Her sense of wonder wasn't shared by some of her crewmates. “Literally cooking meat over a fire,” Barix said with a curl of his lip. “We might as well be wearing skins and living in caves.” He'd returned from wherever he'd disappeared to earlier, so apparently, in spite of his contempt for the colonists' cooking methods, he was drawn by the meal.
His sister poked him between the shoulder blades. “Oh come off it. Even you can't complain about that smell.”
“I can complain about getting lungfuls of carcinogenic smoke blown into my face every time the wind shifts,” the slight man muttered. “We can't all find it as delightful as Lana.”
“Too bad for you,” Lana replied, leaning closer to the grill to deeply inhale the glorious smell.
“Curmudgeon,” Jorroc suddenly said, snapping his fingers.
They all turned to look at him. “Dementia finally setting in, old man?” Barix asked with a sneer.
The colony's governor grinned back, not seeming offended in the slightest. “Ever since meeting you, I've been trying to think of the perfect word to describe you. That's it.”
Far from being insulted, the Ishivi snorted in amusement. “Except in my case it would be purebredmudgeon,” he quipped. “Not so perfect after all.”
“I'm fine calling him purebredmudgeon,” Farron called from where he was working at a different grill, giving Lana a broad grin. She smiled back hesitantly, wondering why he was paying so much attention to her. Was it because he liked her?
The food finally finished cooking, and the crew was given places of honor at the tables and served first. And if Lana had thought the steaks smelled good on the grill, with the first eager bite she discovered they tasted even better. Compared to them, the delicious food Dax had selected for her on the ship tasted more like his processed meat.
She hadn't known food could be this good; she sank down in her seat as she chewed, a moan of pure bliss escaping her parted lips as the flavors saturated her mouth.
“I think Lana just had a foodgasm,” Belix said with a snicker.
She felt herself blush as amused faces turned her way. “It wouldn't be the first time that happened at one of Jorroc's cookouts,” Aiden said, grinning at Lana as a few other people along the table chuckled. Apparently, the food was good enough to make even the captain and elfin woman stop avoiding each other like the plague.
The old man joined in good-naturedly. “High praise. Of course, I take it as an equal compliment that even the gunner is wolfing his down.”
Sure enough, Dax was enthusiastically tearing into his steak and potatoes, without the usual mechanical disinterest he showed with his processed meat. He showed no reaction to being talked about, even when people turned to look his way. Although when Lana grinned at him through her mouthful of steak, he saluted her with his fork.
After dinner, Jorroc invited the crew to stay with his family, which Ali explained he always did. They trooped out of the green accompanied by the old man's children, grandchildren and even some great-grandchildren, as well as various nieces, nephews, and cousins. It was a lively group that made their way down one of the larger streets towards a good-sized house.
One of the colony governor's grandchildren, a girl of about sixteen named Velsie, had been one of the girls who'd taken Lana under her wing before dinner. She didn't seem to have changed her mind on that regard, and stayed protectively close during the entire walk, chattering amiably.
Lana learned a few important things on the walk: one, apparently the makeover was still on, and as soon as they got to the house Velsie was planning to weigh her down with every single scented soap and beauty product she had so Lana could properly wash up and, apparently, get the gunk out of her pores. Then the girl wanted to tackle her reddish-blond hair and brush it at least a few hundred times, before putting it in some sort of braid or other pretty but serviceable hairstyle. She wasn't quite sure which one yet.
The second thing Lana learned was that Jorroc's granddaughter had a very romantic view of what life on the Last Stand was like. It apparently involved swashbuckling boarding parties to enemy vessels, raucous visits to dangerous spaceports that as often as not ended with desperate fights to get back to their ship, and sightseeing visits to exotic cosmic phenomena and luxurious vacation planets.
As far as Lana knew only one of those things was fairly accurate, and she wasn't sure Velsie would be quite as entranced by a description of her visit to Midpoint Station and the danger she'd encountered there.
Last of all, she learned that the teenager either had a major crush on Aiden and was jealous, thought Lana would be perfect for the captain and wanted to set them up, or all of the above. The discussion was incredibly embarrassing, but with the girl wheedling for juicy tidbits she couldn't help but join in the gossip, lowering their voices to whispers and muffled giggles so none of the other crew could hear.
True to her word, Velsie spent the next few hours working her magic. Lana found the entire process very relaxing and enjoyable, although she was so exhausted after staying up through the night until late morning going by ship's time that it was hard to truly appreciate it.
Even seeing a moisturized, exfoliated, brushed, and scrubbed version of herself in the mirror, hair in a perfect braid and dressed in a nightgown of the softest cloth she'd ever felt, was only amazing rather than incredible.
Her new best friend gushed over how gorgeous she looked, and would've stayed up all night gossiping about the other crew aboard the Last Stand, and boys, and what it was like to be a Blank Slate, and what it was like living on a low tech colony
