Omega never imagined she would ever be doing this.

To be fair she also did not think she wouldn't ever be doing this either. Just the bizarre absurdity of the whole enterprise was one she had never formed an anticipation of in the first place.

The spirit in the back of her mind pointed out that due to the nature of combinatorics, even most normal things one does are ones they have never thought they would, the number of possible task variants even only counting the very most unremarkable being far larger than the amount of anticipatory thoughts one could have in even a great number of lifetimes.

She blinked the errant noise from her skill shares.

What kind of person memorizes that kind of shower thought into their very soul? Apparently one that also memorizes the possibility for this whole meta-cognitive train of thought in the context of their soul being used as a skillshare because they have a lot of anticipatory thoughts.

Omega shook her head to get rid of... whatever that was.

The inexplicable absurdist task at hand was more important, never mind the philosophical musings of master chefs and pastry artists.

Cake is supposed to be sweet. From the profile Elsie provided no terran food stuffs would really taste like that for Pylo.

The concept was simply not the same for Sirens. At present she was hoping one of the ‘vitaloy’ safe to pass through the human digestive system would suffice to hint at the concept and shape the flavor and mouthfeel equivalents for a siren physiology but the challenge was definitely one that required the work of two experts, a chemist and a biologist.

But that brought up another problem for Omega. Most of the relevant vitalloy that she had been shown would pass through the digestive system like inert clay. But a few were dangerously toxic.

Meanwhile another part of her mind was working on the failure contingency, apparently something called ‘sandwich cake’... That was a broken association, from assumptions of Terras afterlife being available. An inversion on the concept?

It made the pastry artist incensed and delighted the chef’s background.

She let the two skills shares argue over that in their stilted half deaf way a while. It was tricky to ride skill shares when there was a conflicting opinion like that. But Omega was a master at shamanism. She let it bounce around, making associations, trying out different random coincidental thoughts.

Mild flushes of emotion and agitation as she let her own body live the abstracted knowledge of the souls that opposed one another and integrated the fragmentary knowledge within her own.

“Pylo, could you describe what you like about the cake again? What it tastes like? What stands out? Another way then before, a different style of translation?”

It was a surprisingly domestic conversation, Her, Omega playing chef consul to an alien lewd-beast with mind reading powers.

The fact her ‘client’ was also easily the size of a small room was almost inconsequential.

“The germ of the plants is so wonderfully brutalized, mashed and crushed and tormented until its broken and stolen succor is left adrift around it. Wound up with the teat gifts of mothers and the unborn half childs! Whipped and frothing dissolution yet promises of sweetest care. Lineages reaching back of culled and cultured lines. So many buds and spawn meshed together in corpses of winnowing”

That's definitely a point in favor of meringue being used. And fairly rough mixed grain rather than a smooth sponge cake. Omega wondered if there's a way to get quail eggs. Very few colonies went out with any living food animals and theirs was not one of them. It had been one of the pain points for their efforts to recreate favorite recipes so far. Managing the extra waste and inefficiencies of livestock had been beyond the safety margins and mass allotments set by the terran alliance for colonists unless they sacrificed something else for the sake of cultural heritage.

Their colony had not had the margins to afford it by her reckoning. Most of what HAD been managed for animal products was due to what Pylo had bought as a matter of routine, unrelated to their own contract. Maybe she had on a whim bought some eggs or milk? Maybe a living cow or goat?

Her sampling of Terran goods seemed completely random as far as Omega was concerned. Still it was obvious that she ‘liked’ having animal ‘products’ as much as plant in the mix.

One dark corner of Omega’s borrowed subconscious whispered lasciviously "-and knead the dough with your bare hands, withote washing beforehand. She will know. She will LIKE it."

It made her shudder a little bit in a few more ways than she wanted to admit to herself. No, she was not going to do that. Even for the sake of making peace with their host. Nevermind that Aleph and Quarti were going to be eating this cake too!

They were not going to have enough flour to make separate batches.

Oh, one of the experiments with the "vitaloys" the chef had insisted on was done. Omega pinged Elsie in the pidgin song that was needed for the non-humans to even understand her.

"Are you sure this is safe? It seems like a lot of kinda dangerous heavy metals go into those."

“Unless you are going to heat it up enough to melt lead all of those will stay properly contained and not de-nature into metabolically accessible forms. This vitalloy occurs in small amounts naturally all over terra, just not in a free state. You’ve literally breathed trace amounts of these your entire life anywhere your host’s epidermal solar-plate is sloughing from erosion”

She took a deep breath and decided she would have to give it a proper taste test then. Give the skill shares something else to fight over and scatter her emotions with.

But that lead her back around to talking with Pylo again and trying to dissect the alien preferences for taste so that she could reconcile it with a terran palette.

“Okay, so I’m getting some ideas. But some of them would need some ingredients we didn't include in our colony stocks. When you were purchasing things from Terra did you buy any eggs? Milk? Cheese? Butter? Any kinds of oils or other things that would have been marked as dairy?”

Pylo tapped at her lips with one of those whip like tendrils in what Omega knew for a fact was a gesture as intentional and precise as the Siren’s recently settled ability to be verbally understood. Every single thing about speaking to Pylo was delivered precisely as the ‘Ship Mistress’ wanted it to be.

Omega was not sure whether she preferred being so completely bubbled in perfectly tailor made impressions over the random spew of near brain rape. Apparently something even more intense then that was how Quarti preferred to conduct conversations with Pylo.

