Page 77 of My Tiny Giant

“Slice a piece off,” Agan commented, cutting the mollusk into neat round slices. “Then dip it in the sauce and eat.” He dunked one slice into my sauce dish then placed it on my tray. “Try it. It tastes pretty good. Though, nothing can compare with the way it looks, of course.”

I hooked the piece on my utensil and took a bite. Its texture was tender and buttery, like a scallop. The taste, I assumed mostly came from the sauce, fragrant with a hint of spice.

“It’s very nice.” I gave him a nod of approval.

Only then did Agan start eating.

“It took you a while to find it on Neron?” I admired the ever-changing colors of the shell. “They aren’t popular here?”

“Not widely. The cooking process of ozeah shells is tricky. If not done right, the shell just turns dark, and it’s the color show that really makes the dish—that and the sauce. The actual taste of the mollusk is very mild by itself.”

“How did you get the cooking process right? Did you have some practice, back on Tragul?”

“My family comes from a small village on the ocean shore. When I was little, ozeahs were almost the only thing we ate.”

He’d hardly ever spoken of his childhood or his family before.

“Would you tell me more about the life in your village, please?”

He glanced up at me then lowered his eyes, his ridiculously long eyelashes cast shadows on the velvety fur of his cheeks.

“I don’t remember much,” he admitted. “I remember going fishing with my dad. We dove for the ozeah shells. They aren’t easy to spot in the orange water of the ocean.”

“But the ocean is green on Tragul.”

“On the surface it is because of the microscopic plant life and the way the sunlight reflects off it. But the actual water is orange, just like in the rivers. The yellow of the ozeah shells blends with it. But the deeper you dive, the darker it gets—the pale shells start to stand out against the dark water. That’s how my father would get them, by diving as deep as he could. I was too young to dive that deep, so I stayed close to the surface, chasing the schools of water flies while waiting for Father to come back up. Mother cooked the ozeahs in a huge rock oven in front of our house. No matter how many times I saw her taking the lid of the dish off, it always took my breath away to see the colors move and change.”

The color show was mesmerizing, almost magical, I had to agree.

He put another piece of ozeah in his mouth.

“The taste is never quite the same as when Mother used to make it, no matter how hard I try to recreate it.” He heaved a sigh. “Maybe because I need to be five years old again for it to taste exactly the way it did back then.”

Memories remained anchored in the time when they had first happened, I believed. It was never possible to recreate them completely.

“You miss your family.” It wasn’t a question, I knew he did, but I wanted him to keep talking. He’d once said that I understood him, I hoped he knew he could trust me with his most treasured memories, too.

“I do. It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to anymore, but I still miss them. Every day.” He glanced up at me. Light broke through the dark shadows in his gaze. “Mother would’ve loved you. I think you would’ve liked her, too. She was a great seamstress. She did a lot of things amazingly well—knitting, beading, felting, embroidery, you name it. Father would’ve been very confused by you, though,” he chuckled. “Kind of like I was—still am, to be honest.”

“Do I confuse you, Agan?” I smiled.

“I don’t think you’ll ever stop surprising me, Eleven. I just feel better prepared to handle all the new discoveries about you, now.”

“There is not that much to me. Really.” I laughed, shaking my head.

“There is a lot to you, Emma. So much, I’m not sure a lifetime would be enough for me to learn everything about you.”

I watched the tendrils of color curl and tangle on the surface of the alien shell. A lifetime spent with Agan, getting to know each other, felt like a distant dream—the one I didn’t even know I had, but now didn’t want to give up. My heart squeezed with longing.

“Tell me about your family, Emma,” he asked. “Do you have siblings?”

I blinked, yanked from the dream by his question.

“No. No siblings,” I muttered. “I’m the only child.”

“Like me, then.” He nodded. “How about your parents? Are they alive and well?”

“Yes. They’re both back on Earth. They’ve been amazingly supportive of my career, but I know they’d prefer me being closer to home.”