With all that said and done, Adam followed Chad back out through the hallway and into the main area, where the kitchen and dining room converged. The two rooms were separated only by a marble-topped peninsula. The dining room was made up of a mahogany table and four matching chairs. Upon the wooden table, four plates and four pairs of cutlery were dished out. Otherwise, there was nothing on the table, except for a nice little white tablecloth, as well as a pair of unlit candles.

“Chad, would you please put water on the table?” a mature voice asked from behind the marble peninsula. The man in question had his back to the two and was chopping up a few carrots. Beside him, a bowl of other sliced vegetables stood.

“Sure dad! Adam will be staying for dinner though, is it cool if Adam has dinner with us?” Chad asked as he filled a pair of transparent jugs with water from the tap.

“Yes, of course. He hasn’t been over for a while now, has he? I wonder what’s happened to him, he used to be over almost every day,” Chad’s father lamented, dumping the sliced carrots into the salad. Sliding out a drawer and grabbing a pair of wooden tools, he carefully mixed the whole thing together.

“Dad, you don’t gotta talk about him in third-person, he’s like right over there,” Chad said with a chuckle. Placing the jugs on the table, he quickly fetched a plate and cutleries, which went on the end of the table.

“Heavens! Sorry, Adam, I was-, gah!” the man said as he turned around. His bright blue fleeted between Adam’s strange form and Chad, searching desperately for an answer. His short, blonde, poofy hairdo jiggled as his face whipped around. The man was actually quite short, shorter than Chad by a fair bit, so his sudden apprehension made him look almost mousey.

“I-, Chad, who is… who is this?” he asked, pointing a trembling finger at the tall dark man.

“Dad, it’s Adam. Stuff happened to him yesterday, and now he’s like this. But he’s still Adam! Only thing is he’s kinda forgotten a lot of stuff, but he’s still cool in my book, so he better be cool in yours too,” Chad explained curtly, dragging a chair out from nowhere and placing it by the end of the table. His father seemed a bit confused, his mouth hanging open ever so slightly. However, with a shrug and a wry smile, he stepped over to Adam, a hand reached out.

“Well, if you’ve convinced that bone-head, I guess you’ve got my vote too, Adam,” he said with a carefree smile, his glasses only slightly ajar. Adam glanced down at the hand, up the squared light-blue shirt-sleeved, beyond the pink frilly apron, and back up to the face.

“Oh, also, dad, he doesn’t like being touched, so avoid that, man,” Chad warned, carrying pots and pans over to the table.

“Goodness, how interesting! Do you happen to have any idea as to why this is, Adam dear?” the man asked, his eyes glittering. “Lord above, forgive me, I haven’t even introduced myself! I’m Chad’s father, Donovan, but you may call me Donny if you’d rather prefer that,” Donovan explained happily.

“Uh, alright,” Adam mumbled, not sure how to take anything. He tried to send Chad a pleading gaze, hoping he might save him. Sadly, Chad was stuck carrying various pots and pans from the stove to the table, along with grabbing a tray full of weirdly-cut potatoes from the oven, and so, he had no time to answer the gaze.

“Even your voice is different! How remarkable! And you remember absolutely nothing? Not even Chad? Lord above, how in the world did he convince you to come for dinner?! Is John alright with this? I’m sure you told him you were staying for dinner, isn’t that right?” Donovan said, forcefully meeting eyes with the jittery eldritch god.

“No, I… I haven’t told, uh, anyone, is… is that something you do?...” Adam asked, feeling his control over the flappy thing in his mouth slip from his grasp. Donovan replied with silent disbelief, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

“Lord dear, Chad, will you finish up the table and call Lucia? I’ve got to call John so he doesn’t worry, Lord above, I would,” Donovan said as he left the dining room and headed for his study. Chad glanced over at the confused Adam.

“Hey, come over and sit down bro. Sorry if dad’s a bit close and stuff, he gets like that. If you’re wondering, he did that any time you walked in the house in a new shirt, too,” Chad said with a chuckle.

Most everything was on the table. Adam understood it to be a balanced meal of sorts, with a clear bowl of green things, a roast of some sort of meat, and a tray of round golden-yellow things almost cut into slices but not quite. Two of the pots Chad had carried over contained a pair of sauces, one brown, the other… also brown, but a lighter shade. It smelled heavenly, and Adam came to the realization that his mouth was filling up with liquid. For a moment, he wondered if he was bleeding, but the liquid was clear and tasteless. Which blood shouldn't be. Then again, blood is just filtered saliva, so it was basically the same thing.

