“Don’t bring up the cat magazines, Sherlock. It’ll save you from some embarrassment.” She smiled as she strolled past him to the fridge and opened it.
“Are those the cute and cuddly animals all over those paper books you have hidden under your dog crate’s mattress, Sherlock?” Gelbus asked.
Maria turned to look at the Bloodhound. His eyes were darting back and forth like summer flies around a picnic.
“Busted,” she whispered.
I—uh, no, he’s just joking, Sherlock stammered. Crap, I gotta go check on something…
Sherlock took off out of the kitchen, his claws scrabbling on the tile as he tried to get some traction. He almost fell on his face on more than one occasion.
“That Sherlock is something else,” Gelbus said.
“Yeah, yeah, he is. Life was a lot less…weird when I couldn’t talk to him.”
“That must be pretty nice, talking to one’s pet,” Gelbus mused.
“Eh, maybe if one’s pet is normal. Sherlock is anything but,” Maria replied. She looked back into the fridge and the freezer. “What would you like to eat for breakfast? Eggs and bacon? Maybe some frozen waffles? We’ve got Eggos. Chocolate chip and regular.”
Gelbus’s eyes grew big. “Eggos? What are those? And Waffles?”
“Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting the whole other worlds barrier between us…somehow.”
She took the box of Eggos out of the freezer and set it down in front of Gelbus. Hesitantly, he opened it and took one of the plastic sleeves out.
“Yeah, it’s like a pancake. Do you know what a pancake is? Probably not.” She turned to the cupboard and rooted through the boxes of oatmeal, bags of chips, and cans of soup, looking for the syrup. “You put syrup on it, which is a sweet, sticky sauce. It pretty much makes the entire meal. Syrup to waffles is like Sherlock to garbage and dead squirrels.”
“OW!” Gelbus yelped as something clattered to the table and fell down to the floor. It sounded like a small piece of concrete.
Maria whirled around and saw the Gnome rubbing his mouth. Her eyes traveled to the floor, where a frozen Eggo had slid into a corner of the kitchen.
“Oh man, I should’ve told you that you have to toast these before you eat them,” she said. “Are you bleeding?” She squatted down to look closer at Gelbus’s mouth. He wasn’t bleeding as far as she could see. “Here, move your hand.” He did. Maria cocked her head to get a better look. His teeth were already jagged and misshapen, but as far as she could tell, they were all right. “Seriously, sorry about that.”
The Gnome shook his head. “No, no, it was my fault. Rule number one when it comes to traveling to strange worlds: don’t put anything in your mouth that you’re not completely sure of.”
Maria nodded. “You should share that rule with Sherlock. The first time we went to Oriceran, he put literally everything in his mouth. And in Dominion—well, the ruins of Dominion—”
“Poor Dominion.”
“Well, Sherlock tried eating a Raffin there,” Maria finished.
“A Raffin!” Gelbus said, then winced in pain.
“Yeah, and I came face-to-face with one of those little bastards in your old place of employment. I was about a thousand feet up in the stacks when it attacked me.”
“Those things are such a nuisance, don’t I know it!”
“Well, I did try to feed it,” she admitted, avoiding Gelbus’s eyes.
“Ah, a mistake to be sure,” he said. “Rule number two of traveling to strange worlds: do not feed anything whose species you can’t name.”
“A fine rule. You should write a book.”
Gelbus stroked the little scraggly hairs on the end of his chin. “You may be onto something, Maria Apple.”
“I’m smarter than I look,” she said with a wink. “Now, what’ll it be for breakfast? I take it you probably don’t want the waffles, do you?”
He looked to the frozen waffle in the corner of the kitchen, which was covered in hair and dirt. Maria followed his gaze and jumped when she saw Sherlock was there, sniffing and licking it.
“Sherlock…? How the hell—”
I’m a ninja when it comes to food. You know that, he answered between licks. He picked it up in his mouth and mumbled, I’ll just take this off your hands, if you don’t mind. Then he waddled out of the kitchen. Maria watched him go, a grin on her face as she shook her head.
“I hope his teeth are stronger than mine,” Gelbus said. “But I do think I’ll try the waffles.”
He pronounced them Wolf-alls. Maria thought of correcting him, then decided not to. ‘Wolf-alls’ sounded cooler anyway.
“How many?”
“Well, they’re quite small. I was thinking perhaps…eight?”
Her eyes widened. “Eight? Geez, I think you’ve been hanging out with Sherlock too much.”
“It may not look it, but Gnomes are hearty eaters.”
“I think if you had eight waffles, you’d turn into one,” she said. “Besides, there are only six left in the boxes.”
“Six’ll do.”
Maria toasted the waffles, first four, and then the remaining two. She wasn’t the world’s greatest chef, but when it came to waffles, she liked to think she made a mean batch. She buttered each one. They were warm enough for the butter to melt until a golden sheen covered the toasted surfaces of the waffles. The smell filled the kitchen, and Maria was surprised Sherlock wasn’t crashing the party to beg. He must’ve been pretty busy trying to chew through the frozen one.
After all the waffles were toasted and buttered, she drowned them in syrup. Gelbus ate them greedily, telling Maria she actually was the world’s greatest cook. She blushed.
They sat at the table together, sharing bits of information between Gelbus’s noisy chewing. Maria found she liked Gelbus a good deal more than she had liked the other Gnomes in the Light Elves’s library.
Not long after Gelbus finished eating, Gramps and Frieda came into the kitchen. They both looked well rested; Frieda practically glowed. Gramps had his arm around her waist and was talking about making his world famous eggs for her.
“Nice of
