The Fellowship Of The Fridge
Mere hours after her people leave Atlantis for the mainland, Teyla is missing them.
She feels lonely and alone in a city full of people who are not hers, in a city which feels as alien and strange to her as she feels to the people who now live here.
Accustomed to the sounds of the land around her, the weather above her, the people beside her, Teyla finds the city of the Ancestors full of silence and an emptiness that all the busyness of the expedition from Earth cannot fill.
She understands why her people wished to leave. Whatever they told Dr. Weir, it is more than that they felt unwelcome among the Earth people - it is that the city itself discomforted them. From the fixed solidity of the walls, impermeable barriers between room and room, to the sights and scents and sounds that the city imposed upon them, the sun and the sea and the wash of the waves against the pontoons far down by the base of the city.
It is not just that the Ancestors once lived here, but that the Athosians cannot.
Teyla must.
Lying between sheets that feel too smooth, Teyla longs for the sounds of her people. She misses the wind's whistle through the perimeter poles. There is no dry rustle of leaves in the corridor outside her room. In the next room over, Sergeant Edie doesn't snore or cough or wheeze - or if she does, then Teyla cannot hear her.
Everything is silent and the voices echo as though they are in the caves.
In the end, she gives up sleep and rises to go wandering.
Even this is not the same. Nightime sojourns on Athos are very different - a quiet walk along the paths, a quick skim of the perimeter poles, a pause by the path up to the forest to listen to the nightbirds sing. This is a solitude of spirit and person and mind that sits heavy on her shoulders - a loneliness that she has never felt so intensely.
Drifting through the halls, now empty and darkened, she pauses at an intersection, wondering if she should go back or risk being lost.
"Teyla?" Major Sheppard comes towards her, an easy smile on his face. "Can't sleep?"
"And on the verge of being lost," she says lightly. "I am unaccustomed to the city as yet."
"Yeah, me, too. I was just on my way to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Join me?"
Since she has little idea of what else to do other than wander the city, Teyla falls into step with him along the corridors. "What is usually eaten at these 'midnight snacks'?"
"Well, food." It is clearly levity, but Teyla is not entirely sure how to respond. She is still learning the speech of these people, accustoming herself to the rhythms and flows of their language, their idiom, and the situations in which they use one tone or another. After a moment, Sheppard glances at her with a rueful expression. "Um, usually leftovers. Whatever happens to be in the fridge."
Teyla understands. The contents of the meal are not always accurately judged, and among her people, what can be saved from spoiling overnight is usually saved. "Will that not cause trouble later?"
"Trouble? Why?"
"Will someone not want it?"
"That's why they're leftovers."
They enter the communal food preparation area, all shiny benches and cleared space. Teyla has never yet been in here. Among her own people, her cooking skills are considered laughable - she leaves the cooking to those who do not burn water.
It surprises her, the stringent scent that overlays the softer, more appetising scents of cooked meat and herbal offerings - 'chemical' is the term Lieutenant Ford uses for the astringency.
Teyla knows the processes of her own people's food - the hunting and skinning and cleaning, the smoking or preserving of the flesh, the cooling and cooking of it - but not the manner in which the food of the Lanteans is prepared. Dr. Weir has already spoken to her of an exchange of equipment and medicine for the foodstuffs that the Athosians can plant and provide to the expedition.
But this room says nothing to her of 'food preparation' - although the kinds of foods that the people of Earth prepare are nothing like the kinds of foods to which Teyla is accustomed, so their preparation may be very different.
The major makes his way directly over to a large, metal box standing tall and upright with two doors on its front, slightly raised. The box hums with the power of the Ancestors - the same kind of power that runs all the equipment of the city - and Teyla pauses before the box as John pulls open the door. "The wonders of the modern fridge," he says, squinting into the dark depths before pulling a small cylinder from his pocket and turning it on so a light outlines the shapes of the containers and foods in the fridge. "Okay, there are some meatballs... I think there's some pasta..."
Teyla peers past Sheppard as he continues his murmurings. She sees no reason to interrupt him, although she is curious about the chill emanating from the 'modern fridge' and she brushes one hand along the edge of a metal shelf. The cold is biting.
"Oh, yeah," Major Sheppard says, as though remembering himself. "This is a refrigerator - usually just known as a fridge. It keeps food cold. I don't know how - you'd have to ask someone more technical than me if you want to know the how of it."
If she wanted to know the how of everything in Atlantis, Teyla suspects she would need many generations to even come close to understanding. Even Major Sheppard's people do not know how everything in their world works.
"So," she says, standing up. "What did you have in mind for this 'midnight snack'?"
