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I finally managed to write the scene about not having a coffee maker, Shara’s first morning at the Dameron family compound.
I may or may not use this entire section, because I also wrote a scene where Kes tells Rey about this scene in flashback, and Poe is floored because he never thought about where his mom came from.
Sento shuffled into the room, looking old and tired and exhausted, and Shara regarded him in some alarm. “Papa,” she said.
He squinted at her, then came over and dropped into the seat next to hers, and stole her mug. “No talky,” he said, “only caf,” and took a swig from the mug before she could say anything.
Everyone paused, and he went still, then slowly brought the mug back down. “That is not caf,” he said. “What— the hell is that?”
No one else answered, and Shara admitted, “I don’t actually know, I was too shy to ask.”
Everyone laughed. “It’s atole,” Norasol said, “we drink that instead here.”
The door opened and the teenaged boy from last night came stumbling in, shedding his boots clumsily. “Mari,” he said, “did you do the cavras?” Tito, that was his name.
“I did,” Marita said.
The boy went back to the door, opened it, and hollered, “She already did ‘em!”
Someone answered back with an indistinct yell, and Tito let the door shut and came in, unfastening his coveralls and taking them off too. They were filthy, and he hung them on a peg next to the other outerwear in the entryway. Shara had noticed that everyone seemed to go shoeless indoors, which was novel for her. Not even slippers, but if there was no freezing-cold under-insulated decking to worry about, it made sense. And what with it being a place that had dirt. It was going to take getting used to.
She felt naked without shoes on. She was wearing socks. They were too thin and flimsy and one had a hole in the bottom.
“I might die if there’s no caf,” Sento said, and she realized he’d been sitting next to her staring in quiet horror into the mug.
In curiosity, she took a sip. The liquid was really thick, almost a gel, and it was rich and quite sweet, with a sweet-spiced bite. It was also really hot. “I wasn’t going to kick up a fuss,” Shara said, “but Papa, I thought you were cutting back on that stuff.”
“I have never cut back on that stuff a day in my life,” Sento said. “You must be thinking of your other Papa.”
“My spare Papa,” she said. “The one who is moderate about caf and never swears and is always nice to me.”
“Where are the eggs, Tito?” Lita asked calmly, and Tito stopped short in the doorway, looking chagrined.
“Oh,” he said. “Uhhh—“
The door opened. “You forgot the eggs, Tito,” Kes said, grinning, and he stepped through carrying a big wire basket in each hand.
Shara couldn’t help but stare. He was wearing grubby coveralls, too, sleeveless ones, and bulky boots, and he kind of looked like something out of a holonovela; unlike the boy, the coveralls set off how wide his shoulders were, and the boots how long his legs were, and the baskets were heavy enough that his arm muscles were all tensed to lift them. He looked good enough to eat, and she forgot what she’d been going to say.
The boy broke the spell by nearly tripping over himself to take the baskets, and Kes pulled them backward. “Hey,” he said. “I didn’t carry these this far for you to break them. I’ll get them, go on.” He set the baskets down and started working his foot out of his boot.
Tito went toward the table, and Marita and Lita made identical noises of disapproval, and said “wash your hands!” nearly in unison. Kes was laughing at the boy.
“You’ll need your spare Papa,” Sento said mournfully, picking up the conversation again like nothing had happened. “I hope you enjoy him.”
“We’ll get you through this hardship somehow,” Shara said.
Lita had moved from the stove and was looking through cupboards. “With all the people who come through here, you’d think I’d have such a thing,” she said, “but I don’t think we have any in the house. I didn’t think of it!”
“I’ll try to die quietly,” Sento said.
“Don’t be an ass, Papa,” Shara said. It was rude to insist, but. She did understand his pain. She’d probably get a headache later if she didn’t have any. He certainly would. Her whole life he’d never gone a day without a cup of caf.
Kes stopped where he was. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Oh,” Lita said, “I don’t have any caf.”
“Shit,” Kes said, and jammed his foot back into his boot. “I thought of that, I did. Hang on.” And he went back out the door.
Marita stood up and went over to retrieve the baskets, and carried them over into the next room. “How many do you want for this morning, Lita?” she asked.
Shara was preoccupied by Kes having left. “Where,” she said, and stood up. Heck with it, she was following him out. She went over and shoved her feet awkwardly into her shoes. She wasn’t used to putting them on and taking them off. Everyone here had boots they could just step into and stomp to seat them, and she only had ones with laces or buckles or elaborate fasteners. She’d just never thought of it.
She got them on well enough, and went out the door. “Kes?”
“Down here,” he called, and she went down the steps and found him in the little docking bay thing, kind of a hollow under part of the house where the speeder was, and where their luggage containers had gotten stowed.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I bought caf,” Kes said, “to bring, because I knew you guys drink it and I knew there wouldn’t be any here.”