Considering the obvious physical toll that took on her fellow terran it put the whole exercise in a lot of context.

Speaking to a siren that knew how to be understood by you was an exercise in rampant paranoia. Apparently one that civilizations had been dealing with for longer then all modern human civilization- No Omega corrected her musing, longer then TERRAN human civilization had existed.

“I had procured a sampling of food products of many varieties from the edge wall port authority of terra and her governing alliance. Please be a bit more specific shaman Omega, there are a great many things that counted as Eggs, Butter and Cheese... also are you, Quarti and Aleph ill suited ? Or is there another error we need to go over in classes with ▙◀?“

That caught Omega by surprise. What could be misunderstood here.

“Are we Ill suited for what? What do you mean?”

She readied to drop one of the more involved chemistry shares for the linguistic historian. It didn't always help but it was better than nothing. Then again, with pylo, sometimes the chemistry was more relevant to language than language was. For best results she preferred to roll both when there was a serious confusion but then she’d have to drop something the chef and pastry artist were using and that would set her back hours on the slow creative think work she brought them in for.

Pylo reached out with that slender whip like chord. Moving it through the air like some kind of anima, bizzare and alien. Omega was a bit too addled with the argument in her brain to realize what was happening till it had occurred. A quick firm jab to her chest. In fact it got her right in the nipple.

“Ow! Hey! Pylo! What gives?”

“Humans are mammals correct? Your milk would be an ideal choice for an ingredient correct?”

Everything in Omega’s head seized up for a moment and she nearly lost hold of the souls in her skill share.

"Uuuuuuuhh... That's way to intimate! Our relationship is NOT on that level, and never will be. Besides none of us are lactating anyway and we are NOT going to go through what we would need to in order to bake you a CAKE."

Pylo huffed and shrugged before making a warding off gesture with the limb that had poked Omega.

“Apologies, no trespass intended... Hum... I was not overly broad in taking sampling in that context. I may not have any milks from the required clades. Which families are you, quarti and Aleph lovers with?”

Omega wondered why the pastry chef was giving the distinct impression of laughing. There was no way that they could have anticipated being in this situation unless.

Oh.

Ew! No! No! No! Damn it why was the best Pastry chef in the colony archives a total pervert?!

Quarti however butted into the communication channel like a torrent of twelve different accents trying to practice some kind of synchronized tumbling.

"Woah blue-beauty! I got dis! Hipsalicious grandtrix! My tongue-gargler of a great ladyship! So remember that feel when I told so-in-the-wabe? Big mother-beasties turgid-some fat in babu-cute-humies? Ya clumsy dorbs dat was? Not as much some like that they been. Big mother beasties left two some centuries after and peoples mostly forgot. Also so like though we can grow all fruity in the bellies some same, Most meaty brutes no quicken it canny? Souls jump skip slip slide and blend whasit whisps sure! But meat an bone all prudey hair seeds... Modern gals (hardly any guys these times, wierdo over-womanizing folk they!) Even more extra prudey then words would make ya think some ya, Anyway so that’s the gist can?"

Omega blinked several times, then looked at Pylo to see if that helped or made everything worse. Most of the time it made things better but Omega could not really parse what precisely could resolve from THAT spew of half coherent syllables.

Pylo nodded as if all of this had made perfect sense and dipped her head a bit.

“Apologies Omega, I did not mean to imply you were... taboo breaking and uncivil? Your culture is not very intuitive some times.”

Omega huffed and shook herself free of the creepy suggestions from within and without.

“Fine, whatever, moving on. Milk, Eggs, Butter and Cheese. Do you have it? If so what kinds?”

The Siren grinned with a mischievous glint of teeth that Omega was still not sure she had a good explanation for why Pylo had in the first place. There is no way that Sirens needed the same kind of dentition as Terrans.

“I am certain I could provide all of those of several dozen terran varieties... But as you have illuminated to me that might be a bit too intimate and forward for your... sensibilities”

Omega’s heart sank as she felt the echo of a long dead pastry chef break out into delighted cackles.

“Really? You don’t have any stored away anywhere? THAT’S the only option?!”

“Apologies, but I am afraid I ate all of my raw samples before we reached Redweed. The closest thing I have is some of tunies symbiote eggs with a similar chemical composition and proteome to your archosaurs. The germline diverged... Around two m͏̣̗̳̭̭y̶̥̞͍r̞̗͕i̯͇̮̠̞a̼̰̙̳̘d ̪̲͎̗̟͘generations ago.”

Omega’s face was flushed and she dragged at the roots of her hair with her fingers running along her scalp. She actively avoided trying to actually ‘notice’ the number that Pylo had gently as possible SHOVED into her head.

Down that way lies pain and hangovers.

"Fine, alligator eggs or something I guess will work. "

Elsie chimed up into the conversation with a bland tone.

“I Don’t recommend terrans taking eggs from those, the population will be struggling to recover after the planned sunbath as it is. Also if you don’t filter a great deal of the phages out of it consuming several compounds within those eggs are liable to be very fatal."

Pylo frowned a bit at that then shrugged and offered an apologetic smile to Omega.

“Well then... Do you have a specific requests of my body’s bounty Shaman Omega?”

Omega stared up at her.

“Promise me you will never call it that again, don’t show me how you produce it, and don’t tell Aleph about this and I’ll get you a list”

Aleph of course chimed in.

“Kind of late on the last bit Omega, Quarti left the channel open... And Also So Rude! Don’t ask people to keep secrets for silly reasons!”

Omega buried her face in her hands and groaned.