Some ten minutes later an assortment of bits and pieces are laid out on the bench before her, from the 'meatballs and pasta' to a handful of 'crackers' next to a purple-filled jar that is labelled 'jam' but which the Major calls 'jelly'. There is a bowl of nut kernels and dried gem-like things that are most likely fruit. Teyla tastes one and the sweet crystalline flavour of it confirms it to be fruit. The nuts are not ones she knows - perhaps they were brought with the expedition.
"And," says Sheppard with enthusiasm, "I uncovered this at the back of the fridge! Someone must have been saving them for a rainy day."
Teyla regards the two tall brown segments that John has laid out before her, wedge shaped, with a texture a little like bread on the inside and a shiny surface that yet seems malleable. With a glance at him to check that it is all right, she dabs a finger into the shininess as one might touch an open sore. The dark brown stuff comes off on her finger, a tiny pointed wave on her fingertip, and her finger's imprint is left in the shiny surface like a wound.
"Taste it," he says. "I think you'll like it."
She only hesitates a moment, then carefully licks her fingertip. The flavour is rich and sweet, reminiscent of something heavy and full. The Athosians do not come by creams very often, but sometimes they trade with cultures who keep such beasts, and this has a flavour that seems very like it, but darker.
"Chocolate cake," he says, watching her expression with satisfaction. "Someone didn't want us to find this."
Teyla pauses, suddenly concerned. "Then...should we not leave it for them?"
He shakes his head. "This is the communal fridge - leftovers and anything that people care to snack upon," he said. "Sometimes, in the military - or, I guess, in the labs - people get hungry at odd hours. So the mess hall sergeants will keep this thing well-stocked for people like us who feel like something to eat at..." He checks his wristwatch. "One in the morning."
"I thought you said this was to be a midnight snack," Teyla observes. Early on, she came to realise that in the idiom of these people, things are not always precisely as they are described.
"Well, if we'd woken up an hour earlier then it would be a midnight snack." He glances up at her. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"
She allows one corner of her mouth to quirk as she takes up the fork and spears a heated-up meatball on it. Not only the ability to easily keep things cool, but the ability to warm things up swiftly - an amazing people, her newest allies.
John pours out a cloudy yellow drink. "Lemonade. McKay would have conniptions if he knew we were drinking this," he says, setting a glass by her plate. "He's deathly allergic to it."
Regarding it with some wariness, Teyla turns the glass around. "Is it safe?"
"For you and me? Perfectly. For McKay? Not so much. His body reacts to the citrus. So," he said, tilting his glass and tapping the rim lightly against the rim of hers with a twinkle in his eye, "no kissing him after this."
Teyla picks up the glass and tilts her head a little. "I suppose sacrifices must be made in the name of midnight snacks."
"Yep." Sheppard flashes her a smile as he takes a drink and Teyla copies him.
The liquid is tangy and tart in her mouth, with a sour-sweet balance that is both refreshing and satisfying, and Teyla licks her lips thoughtfully.
"Good, eh?"
"Very good," she agrees as she continues to nibble at the meatball. "So, tell me of other midnight snacks you have had."
As he talks, they eat, conversation punctuated by the food they consume.
In Teyla's mouth, the flavours are typical of the Lanteans - not bland, but lacking the depth and variation to which she is accustomed. Still, she eats because Major Sheppard is talking, and prompts him with questions to qualify his memories.
"You never did anything like this?" He asks once. "On Athos?"
"Not in quite the same manner," she admits. "Myself and several friends once went to another planet to collect our own fruit since we could not access our harvest stores. Our parents wondered why we had little appetite that night."
The memories she holds are of the breathless race from the orchard to the Ring, clutching fruit in her arms as she stumbled along and glanced back, looking for those who lagged behind and the pursuit even beyond them. "Even when we were back on Athos," she explains as she picks kernels out of the small dish of nuts, "we had to hide the fruit somewhere so we could collect it again. There was a cave, down by the river where we played, and we hid it there."
"Did you get in trouble for it?"
Her mouth twitches. "Not that time."
"That sounds a bit like the time I nicked oatmeal cookies off Mrs. Enderby's back porch," says Major Sheppard with a wry smile. "Shared them with Jo-Ann Lynch out by the bike track."
There's a gleam in his smile that Teyla recognises. She suspects the same smile sits on her lips from a memory of trading a kiss for Kanaan's last barangi that summer. But she does not ask. Some memories are only to be fondly turned over in private.
By the time they reach the chocolate cake - which John insists that they leave until last - Teyla realises that the meal has not been a solitary one at all. That she has been accompanied by not only John, but his memories and her own. While her people are not here, they are here in another sense - in her memory and in the reminiscence of them with someone else.
I am not alone.
Within her, a tiny knot unfurls in release. She almost sighs at the realisation and the wave of comfort it brings, like settling down at the end of a busy day.
John pauses with his fork half in his slice of chocolate cake and eyes her. "You okay?"
She forks up another mouthful of cake and merely smiles at him
- fin -