He had pried one of the containers open and was digging through it. The coveralls had no sleeves, just shoulder straps, so they showed off a lot of the muscles of his back through the thin shirt he had on underneath, and she had to come up behind him and put her arms around him.
“Hi,” he said, turning in her grip, and he was clutching a box in one hand, and smiling at her.
She pulled him down by the back of his neck, and kissed him sweetly. “Hi,” she said. “You look like the farmer in a porno I saw once.”
“You saw a porno about farmers?” Kes looked interested. “I never saw something like that.”
“It was super hot,” she said. “You’re super hot, you know.”
He laughed, and she kissed him because he was so pretty like that. He returned the kiss, and his free hand at the small of her back felt good. “I want to stay out here and make out with you,” he said, “but I think I’d better go and make your father some caf so he doesn’t die.”
She kissed him once more, then let go, and went back up the stairs with him behind her.
“Did you think Kes would need help unloading a heavy box?” Marita asked as they came back in. Oh, she definitely knew what was up, she was eyeing them with an unsubtle air of speculation.
“I’m just concerned for my honored father,” Shara said. “Who in his feeble age is confronted with such a travail.” Sento rolled his eyes; the others didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
Kes freed himself from his boots and stepped in past her with the box, setting it down on the counter. She managed to struggle free of her shoes.
Kes was washing his hands. “Take your dirty coveralls off,” Marita said.
Kes continued washing his hands, and said, over his shoulder, “I got dressed fast asleep this morning, I don’t think you want to see me in what I’m wearing under these.”
“Are you for real?” Marita exclaimed, laughing. She had a really shrill laugh, and Shara quite liked it.
“Totally forgot to put pants on,” Kes said. “Realized it all the way up the hill. Not taking these off, sorry. They’re not that dirty.”
For some reason, Marita looked at Shara, and Shara had no idea what expression she was supposed to have, so she just looked blank and tried not to think about the fact that Kes had probably slept in his underwear and looked really cute like that.
Kes pried open the box and pulled out a little caf machine, the kind that you had to boil the water separately to use, and a bag of caf grounds. Shara peered over his shoulder, and the box was just stuffed full of more bags. “How much did you buy,” she asked, delighted. There was more coffee here than any human could drink in half a year.
“I have no idea how much is a normal amount,” he said, and pulled the carafe part out of the caf machine to wash it. “For all I know that’s a two-day supply.”
Sento appeared over Shara’s shoulder, and said, “Three days,” and everyone laughed.
Shara took over assembling the caf machine. Lita was cooking something. It took Shara a few moments of absent half-attention to notice that those things on the counter were— there were small oval things, palm-sized, creamy pale brown, and Shara had dismissed them as appliance parts or something, but then Lita picked them up and hit them on the edge of the bowl and broke them, one after another.
Shara stared for a moment at the empty— shell things, some sort of gel had come out of them, bright yellow in part and clear in others, kind of globby. Lita was whisking them around into a frothy yellow substance in the bowl.
“Something wrong, dear?” Lita said finally, and Shara realized she’d been staring.
“What is that?” she asked, and reached out in uneasy fascination to poke at one of the emptied shells. “What— are these?”
“Eggs,” Lita said, perfectly neutral.
Shara knew what eggs were, she’d had eggs before. They were a powder. She clearly was missing something. It was such odd packaging, to put them into a container you had to break to get them out. Unless the containers were reusable? She picked one up. It hadn’t fractured along any lines, and little fragments were clinging to an inner waterproof membrane of some kind.
She glanced over at Sento, who had torn himself away from his rapt contemplation of the caf machine to join her puzzled contemplation of the inexplicable packaging. Why would it come in gel format? The water would add a lot of extra weight that would make them expensive to transport.
“You weren’t kidding,” Marita said to Kes. “You guys have never seen eggs before?”
“We have eggs all the time,” Sento said. His expression shifted. “Are you telling me this is— well, fuck.”
“What,” Shara said, recognizing that expression. He got it, but she didn’t yet. She was still missing something. “What?”
“This is how they come out of the bird,” Lita said. “Marita, how would they ever have seen this before? Nobody’s exporting eggs in the shell. You know fine well we dehydrate them here before we ever sell them.”
“I guess I never thought of that,” Marita said.
“They come out of the,” Shara said, and stopped talking. She’d already said too much. All her life-long lessons about being vulnerable in new places, and she’d forgotten all about them because a boy was cute.
“That’s fucked-up,” Sento said. “I tell you what, that’s fucked-up. What’s the container made of? It’s like a bone or something! That is fucked-up.”
It defused the tension. Everyone laughed, and Marita said, “Tito, can you go tell Yaya and the kids it’s time to eat?”
