Endless Pastabilities
"Here we go," said Mario, his voice a little higher than normal. "Fettuccine carbonara with parmesan, mushroom, and meatballs, served ala Mario."
Peach, seated in the dining room of the Mushroom Castle, the capital of the Mushroom Kingdom, the centre of power within the Mushroom World, located in the spiral arm of the Mushroom Galaxy, reflected on two things. The first was that for all the qualities of the toads, originality wasn't one of them. The second and more important consideration however, was that Mario had just put a plate of…things in front of her.
Thinking things, she reflected. Well, Toadsworth always insisted that a ruler should have plans within plans.
Right now, her plan was to have dinner before moving onto…well, other plans. The thing was, she wasn't actually sure what this dinner was, and as he waddled over, nor was Toadsworth.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like the food taster?" her butler asked, squinting through his spectacles at Mario's concoction. "I can send for him in an instant. Like that."
Peach, watching as Toadsworth tried and failed to snap his fingers, said, "I'm sure that will not be necessary." She gestured to the short man in red and blue at the other end of the table. "Besides, he's enjoying it."
Mario ate with gusto, using a fork to put in the yellow/white tentacles into his mouth. If he'd poisoned the meal for whatever reason, he was taking himself down with her.
"But he's not one of us," Toadsworth whispered. "Who can say how the human system reacts to whatever concoctions they may have?"
"I'm human," she pointed out.
"Be that as it may, what if he's built up immunity? What if-"
"Evthangalwit?" Mario asked between mouthfuls.
"Fine, thank you," answered Peach, before giving Toadsworth 'the look.' One that caused her butler to bow, leave, and close the doors with a gentle clunk. Leaving her with naught but silence, slurping, and…alright, not silence at all, just slurping from the plumber as he dug into his…
"What was this again?" Peach asked.
"Carpestu."
"What?"
Mario finished chewing. "Carbonara. It's a type of pasta."
"Pizza?"
"No, pasta. Totally different."
"I see…" lied Peach, as she picked up her fork and gently prodded the tentacle things. "And these little grey things here. What are they?"
"Mushrooms."
Peach's face turned whiter than the pasta sauce.
"Ah, like, y'know, Earth mushrooms," Mario added hastily. "Not toad-mushrooms, or powerup mushrooms, just, well, mushrooms."
"Mario, I've been around mushrooms all my life, I can assure you these aren't mushrooms."
"And where I come from, turtles don't breathe fire. So, y'know…cultural exchange."
Peach winced – the last time she'd done a cultural exchange with the Kong Kingdom, all the roads in the capital were left trailed with banana peels. Still, conceding the point that in Mario's world, turtles weren't evil dictators (tortoises, she wasn't too sure about yet), she gingerly took the tentaclely mass of so-called pasta, steeled herself, and took a bite.
Followed by another bite.
And another.
And lots of other bites, before Mario asked, "um, princess?"
"Umwat?"
"You alright?"
"Wat?"
"Are? You? Alright?" Mario asked. "Is the pasta alright?"
"Ibdecidis."
"Excuse me?"
Peach slurped down the spaghetti. "It's delicious."
"Oh, thank goodness. If I told my ma that you didn't like her carbonara recipe, she'd blow a gasket."
"…ma?" Peach asked slowly.
"Yeah, my ma," said Mario, as he returned to his own pasta. "My ma, my mother, my mummia."
"Oh," Peach whispered. "A mother."
She'd heard Mario mention his family before. Apparently in his world, people had mothers and fathers (mostly), or sometimes only one mother or father, or two mothers, or two fathers, or if you were particularly unlucky, no parents at all.
"Adopt." That was a word Peach understood. But wrapping her idea around the concept of parents…that was much harder.
But based on the realization that she and Mario were the same species, she'd realized that her parents had to be out there somewhere. A mother. A father. Out there, in this world, or in another…the toads just popped out of the ground and operated as one large, very friendly family, and while they'd welcomed her with open arms, when Mario described his childhood, it made her feel…sad.
Happy for him, but still, sad.
Mario was telling one of his stories. "She'd plop me and my bro on the table. She'd say 'ah, my precious boys, they have to grow up big and strong.' And then she'd make pasta, and she'd let us taste it, and there was that one time when Luigi scalded himself, and while she didn't grow up big, she did grow up strong, and that's how we ended up in the wrecking crew business."
"I thought you were in the stage business."
"Eh, I was for a bit." Mario leant back, smiling. "Ah, Pauline, what a gal…"
Peach didn't know why, but she clenched her knife a lot harder. Nevertheless, feeling a strange, undying urge to change the subject, she asked him, "what about Luigi?"
"Luigi?"
"Yes, Luigi. Where is he anyway?"
"Oh, he won a mansion in the mail."
Peach stared at him. "A mansion."