“Bro, come on, just sit down. I’ll go fetch Lucia, don’t start before everybody’s back, alright?” Chad said, heading back down the hall and leaving Adam alone for a moment. Adam let his gaze trail behind Chad for a second, before walking over and standing behind the chair at the end of the table. Hum. Strange. The fork was on the wrong side of the plate. Before anybody could return, he quickly switched it around. On closer inspection, the fork seemed to have a total of four spikes, whereas the normal fork had only two. How strange.

But before Adam could go about fixing that as well, Chad returned, the little Lucia in tow. Chad, without missing a beat, sat down on a chair next to Adam. Lucia, in turn, sat next to him.

“John said it’s alright. Apparently, Jessica went out to search for you, but he’ll call her. You’re also welcome to sleep over if you’d like that. Oh, and I also called Maria, and she’ll be home in about five, so we’ll begin without her,” Donovan said as he went ahead and sat down by the table facing Lucia. He glanced over at the still-standing Adam. “You may sit down if you’d like, Adam. This isn’t some grand feast,” he joked, laughing a bit at the end. Chad chuckled and Lucia smiled.

Adam, somewhat sheepishly, sat down.

“And, let’s not forget to give a good word to our Lord in Heaven above. It’s a shame Maria won’t join us for grace tonight, but she has practice,” Donovan said, reaching out for Lucia’s hand. She let their hands join, and grabbed a hold of Chad’s. Chad, politely, did not grab Adam’s hand but instead gave him a warm smile. Adam smiled back nervously.

“Good God bless this food, in the name of Jesus, Amen,” the three mumbled all together, eyes closed. Adam could only stare somewhat slack-jawed at the situation. Wait, there was religion back here?... Oh boy, what a bother. Whoever this Jesus guy was, Adam knew he’d beat him up if he ever got the chance. Best way to assert dominance.

The group opened their eyes, and Donovan immediately turned to Adam.

“Alright, it’s good to eat now! Dig in!” Donovan ordered, and the rest followed suit. Chad practically poured food onto Adam’s plate. Chad mostly had a bunch of meat on his place, Lucia focused on potatoes and vegetables, whereas Donovan himself had a much more balanced diet. Adam looked down at his plate.

Two slabs of meat glistened under a sheen of rich sauce, and a triplet of golden well-seasoned potatoes and a pile of crisp vegetables all laid out proudly on his plate. hesitantly, he took a bite of the meat. Yes. That’s the stuff. Within mere seconds, all three pieces of meat had flown down Adam’s gullet, gone forever. Food was good. This was beyond the porridge, beyond the dry meats and things he’d eaten for lunch. This was something else entirely.

He quickly turned to the vegetables. He didn’t know what any of them were, but… They were all delicious. Crisp, flavourful and sweet. The dressing was light and airy, and instead of drowning out the flavour of the individual pieces, it bound them together, enhancing their strengths and dulling their flaws.

Finally, his excitement at the top, he turned to the weirdly cut potatoes. With a fork in one hand and knife in the other, he cut himself a piece of three slices. The smell of butter was overpowering, even before he could taste it. But, the second he put the piece in his mouth…

“Ptooey!” he spat it right out, the little devilish thing falling right back onto his plate.

“Adam! Is everything alright?” Donovan asked, bolting out of his chair to stand behind Adam. “Did you get it stuck in the wrong throat?”

“No, I, excuse me, it was simply so… salty?” Adam explained. And, indeed, that had been the case. That little piece of Hasselback potato, which would usually make any salt lover squeal, instead made the man, slug, thing, retch.

“Really now? That’s alright Adam, you certainly don’t have to eat everything if you’d rather not,” Donovan explained, walking back to his own seat. Adam nodded.

“I’m home,” a woman said from another part of the house. Following this, a door was loudly closed. Entering the room was the aforementioned Maria, Chad and Lucia’s mother. She was clad in a baseball uniform with a coat on top of it, baseball bat in one hand and ball in the other. Her bright green eyes quickly fell on Adam. “Oh? Did you bring home a coworker, Dear? No, wait, isn’t that the Perpendicular High school uniform?... What’s going on here!?”

“Dear, you’re home! Have a seat! Don’t work yourself up in a fuss again, this here is Adam, Chad’s friend. He looks like this because of some recent happenings, and he’s got some sort of retrograde amnesia, but he’s still the very same Adam,” Donovan explained, getting up from his seat to welcome her with a hug.

“Hey, whoa! You let some stranger into the house just because Chad said he was Adam!?” Maria shouted, pointing an accusing finger at both Chad and Adam.

“Well, yes. Mind you, he’s been acting like a perfect darling so far. If Chad trusts him, so do I,” Donovan explained surprisingly rationally. Then again, he was supposed to be somewhat of a scientist himself, so being at least a little logical shouldn’t be a surprise.