I finally managed to write the scene about not having a coffee maker, Shara’s first morning at the Dameron family compound.
I may or may not use this entire section, because I also wrote a scene where Kes tells Rey about this scene in flashback, and Poe is floored because he never thought about where his mom came from.
Sento shuffled into the room, looking old and tired and exhausted, and Shara regarded him in some alarm. “Papa,” she said.
He squinted at her, then came over and dropped into the seat next to hers, and stole her mug. “No talky,” he said, “only caf,” and took a swig from the mug before she could say anything.
Everyone paused, and he went still, then slowly brought the mug back down. “That is not caf,” he said. “What— the hell is that?”
No one else answered, and Shara admitted, “I don’t actually know, I was too shy to ask.”
Everyone laughed. “It’s atole,” Norasol said, “we drink that instead here.”
The door opened and the teenaged boy from last night came stumbling in, shedding his boots clumsily. “Mari,” he said, “did you do the cavras?” Tito, that was his name.
“I did,” Marita said.
The boy went back to the door, opened it, and hollered, “She already did ‘em!”
Someone answered back with an indistinct yell, and Tito let the door shut and came in, unfastening his coveralls and taking them off too. They were filthy, and he hung them on a peg next to the other outerwear in the entryway. Shara had noticed that everyone seemed to go shoeless indoors, which was novel for her. Not even slippers, but if there was no freezing-cold under-insulated decking to worry about, it made sense. And what with it being a place that had dirt. It was going to take getting used to.
She felt naked without shoes on. She was wearing socks. They were too thin and flimsy and one had a hole in the bottom.
“I might die if there’s no caf,” Sento said, and she realized he’d been sitting next to her staring in quiet horror into the mug.
In curiosity, she took a sip. The liquid was really thick, almost a gel, and it was rich and quite sweet, with a sweet-spiced bite. It was also really hot. “I wasn’t going to kick up a fuss,” Shara said, “but Papa, I thought you were cutting back on that stuff.”
“I have never cut back on that stuff a day in my life,” Sento said. “You must be thinking of your other Papa.”
“My spare Papa,” she said. “The one who is moderate about caf and never swears and is always nice to me.”
“Where are the eggs, Tito?” Lita asked calmly, and Tito stopped short in the doorway, looking chagrined.
“Oh,” he said. “Uhhh—“
The door opened. “You forgot the eggs, Tito,” Kes said, grinning, and he stepped through carrying a big wire basket in each hand.
Shara couldn’t help but stare. He was wearing grubby coveralls, too, sleeveless ones, and bulky boots, and he kind of looked like something out of a holonovela; unlike the boy, the coveralls set off how wide his shoulders were, and the boots how long his legs were, and the baskets were heavy enough that his arm muscles were all tensed to lift them. He looked good enough to eat, and she forgot what she’d been going to say.
The boy broke the spell by nearly tripping over himself to take the baskets, and Kes pulled them backward. “Hey,” he said. “I didn’t carry these this far for you to break them. I’ll get them, go on.” He set the baskets down and started working his foot out of his boot.
Tito went toward the table, and Marita and Lita made identical noises of disapproval, and said “wash your hands!” nearly in unison. Kes was laughing at the boy.
“You’ll need your spare Papa,” Sento said mournfully, picking up the conversation again like nothing had happened. “I hope you enjoy him.”
“We’ll get you through this hardship somehow,” Shara said.
Lita had moved from the stove and was looking through cupboards. “With all the people who come through here, you’d think I’d have such a thing,” she said, “but I don’t think we have any in the house. I didn’t think of it!”
“I’ll try to die quietly,” Sento said.
“Don’t be an ass, Papa,” Shara said. It was rude to insist, but. She did understand his pain. She’d probably get a headache later if she didn’t have any. He certainly would. Her whole life he’d never gone a day without a cup of caf.
Kes stopped where he was. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Oh,” Lita said, “I don’t have any caf.”
“Shit,” Kes said, and jammed his foot back into his boot. “I thought of that, I did. Hang on.” And he went back out the door.
Marita stood up and went over to retrieve the baskets, and carried them over into the next room. “How many do you want for this morning, Lita?” she asked.
Shara was preoccupied by Kes having left. “Where,” she said, and stood up. Heck with it, she was following him out. She went over and shoved her feet awkwardly into her shoes. She wasn’t used to putting them on and taking them off. Everyone here had boots they could just step into and stomp to seat them, and she only had ones with laces or buckles or elaborate fasteners. She’d just never thought of it.
She got them on well enough, and went out the door. “Kes?”
“Down here,” he called, and she went down the steps and found him in the little docking bay thing, kind of a hollow under part of the house where the speeder was, and where their luggage containers had gotten stowed.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I bought caf,” Kes said, “to bring, because I knew you guys drink it and I knew there wouldn’t be any here.”
