Ensign Morton: Foodies
James
((The Mirror Gardens, Cryethrae))
Vala and Lhandon were the opposite from one another physically. She was incredibly tall and built like a rugby player. She was incredibly short and petite. Yet they seemed to share more than a career in Starfleet, and more than a love of plants. It had become evident to her that he also had a mischievous playful streak too. He had brought out a side of her that had been suppressed by self-doubt and worries about fitting in, lately. Coupled with some homesickness and she had not been her best self. Lhandon was trying to convince her to refer to Commander Arlill as ‘Tox’ claiming that he was super casual and loved that. She was having none of it.
Morton: I don’t know about that! But yeah, I think maybe Commander Arlill is fine for now. So if you want to know this impressive person so much, let’s talk! ::Enthusiastically:: Tell me about where you grew up.
Nilsen: Oh, I’m from Gault. It’s kinda in the middle of nowhere, about a sector or so over from the Klingon border. It’s all farms and forests as far as the eye can see.
Vala’s homeworld, Lolagi IV had a lot of forests too, mainly tropical. She wondered what sort of biomes Gault had, and how they differed from Lolagi IV. The Haliian botanist had always loved the forests of Lolagi IV. Not just the lush, humming rainforests near her childhood home, but the mist-wrapped cloud forests that clung to the island highlands, where the air tasted of moss and memory. She remembered family hikes through the dry woodlands in the western interior, where the trees dropped their leaves in golden waves after the rains passed, and the savannas beyond where firelight and birdsong carried on the breeze. On school trips, they’d visited the coastal mangroves, watching purple crabs scuttle between roots while dolphins surfaced beyond the shallows. Even now, she could still picture the alpine meadows further north, where rare flowers clung to windswept ridges and the Oddapaski danced through tall grass, as if possessed by the planet’s own wild rhythm. To be Lolagian was to carry all those forests within you. The cool, the tangled, the open, the sacred.
Beyond the forests and coastlines, the rural heartlands of Lolagi IV stretched out in gentle, cultivated patchworks. Terraces carved into volcanic slopes, golden with grain-like grasses adapted to the soil, and orchards bearing fruits with names older than Federation Standard. Smallholdings and co-operative farms dotted the lowlands, their buildings shaped to the land, often roofed with woven fronds or cool ceramic tiles. Vala remembered visiting cousins who still lived out that way, rising with the sun to tend sea-fed rice paddies, or harvest pods of silken fibre used in ceremonial fabrics. The rhythm of rural life moved slower there, marked not by starship schedules but by the pull of the moons and the song of the wind through the cane. It was quiet work, but full of meaning. Even now, when Vala needed to centre herself, she imagined her hands in warm soil and the scent of breadfruit roasting over an outdoor flame.
Morton: oO Farmboy… The nickname makes sense now. Oo
Morton: So you come from a farming background?
Nilsen: Yeah, I'm a farmer - my whole family, going back generations, are farmers. Papa insisted we still do some things the old ways, so every day, I was out in the field, or hauling stuff around or fixing something.
Morton: No wonder you’re so strong - that’s hard work. As you may have guessed, I come from a marine background. Both my parents work in marine xenobiological fields, as their parents and so on did before. My brother’s doing his own thing as an FNS reporter. Fourth generation Lolagian, going back to the first Haliian settlers, and proud of it too. What about you?
Her family roots beyond that traced back to Halii but she didn’t know too much about the side of the family that stayed on the Haliian homeworld. Her brother, Kalen, had more interest in that sort of thing than she did.
Nilsen: I can trace my whole lineage back to Earth. We think our family originated in Romania, but none of us has yet gotten around to finding that out. We do know that the first people to land on Gault were from a group called the Siberian Collective, so maybe others from the eastern part of the European continent might have joined them.
Morton: Have you even thought about taking some time out to visit Earth and, I dunno try and track down some long-lost relatives? See where life took them?
Vala only asked because Kalen seemed to think it was a brilliant idea to go back to Halii and fill in this ancestral tree, find out their history. She wondered if Lhandon ever had any similar such ideas. The two of them were explorers and this was just a different type of adventure, she supposed.
Nilsen: Maybe. You mentioned that harbour, we didn’t really have them at home, but I’m guessing that’s where you’re from? And Krabok, they’re those crabs **right? How do they cook them? Was it frying?
He was right not to make assumptions about where they were based geographically based on the job role. Her parents could have been lecturers at a university, or working in city based research facilities. He was right to pick up on the reference, however.
Moanaelani was her home city. It curved along the sunlit crescent of a deep natural harbour on Lolagi IV’s eastern seaboard, where warm ocean currents met upwelling nutrient-rich waters, making it one of the planet’s richest marine ecosystems and the very best place to see the Bloom Tide Festival. Founded on the strength of both tradition and science, the settlement was home to generations of fisherfolk whose colourful boats still head out at dawn, even as sleek research vessels from the Oceanographic Institute glide out beside them.
Low buildings in blues and whites lined the shore, blending native architectural styles with Federation materials. Walkways and open-air markets hugged the coast, and the air carried the scent of salt, shellfish, and grilled purple crab. Tourists came for the waves, coral diving, and the famous night festivals where music and bioluminescent lanterns mingled on the beach. Moanaelani’s marine centre was a beacon of interspecies cooperation, with dolphin researchers, Haliian biologists, and human scientists working side by side to understand and protect Lolagi’s oceans. For Vala, it was the kind of place that felt older than the stars but always brimming with something new.
Morton: Yeah, that’s right. We’re from Moanaelani - the largest coastal settlement on Lolagi IV. Moa to the locals. Now to make Krabok, you get purple crab meat - costs a fortune, by the way, because of the licensing - and shred it fine. Mix it with ground kelp-root and some kind of binding flour. Roll it into palm-sized patties, then drop them into vats of hot oil. The whole thing sizzles and pops until the outside turns this beautiful golden-brown, but when you bite through that crispy shell, the inside is still tender and sweet. Do you like seafood?
Vala knew she probably shouldn’t have followed up with another food question as it was only making her stomach rumble and her taste buds salivated. Nevertheless, she simply couldn’t help herself; she’d talked so much about her local cuisine that she now wanted to know about his.
Nilsen: Response
Morton: Fair enough. Watch out for Bararaq then. Don’t get me wrong - you might love it. I do. It is a seafood dish - we have just, uh, had a bit of a problem in the past with a few unscrupulous vendors. Nevermind that, tell me about one of your homeworld foods.
The authorities had been cracking down on the vendor issue for years. It wasn’t much of a problem now, but in the past some unscrupulous vendors thought it amusing to mislead tourists as to the nature of the dish’s filling. It was all fun and games until someone had an allergic reaction. Although granted - the biggest pranksters did also tend to be the most cautious about asking clients about allergies before completing the sale. They weren’t entirely reckless. Nevertheless, Vala frowned upon it and felt it really dirtied the community’s reputation.
Nilsen: Response
Morton: Sounds intriguing. Never had it - how do you cook it?
Nilsen: Response
You could tell the difference between someone who simply loved eating food to someone who loved cooking by the way they talked about food. It seemed to Vala, that maybe he liked cooking as much as she did. Maybe even more. What were the chances?
Morton: That sounds pretty delightful. Do you enjoy cooking?
Nilsen: Response
Ensign Vala Morton
USS Octavia E Butler NCC-82850
O240205VM3