Private Floor Grit and Violent Grime

[Milla]

"No, no." A touch impatiently.

It was not in fact immediately clear what Milla was no no'ing about. It could have been any number of things, especially as she said it more to the last few bites of steak on her place rather than to Mercy .

Milla didn't care about the way Mercy was eating. It didn't even signify. She'd known, nearly universally, messy eaters. The neat ones were the outliers to her, as perhaps her own table manners would speak to.

Could it have been about turning lords into slaves and slaves into lords? Milla cared even less about that. It was virtually meaningless to her. She knew the broad strokes of what those terms meant at least, the words not falling through the cracks (nay, gaping chasms) of unfilled common knowledge.

"What did you do with the bodies?"

But then she gave Mercy a quizzical look. The one sentence bleeding into the next as though it were a perfectly natural segue. Blurting out before she could think about it-

"What's a napkin?"

 

[Mercy]

Milla

A blink there as she plucked a napkin from the table and put it next to Milla's plate.

"That is a napkin. You use it to clean your face after you make a mess." The woman who made a mess said. As if reminded herself, she began to use her own napkins to clean up her own messes.

"As for the bodies..."

Mercy suddenly looked up a little bit suspicious.

"What are you, a cop?" It was a tease, but only half of one, because now Mercy was curious what kind of creature she had allowed on board. A woman who was scrawny, boney, who didn't know about obvious things and yet knew strange things. Who didn't know what a napkin was and never had tried steak, even though she had heard of it.

But she was curious about bodies.

Victims usually weren't interested in the macabre in that way.

"Why do you care about the bodies?"

 

[Milla]

"So. Like sani-wipes in the lab." With some interest. Running one across her face, and then, cocking her head and looking around, starting to clean up around her plate as well with it.

"I'm not a cop," she said with a sniff. Milla had no idea what a 'cop' was, but something about the tone made her think that she didn't want to be one.

"Well I didn't want them to have gone to waste." In the most matter of fact way possible, Milla had given away a huge slice of herself without intending to. She wasn't trying to hide it mind you, but that one statement told a history of scarcity tied to pragmatism but most importantly coupled to the absolute lack of care or concern about the sanctity of a human life over any other form of meat.

How far precisely that line rode out toward the horizon was yet unclear, just that it passed far beyond cultural norms for humans and near humans across most of the galaxy.

Milla hadn't much yet considered what it meant for her, to no longer be the gatherer for someone else's whims. But that gatherer, that hoarder of materials was too deeply ingrained for that process to be laid to rest. It went beyond compulsion. Could one call breathing a compulsion? No, nor instinct. There was no thought behind it, merely necessity of survival. She could no more have held her breath and waited for death than to be anything less than what she was at her core - a scavenger.

"Are you going to eat that?" Pointing at a last morsel on Mercy 's plate.

 

[Mercy]

Milla

Eventually both of the creatures around the table managed to clean both themselves as well as the table.

For the best, because they had made quite a mess before that.

"Well I didn't want them to have gone to waste."

Eyebrows raised up at that admission. She said it without skipping a beat or even a blush. Which... was interesting, again very interesting. Mercy leaned in there, elbows on the table, uncaring about the faux pas and not thinking that Milla would give one damn about it. Or even know what a faux pas exactly was.

"I understand. It's such a waste of meat otherwise, isn't it?" Mercy drawled lazily, almost casual, wondering what exactly Milla would say to that.

"Are you going to eat that?" Pointing at a last morsel on @Mercy 's plate.

Now Mercy squinted.

"You are absolutely tiny. In what world do you need more food than what I already gave you?"

Milla hadn't even touched her salad, which got a pointed look at.

"I mean, you can have it, but I am just shocked you still have room in there with how scrawny you are." Pushing the plate towards her, instinctively approving of the greed on display.