? Over boiled grain?”
“A sauce with plenty of dairy, if you have that here.”
“Oh, yes…”
Jellia collapsed into her chair. Her en-drek had taken over the ‘survey’ aspect of the tasting… which was good because she was exhausted. First figuring everything out, and the starting cooking, and then meeting her new cousine and her family, and then supervising the dozen kesh-u-i who wanted to help cooking. And now she finally got to sit and eat quietly and taste some of what they had cooked.
“Oh, I love this Tender Back!” she said, trying the cream sauce they had cooked it in. “Too much salt but otherwise…”
“What a day!” Jellia said to en-drek as the two lay in bed together. “You were so helpful! Mother… sorry, Ska-drek-a, is just excstatic. We’ve made a market for these good already. And all my kesh-mates were in heaven. And I think it went well for my new cousine as well… oh, it was so odd having to remember all of my relationships… which I never knew before.”
“I’m glad you found me useful,” he said, dryly. “I’m sure it was hard for you, contracting with me, since I am so old.”
“Oh, you’re not that old… and everyone was always telling me how I needed to contract with an older en-drek to get some seriousness in my life.”
He chuckled, “I will endeavour to be more serious…”
Contract Marriage
Contract marriage is an adult dystopia examining the issues of marriage. Like 1984 and Brave New World, Contract Marriage treats the relations between the sexes as a fundamental aspect of how a society is formed and, thus, how a society can go wrong.
Unlike those dystopias, Contract Marriage isn’t all horrible all of the time. The characters for the most part have a good time and get along in their society. But the issues of sexuality, of marriage or not, monogamy or not, faithfulness or not, and gender roles… keep coming up and causing tension and conflict and joy and pain.
My desire is that my readers would be thinking along with my characters about these issues and perhaps even arrive at the same place (minus the flying cars).
Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von