“I… I guess you’re right Dear,” Maria said. Donovan smiled brightly, and she smiled back only a smidgen. Their eyes met for a moment, their lips grazed each other, and then they went to their seats. Maria went to sit down between Donovan and Adam.

“So, Chad. You say this is Adam?” she asked Chad. Chad looked up from his now almost-empty plate.

“Huh? Yeah man, he’s Adam 100%, no question about it,” Chad said with a grin. Maria turned to the supposed teen in turn.

“So… you’re supposed to be Adam?” she asked.

“Uh, yes,” he replied.

“And you say this despite clearly being at least halfway to thirty?”

“I, uh… yes?” Adam said, knowing very well he was at least halfway to 700.

“Uhuh, yeah, right. Who are you really?”

‘An Eldritch God from the world Lutum who’s trying to befriend your son again,’ Adam thought to himself, but there was no way he could say that.

“I’m, uh, Adam. Adam B. Windsley, and… that’s it,” he said instead.

She squinted her eyes at him. Popping a small tree-like green thing in her mouth, she frowned.

“Darling, leave him some breathing room, won’t you? He’s not here to question his existence, just for dinner. Or to sleep over, if he’d like that. Would you like to sleep over, Adam?” Donovan asked instead, smiling. Adam looked back, and then over at Chad, who was chewing on a piece of tender juicy meat.

“Bro, you should, nmpf, totally stay over! Gmnpf, nmh, that’d be awesome bro! We could, smg, play games and eat popcorn and stuff!” Chad described happily, his eyes glistening and star-like. Adam smiled back, his doubts cleared.

“Sure, I’d be glad to stay!” Adam said, nodding.

“Well then, there we have it! I’ll call your father before we have dessert. And on the matter of dessert, is everyone done?” Donovan asked the group. Chad, still chewing his last piece of meat, nodded furiously. Maria answered with a curt yes, and Lucia didn’t answer at all.

“Lucia, sweetie, are you done?” Donovan asked, turning to the dark-haired little girl. She nodded slowly, her eyes not meeting him. Donovan smiled sadly.

“Alright, I’ll go call John, Chad, will you clear the table?” Donovan asked as he left the table.

“Sure thing dad!” Chad said as he rose as well, finally having finished his pile of meat. Adam, without really saying anything, followed whatever Chad was doing. He didn’t actually do anything, he just sort of followed him, looking over his shoulder. Chad didn’t mind. As long as Adam was having a good time, what did it matter if he didn’t do much of anything? Man’s got enough on his plate as is, so taking it easy wouldn’t do much.

After a couple of minutes, the table was all cleared, the large plates replaced with smaller bowls with matching small spoons. Adam did now know what this all was for. As far as he knew, there was only one meal to a dinner. Sure, it was a large, varied one, but having something afterwards… very strange.

“Adam? John now knows you’ll be staying the night. However, he couldn’t get in contact with Jessica. So, if you hear anything from her, tell her to go on home, will you?” Donovan said as he entered the kitchen once more. Adam nodded in response, and Donovan sighed.

“Alright, now for the dessert! For tonight, we have a delicious chocolate Fromage I whipped up this morning, and I hope you’ll all like it!” Donovan said as he removed a large plastic-covered bowl from the fridge. Placing it on the mahogany table, Adam found there to be some sort of light brown cream inside. What was it made of? What did it taste like? What was it supposed to taste like? Adam knew nothing of these, and the fact that he knew absolutely nothing about it made him cautious, to say the least.

Maybe he’d be less afraid if it had even the slightest resemblance to anything he’d seen on Lutum, but… so far, it only made him think of those mashed lungs he’d seen at the Ritual feasts. Not that he had anything against mashed lungs or any other intestine foods, but he didn’t like the colour of it.

With a grin rivalling the moon, Chad heaved up a large portion for both himself and Adam. Apparently, he could still fit more. The pros of being a total chad. Donovan gave himself and Lucia quite small portions, and Maria took enough to rival Chad himself. Adam stared down at his bowl. It smelled… strange. Like nothing he’d ever felt on Lutum.

But… there was also a sweetness to it. Like the sweetest of fruits, beyond the classic Permafruit or the elusive Gem Harvest. Everybody else had already started eating the strange food, so, not wanting to be entirely left out, Adam scooped some up and ate it.

Oh.

Oh yeah.

The metal spoon in his hand bent into strange shapes in his hand. For a full thirty seconds, Adam could do nothing but taste the Fromage in his mouth, the spoon in his hand becoming less of a spoon with each twitch of his fist.

When those thirty seconds ended, he went on a frenzy of sorts, and if he hadn’t gotten too full to eat another spoonful by the second bowl, he might just have eaten the whole thing.

And with dinner done, all that was left for Chad and Adam was the slumber party itself.