It’s Friday, so here’s a longer segment. I always seem to have people talking during a meal; quirk of mine, I suppose. As you’ll see on Monday, from the last paragraph here I have her jump to the conclusion, with “so that’s what happened.” Otherwise, I’m retelling swaths from Ice Inundation Intelligence, which all of you have already read.

Since I asked myself about vitamin D deficiency, I had to do some research. Guess what’s on the menu next week?

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

“So…so we get out of here?  And, didn’t you imply we’re on Mars?” He shook his head.  “That can’t be.  It’s a dead planet.  No air or water.”

At that, she stood, indicating him to follow.  Outside, she took a deep breath and pushed her face into the torrent from the stone pipe, drinking.  Alicia turned about, water streaming down her skinsuit.

“I am breathing.  I just drank.  Mom and Dad have lived here most of their lives.  I am a born native.  You, human, do not know what you do not know.”

“Human?” He took one step back.  “Shit.  Are you one of those, like Faustina?”

“Do you mean,” she asked, walking into his space and looking up into his blue eyes, “demi-human or Catholic?  Because I’m both.”

Very confused over the last few minutes, she was still a pretty girl, soaking wet, and entirely too close for a man alone for three years.  Another two steps back.

“And we’re family, too, Allen!” she smiled, reading him.  “But, since I’m at your home, I think I’ll get this suit off me.”

“I…” he began, “I saw the image on the front.  That’s the Lady of Guadalupe, right?  And, what is that you’re wearing?”

“It’s called a skinsuit.  You would call it a very thin, advanced spacesuit, used for missions in non-hostile environments.” She paused with the zippers and links to look around the dark.  “Joke’s on me, huh?  It can be fitted with a helmet, but I was using my nosetube, here, when I fell down the rabbit hole into your wonderland.  There!”

Now as naked as her host, she folded her suit before pulling her boots back on, not trusting the ground.  Allen’s feet must be calloused beyond imagining.  In complete contrast to his marble skin.  How is he not dead from vitamin D deficiency?

“If this is too prurient, I can turn around or move out of the light, Uncle.”

“It, it’s fine, Alicia.  But, as you keep mentioning family, do you have anything like a phone or tablet with images of my wife and daughter?” he asked, going back to his hut and shaking the wadded balls into more light.  That done, he knelt next to a large, flat stone and began setting out more lichen and shoots.

“Sorry, Allen.  I’d unhooked my tablet from my belt just before stepping in the wrong place, in a cave kilometers above us.  That, in fact, is one of the reasons you lived:  this deep, especially after we began our terraforming project, there’s just barely enough oxygen for you.  As for water, we knew for years there are trillions of liters of it underground, most frozen but not all.” She looked at the hut’s entrance.  “I still want to know if the Crabbies were surface dwellers or from down here, originally.  What’s funny?”

“’Crabbies’,” Allen said with a smile, using a stone knife to cut up the – their – food.  “It makes them seem less threatening.  The first time I saw those mosaics, I didn’t sleep for a week, scared to death.”

“Threatening?” she asked, puzzled.  “Oh, I can see that.  I just thought it interesting that one, we now know there’s other life out here, and two, they seem intelligent.”

“Being lost in dark cavern gave me a little different perspective, Alicia,” he said, putting some of the vegetable into a stone bowl and handing it over.  In doing so, she was able to see the scar on the right side of his cheek, at least the part above his beard.  She appreciated the confirmation of who he was.

“I’m guessing you’ve had this before,” she raised the bowl a little, “and that it’s not poisonous?”

“I’ve tried a little of everything I’ve found down here, and, yes, there are some which had me on the ground in pain for a day,” Allen admitted.  “So, don’t just go around randomly picking and eating things until you ask me, first.”

“Okay!” She sat the bowl down and clapped her palms together.  “Itadakimasu!”

Another laugh from Allen.  “So, the family is still doing that?  Ry, that is, Ryland, taught me.  So, itadakimasu, too.”

While she had thousands of questions, she could see he was starting to get emotionally uptight as they ate.  Probably from not seeing anyone for three years and then it turns out to be family.  But we do have to talk about one thing when we’re finished.

Done, she stood and took his bowl outside to rinse them both out before refilling them with water.  She went back inside and sat, sipping from hers.

“I see you’re a little stressed, Uncle, but I think all will be fine,” Alicia began.  “Kira is no doubt putting together some sort of rescue effort – how I’ll get up that tunnel is a mystery to me – but now, here’s you.  I’ll have to let the team know we’re both down here, so you will come up with me.”

“Rescue…?” was all could manage.

“In fact, we’ll have to have a suit with oh-two sent down first, as you’d be hypoxic by the time we’re back on the surface.” She finished her water and set the bowl aside.  “None of this will happen in days; ‘prolly more like weeks.  So, I’ll be in your care until then, okay?”

“Thank…that’s fine, Alicia.  Oh!” He wiped at his eyes.  “Look at me, acting emotional when I’m supposed to protect you.  Some great uncle, I am.”

“There is,” he got himself under control, “another part of your story I do not understand.  You said my disappearance was fifty years ago to you?  But it seems I’ve only been here for about three.  That’s nearly an unaccounted half-century.”

I could hedge the truth or just right-out lie to him, she thought, considering the story of the Empress and her grandfather.  No.  The truth.

“Let me tell you a story,” she began, shifting to make herself a bit less uncomfortable, “about Empress Faustina, her son – now your son-in-law – Edward, and their little adventure, here on Mars.  And in its future…”