“Professor Lornah always d-does the best lectures,” Lorn said, with apparent pride. “She gets asked to speak m-muh-more than any other professor here.”
“I can see why,” Vicky said, taking another bite of the cake. “Delicious.”
Beside her, Chain was enjoying his cake as well. In fact, he finished his off in two bites.
Vicky, on the other hand, wanted to savor hers. She took tiny nibbles but she had barely eaten half of the delicious little cake when Professor Lornah stated that she hoped they had all enjoyed the delicacy but now they had to move on.
As she began to speak about something that sounded like a cross between a jelly donut and a stuffed potato, the remains of the honey cake abruptly melted away from between Vicky’s fingers, making her sigh in disappointment.
“Oh, too bad! I didn’t know it was going to disappear,” she whispered.
“D-don’t w-worry,” Lorn told her. “Sh-she’s j-just getting started.”
And indeed she was. The next cake popped up on a gorgeously scrolled limestone platter and this time Vicky was determined to eat it all. She was really hungry and the honey cake had been barely more than an appetizer.
This cake, however, had a much stranger texture than the last. Vicky bit into it anyway to find that it was, indeed, very like a cross between a stuffed potato and a jelly donut, but the bright jelly inside it tasted strange in her mouth. It had a weird meaty flavor and it felt oozy and strange against her tongue.
She swallowed and decided to take a closer look before she bit down again. To her surprise and disgust, she saw that the filling inside the potato-donut-cake was moving. Suddenly Professor Lornah’s voice caught her attention.
“…filled with the immature larvae of the bleck tree-hopper of Nissa Prime,” she was saying, gesturing to the potato-donuts everyone seemed to be eating. “It’s a lovely dish and it seemed to jibe nicely with tonight’s theme and location, since we are lucky enough to be hosted by the University of Insects and Arachnids.”
Larvae? Those are larvae in there? Vicky looked with dismay at the squirming filling of her donut. But I ate that! I ate a bite and swallowed it!
No wonder it had tasted meaty.
Vicky’s stomach rolled and for a moment, she was sure she was going to be sick. But she couldn’t do that, she reminded herself. She was supposed to be making a good impression and puking up the bug stuffed pastry she’d just eaten wasn’t going to do that. In fact, it was likely to mortally offend their hostess.
Get a grip, she told herself sternly as she placed the bug-bun back on her plate and looked pointedly away from it. Just get a grip, Vicky. Hang in there—you can do this!
This mental pep talk helped a little and Vicky felt her stomach settled just the tiniest bit. But she was determined to be more careful with the next dish. Whatever it was, she was going to cut it open before she took a bite, that was for sure!
The next dish, however, wasn’t cuttable—not unless you were really fast with a knife, Vicky thought in dismay as she saw what fizzed into existence on the plate in front of her.
“This coin-sized cake is sweetened with the sap of the Xao tree and served using the long-legged tushings which live and hunt upon its bark,” Professor Lorhan said. “The tushings are trained to run right up one’s body and place the cake inside the eater’s mouth. Truly, it is a remarkable accomplishment on behalf of the cake-artisans.”
On Vicky’s plate, a huge hairy, purple and black spider with a leg-span that was bigger than the plate itself suddenly appeared and rushed towards her. On its hairy back was a small white cake but Vicky was not paying attention to the “prandial delights” Professor Lornah had spoken of earlier. She let out a terrified squeak and shoved her chair back from the table as fast as she could.
The enormous purple spider with the cake on its hairy back ran right up to the edge of the table. Then it lifted the cake and raised it with it’s two front legs— which ended in sharp-looking pincers—as though offering it to Vicky.
“It’s all r-right,” Lorn hissed beside her. “It j-just wants to run up and p-put the c-cake in your m-mouth. Just let it, Professor Victoria.”
“Let a giant spider jump on me and crawl all the way up to my face?” Vicky asked, her voice sounding tight in her own ears. “I don’t think so. No freaking thanks.”
Though she spoke to Professor Lornah’s student, her eyes remained glued to the spider. No way did she want that thing anywhere near her! But it didn’t look likely to give up on its quest to deliver its prandial package.
The black and purple spider was poised there on the edge of the table, holding up the cake in its front legs. It was bouncing slowly up and down, reminding her of a cat with a lashing tail getting ready to pounce. Apparently it was planning to jump into Vicky’s lap and run right up her body to shove the cake in her mouth with its hairy pinchers. And Vicky—who had once talked down a student with a gun and had been teaching surly teenagers for years—was frozen in fear.
If there was one thing she really didn’t like, it was bugs—especially spiders.
If it jumps on me, she thought, feeling like her blood had turned to ice in her veins. Oh my God, if that thing starts crawling on me and gets anywhere near my mouth—
Suddenly a
