After they settled in from that first trip Pylo arrived with cake. And Aleph and Omega experienced a rather terrible shock.

“What... did you do to it?”

“I am confounded by touches brushing over my curves and tickling and teasing my weft and wane. To what is done? It is cake! Delicious and delightful sweetness and delicate textures running over tooth and tongue like the decadent flesh of a lover embracing and grinding into my tongue. one singlet of many, each different and glorious”

Aleph scrunched up her nose a bit.

“It smells... like... I don’t even know... like... salt? I didn't even think salt had a smell before... and is it frozen? It feels cold from here... like ice cold! More then Ice Cold!”

Pylo frowned a bit and nudged the box closer to them with one of those whip like fingers/arms.

“She who sings and dances the weft of aether sultry and voluptuously took the gift of flesh feasts into herself to hold fast against weathered aging. Her humours soaked through to hold the nature preserved and perfect. Stilled to coolness and matter lattice in crystals to last through the journeys. Scum and rot halted for enjoyment over sweet forevers. For feasting it is! Fear not, I have stroked and tasted over the many dangers and diseases of the tooth-scum-creamy-discharge-people. It is without harm or pain for you”

Omega blinked, then looked at Aleph.

But it was Quarti who realized what was said and spoke up, laughing with a pained strain in her throat and when Aleph looked she saw tears in the prophet’s eyes swaying in blubbery clumps..

“She PICKLED the CAKE?! SHE PICKLED and FROZE ALL OF THE CAKES?!”

Aleph and Omega looked at the ‘thing’ which looked like a perfectly appetizing cake. It looked delicious and perfectly prepared. Holding her hand out to it she could feel the waves of cold and the faint hint of condensation and ‘steam’ billowing off.

Aleph had tried to poke the cake with a finger experimentally but it was like tapping ice and her finger was already stinging from a burning chill.

Quarti was, yelling or lamenting or singing something she could not follow at all at Pylo, but judging by the way that their host’s face was getting more and more pained in the curve of her lips and the way she was gnawing at the bottom one and all the curling up like that Aleph suspected it was something shocking and kind of mean.

“I apologize, I Apologize! I will try to fix the Cake so it is soft and pleasing and stripped of the lattice that holds it still and restrained... I... I am very sorry it was supposed to be delightful pleasures and joy! Sweet dances and delight! I wanted to... I will take this and rip it free of the terrible bondage and skewerings. It will be right...”

That was...

Well that was the last that Aleph actually saw Pylo for a long time, for a while they waited but she did not return.

Eventually they got back to moving things.

Work waited for no one after all.

It took a while.

It took a really long while, Aleph checked the watch once while they were done moving things. The one that could count a whole year.

They had started this clock it when they departed Terra.

It was almost halfway through now.

And she had checked it when they returned for the second load of 'furnishings' for their new 'quarters'.

Pylo was nowhere to be seen for shift after shift after shift.

Presumably their host was trying to restore pickled cake to something less horrifying.

Or moping or crying in a corner of the ship possibly. She had seemed really bothered by whatever Quarti said, but when confronted Quarti only huffed and said she deserved it for doing something so horrible to such 'precious cake'.

It had taken over a month to move everything.

And there had been no sign of Pylo that entire time.

They had to dismantle a lot of machines that were not really ‘meant’ to be taken apart. Dozens and dozens of trips back and forth from the berth and their new ‘room’.

But even with a wall scattered with farming stacks. Even with the meditation pods, the emergency air scrubbers, the extra oxygen tanks, spare suits, sleeping boxes and backup fans and oxygen candles.

Even with the plumbing for a shower.

But now they were done and it was amazing.

Even with so much of their lives unfolded in a mess of pipes and boxes; The space was still so open and inviting. Their little sprawling clump of machinery and furniture and farming racks more like a kind of tiny village or city in the sky with so much more open space available to be used around it.

And it was wonderful.

It made the routine of maintenance that much less stressful. The air felt cleaner, the smell was fresher and there was just less dust everywhere.

Even spills that would have required a panicked response were less disastrous. Fluids and flecks of mess would be pulled to the walls by subtle eddies and then into the mysterious white fluffy clouds. Afterwards no sign of the scraps could be determined.

Honestly the only thing that was still frustrating and disgusting was the toilet and associated filtering systems and ecology vats. But there really was no way around that one. And all three of them had agreed that even if Pylo had some kind of alien technological wizardry that COULD help with it no one was bothered by the complications of it enough that they wanted to find out WHAT their host would provide/suggest.

Everyone remembered the pickled Cake.

Quarti vehemently would not let anyone forget it.

And besides there are just some things one does not want to have to translate from sultry lewd speak.

But still it all settled into a kind of routine again. But a fresher aired and less cramped one.

They would work on maintaining the farm, preparing food, cleaning and repairs of the machines.

Quarti and Omega would check on the ‘health’ of the colonist souls stored in still crystals.

They would meet for meals.

Aleph kind of missed their host and her tours though.

Eventually she brought it up.

“Do you think we hurt her feelings?”

Omega slumped into herself a bit and shrugged.

“Probably? She really wanted to help... did you have to go off on her like that Quarti? It was just cake...”