He had pried one of the containers open and was digging through it. The coveralls had no sleeves, just shoulder straps, so they showed off a lot of the muscles of his back through the thin shirt he had on underneath, and she had to come up behind him and put her arms around him.
“Hi,” he said, turning in her grip, and he was clutching a box in one hand, and smiling at her.
She pulled him down by the back of his neck, and kissed him sweetly. “Hi,” she said. “You look like the farmer in a porno I saw once.”
“You saw a porno about farmers?” Kes looked interested. “I never saw something like that.”
“It was super hot,” she said. “You’re super hot, you know.”
He laughed, and she kissed him because he was so pretty like that. He returned the kiss, and his free hand at the small of her back felt good. “I want to stay out here and make out with you,” he said, “but I think I’d better go and make your father some caf so he doesn’t die.”
She kissed him once more, then let go, and went back up the stairs with him behind her.
“Did you think Kes would need help unloading a heavy box?” Marita asked as they came back in. Oh, she definitely knew what was up, she was eyeing them with an unsubtle air of speculation.
“I’m just concerned for my honored father,” Shara said. “Who in his feeble age is confronted with such a travail.” Sento rolled his eyes; the others didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
Kes freed himself from his boots and stepped in past her with the box, setting it down on the counter. She managed to struggle free of her shoes.
Kes was washing his hands. “Take your dirty coveralls off,” Marita said.
Kes continued washing his hands, and said, over his shoulder, “I got dressed fast asleep this morning, I don’t think you want to see me in what I’m wearing under these.”
“Are you for real?” Marita exclaimed, laughing. She had a really shrill laugh, and Shara quite liked it.
“Totally forgot to put pants on,” Kes said. “Realized it all the way up the hill. Not taking these off, sorry. They’re not that dirty.”
For some reason, Marita looked at Shara, and Shara had no idea what expression she was supposed to have, so she just looked blank and tried not to think about the fact that Kes had probably slept in his underwear and looked really cute like that.
Kes pried open the box and pulled out a little caf machine, the kind that you had to boil the water separately to use, and a bag of caf grounds. Shara peered over his shoulder, and the box was just stuffed full of more bags. “How much did you buy,” she asked, delighted. There was more coffee here than any human could drink in half a year.
“I have no idea how much is a normal amount,” he said, and pulled the carafe part out of the caf machine to wash it. “For all I know that’s a two-day supply.”
Sento appeared over Shara’s shoulder, and said, “Three days,” and everyone laughed.
Shara took over assembling the caf machine. Lita was cooking something. It took Shara a few moments of absent half-attention to notice that those things on the counter were— there were small oval things, palm-sized, creamy pale brown, and Shara had dismissed them as appliance parts or something, but then Lita picked them up and hit them on the edge of the bowl and broke them, one after another.
Shara stared for a moment at the empty— shell things, some sort of gel had come out of them, bright yellow in part and clear in others, kind of globby. Lita was whisking them around into a frothy yellow substance in the bowl.
“Something wrong, dear?” Lita said finally, and Shara realized she’d been staring.
“What is that?” she asked, and reached out in uneasy fascination to poke at one of the emptied shells. “What— are these?”
“Eggs,” Lita said, perfectly neutral.
Shara knew what eggs were, she’d had eggs before. They were a powder. She clearly was missing something. It was such odd packaging, to put them into a container you had to break to get them out. Unless the containers were reusable? She picked one up. It hadn’t fractured along any lines, and little fragments were clinging to an inner waterproof membrane of some kind.
She glanced over at Sento, who had torn himself away from his rapt contemplation of the caf machine to join her puzzled contemplation of the inexplicable packaging. Why would it come in gel format? The water would add a lot of extra weight that would make them expensive to transport.
“You weren’t kidding,” Marita said to Kes. “You guys have never seen eggs before?”
“We have eggs all the time,” Sento said. His expression shifted. “Are you telling me this is— well, fuck.”
“What,” Shara said, recognizing that expression. He got it, but she didn’t yet. She was still missing something. “What?”
“This is how they come out of the bird,” Lita said. “Marita, how would they ever have seen this before? Nobody’s exporting eggs in the shell. You know fine well we dehydrate them here before we ever sell them.”
“I guess I never thought of that,” Marita said.
“They come out of the,” Shara said, and stopped talking. She’d already said too much. All her life-long lessons about being vulnerable in new places, and she’d forgotten all about them because a boy was cute.
“That’s fucked-up,” Sento said. “I tell you what, that’s fucked-up. What’s the container made of? It’s like a bone or something! That is fucked-up.”
It defused the tension. Everyone laughed, and Marita said, “Tito, can you go tell Yaya and the kids it’s time to eat?”