"Yep."
"In the mail."
"Yeah, straight through the letterbox of 2023 Toadstool Terrace."
"And he…left to get his mansion?"
"Um, yeah?" Mario asked. "If you won a mansion, wouldn't you go to see it?"
"Mario, I don't think that…" She took a breath. "Who was this letter from anyway?"
"Oh, someone, I dunno. Ben? Boo? No, Beau. Definitely Beau. Sounds like a nice guy, giving mansions away."
Peach hoped so. While she was loathe to admit it, Mario's brother had struck her as, well, less than impressive. Not without potential, but despite being the taller of the two brothers, he was always in his brother's shadow. A follower rather than a leader. Handy with a wrench, as the two brothers had spent the last month using their plumbing skills to fix the kingdom's warp pipes, but not much else.
Nevertheless, she continued eating. Mario, who'd finished his pasta before her (then again, he always finished before her), kept talking, while she kept nodding and murmuring things. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy hearing Mario's stories, his world sounded fascinating, but if life was one big story, she found herself unable to see the next chapter.
Bowser was her prisoner. The kingdom was being rebuilt. The Kongs were…well, they were the Kongs, but so far they'd avoided going apeshit or getting up to monkey business. The penguins of the Snow Kingdom were doing their thing, Sarasaland maintained its isolationist stance, and in a way, life moved on.
In another, not dissimilar way, it didn't. And it was such thoughts that occupied Peach's head as she stared at her meal. By quirk or design, all she had left was some of the tentacle things and the meatballs. Slowly, subconsciously even, she used her fork not to eat, but to arrange the things in her bowl.
Peering into the depths of Creation itself as-
"Whatcha doin'?"
"Gah!" She looked at Mario, who was standing beside her (not over her, he was far too short for that). "How long have you been there?"
He looked at the magic device under his glove he called a watch. "Three minutes, six seconds." He chuckled. "Aw, look at that, you've got it smiling."
"What? I have not got it smiling, I…oh. Yeah, it's kinda smile."
It was. Sort of. The castle had no shortage of pictures that had been commissioned over the years, most of them representing different kingdoms in the world. Toadsworth, having taken over her formal education, had explained that art was in the eye of the beholder…and that she should not, under any circumstances, try jumping into one of those paintings without a power star, because it would cost thousands of gold coins to mend the frame.
Peach's art (really, it was food, but what of it?) had meatballs linked together by spaghetti. And she told Mario that it wasn't really a smile.
"Then what is it?"
"Oh, just the thread of the universe." She tapped the meatballs with her fork. "Your world, my world." She twisted the pasta. "The corridor that binds them."
"You mean that portal tunnel thing between the pipes?"
"Exactly. And beyond that…" She swirled the pasta sauce in the space above the meatballs. "One big universe."
Mario didn't say anything.
"I can't get it out of my head," she said. "Why was there a pipe in your kingdom? Why did it lead you here? Who built it in your world?"
"Um, are we still talking about pasta?"
"Did I come from your world? Goodness, I've considered the possibilities. If I did, I-"
Mario ate one of the meatballs. Peach stared at him.
"What? I was hungry."
Peach continued to stare at him. Part of her wanted to slap him. Part of her wanted to kiss him. Part of her wanted to have the other meatball because the pasta was delicious.
"Ah, my princess. Desert is here."
Alas, she had no time for further pasta as Cook wheeled in a pavlova, accompanied by various servants who began to clear the plates away. Mario protested, but she held him in place.
"The meal is over," she said. "That is the way of things."
"But you hadn't finished."
"It is the way of things," she repeated, as a slice of pavlova ended up on her plate, along with one for Mario. The waiters tried to do their best, but she could hear their whispers, see the way they looked at him. No toad was unaware that the plumber fixing their pipes was the one who'd saved the world. The "Super Mario," as they called him. Already, she'd seen Mario trying on a yellow cape (she'd have thought he'd have used red, but he'd explained that red and blue was already taken by someone who had super in his name).
In less than a minute, the toads had left them with two small plates, and one big cake. Silence filled the dining room, longer even than it had taken the toads to set the table.
And more silence.
And more silence.
And-
"It really is a bit abrupt," Peach said.
Mario nodded.
"Then again, I usually dine on my own, without company."
"Oh. Um. Okay," said the plumber, his voice higher than normal.
"Still," said Peach, as she walked over to the cake. "I suppose we can use this as a metaphor for the layers of the universe. A knife cutting through realities, moving through the fabric of creation, to reach the epicentre of…of…Mario?"
"What? It's delicious!"
Peach sighed and returned to her table. One way or another, some ground rules would have to be set.
But he was right, at least. The cake was delicious.
Though next time, they'd try pizza for the main course. Or even something else.
After all, like the world she had come from, the pastabilitieswere endless.