“It was NOT just cake, Was abominable doom pickles! Ruination and horror and terror and lies! How could so sweet a pair of thighs enact such foulness upon us! Such terrible wroth of hate and fetid discord on the tongue. Frozen like the dead heart and soul-less husk that could possibly imagine-witch a monster such as pickled cake!”

Aleph huffed and tossed a torch crisped sprite cabbage at Quarti to bounce off her brow.

“I think you really need to let this go... She hasn't come to see us since you blew up at her about it. I think you really could have offended her. She’s never left us alone this long before. When she gets back you should apologize for... well whatever you said”

Quarti hunched around her bag of snacks and stuck out her tongue.

“Fume rovels fine-switch you cute-bitch-pup I’ll be apologize for a shouting like, but Pickled cake is horror-like never seen by aye. Will not forgive that not I”

Suddenly there was a smell in the air, it was rich, moist and sweet.

It smelled wondrous, it was...

Aleph whirled around, throwing herself into a spin that required omega to grab her by the shoulders to catch her momentum.

A little head shake to clear her vision confirmed it.

There was Pylo.

And she had nestled in the hoop of her serpentine arms a box that was smelling darkly divine.

Quarti had gentled shoved off to drift forward, nostrils flared and mouth gaping. Eyes going wet and wobbly with tears that pooled over her brow and the ridge of her nose.

“I’m sorry such so and high for me rudely oh beautiful, perfect hip-queen goddess o thighs! Is that true fresh and pure cake?!”

Pylo shook her head smirking so smugly Aleph felt mildly offended, but the smell from that box was too enticing.

Omega was simply floating with legs crossed munching on one of the sweet tubers from the latest farmstack harvest. Crunching obnoxiously loud really.

The box parted open and Aleph had to swallow hard to not choke on the flood of saliva leaping from her tongue.

It was chocolate, it was a cake, there were some kind of blue berries and little green leaf.

She had been living on sparse nutritional rations and what sweets they could grow in the farming stack.

And here was the veritable pinnacle of confectionery civilization before her.

It smelled perfect, she could see a slight smear of the chocolate on the lid of the box from where it had brushed.

She could feel it was not frozen solid.

Quarti’s slow drift slowly eclipsed the cake and Aleph only realized her mistake in pausing in awe like she had when the prophet drifted free and away revealing the box was left empty.

She screamed up in sudden fury realizing what had happened!

“QUARTI! DON’T YOU EAT ALL OF IT!”

But Quarti bellowed through half stuffed cheeks chocolate frosting spraying everywhere, not even bothering to turn from her treacherous feast.

“NAY YE WHELP I HAVE FORSAKEN MORTAL PLEASURES FOR A LIFE TIME AND FOUR ERAS! I WILL HAVE MY SUCCOR OR YE WILL KNOW THE WRATH OF THE MILLENNIA UNBORN HUNGER!”​

The moaning and groaning delight from Quarti that followed after that honestly was kind of obscene sounding. And then there was the sugary carnage of the poor chocolate cake. The act of gorging was disturbing in the violence that minute fragments of confectionery viscera sailed through the air from the feral beast that had become of Quarti.

However Aleph’s growing protests at this denial of what smelled to be a true treasure of the senses died away when Pylo produced another box from behind her back, lips parting in a wide grin.

The lid peeled open and with a slight jostle the delightful treat within was set sailing free towards Aleph's outstretched hands.

“So it seems this time it was a success, let it never be spoken again that I do not know how to delight, thrill and utterly satisfy the lusts of my wards”

Aleph flushed but nodded a bit and gently moved up to take the cake in her hands, then with a little giggle at the ‘transgression’ pressed off of the alien’s shoulder with a toe to sail back over to their dining nook.

Quarti’s ecstatic almost sobbing laughter garbled by a mouth full of cake and what was probably speech in tongues long dead.

Aleph decided to offer words of thanks a bit more coherent then their resident prophet.

“Thank you for the cake... Um we hope we did not offend earlier... you were gone for a long time... I was kind of worried we had”

Pylo tilted her head and the lips lowered in a thoughtful frown.

“Some offense cruel was said... But more It is not the work of a single moment’s passion and exertion to draw the preservative purity out of the moist flesh of decadence. Not without leaving many a blissfully delicious carcass torn asunder and broken in the throes of its extraction, plundering of the purifying taint was gentle and smooth and intimate... the sumptuous fruits of many plunging efforts again and again”

Aleph blinked a bit even as the sweet creamy wonder that was the frosting met her tongue. She had cakes and sweets as a child, but this was either by distance making the fondness stronger or perhaps the perfection of the confectionary gifted a visitor from beyond.

Did she want to think about what that sentence implied Pylo had DONE to the cakes to ‘unpickle’ them? She felt her throat and stomach try to churn but she smothered the thoughts with a big mouth full of sumptuous spongey delight and sweet almost sparkling frosting.

And for a time she just floated in a sky of pure white clouds and blue skies chewing.

Enjoying her cake.

She could almost agree that it deserved the sounds Quarti was making over there.

But she was going to keep the moan of delight to herself.

Omega was strangely quiet.