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Remember the Christmas Special?

Probably not.

Anyways, to fill you in, part of the Graingy Christmas Special was a short story following a good(?) friend of mine: Kindness the sharp-toothed salt-eating alien person.
It was called The Christmas (sort of) Saved by Kindness (Whether she intended to or not), and a couple people read it. A few of its upvotes were definitely just people throwing points at me later, however.
Regardless, that wasn't the only story about Kindness I've ever written. Might as well put the other one up here too for completion's sake.

That story was made as a gift for someone I know, whereas this one was made earlier for someone I didn't. It's a lot shorter, but it goes into a bit more detail in some ways since, again, I didn't know the original intended audience and thus couldn't expect them to know some things.

Anyways, if this is serious breach of site rules (considering that Graingy isn't even mentioned in this story) then... oops.

Serial: 1
Chrono: ?, before TC(so)SBK(wsiton)

(That is, this is the first written and takes place before the previous uploaded part of the Saga of Kindness, but due to the series only having two parts I can hardly give it a definitive number)

[Next]

(One more side comment, putting in that "next" made me feel like a redditor. ugh.)

Anyways, enough of that.
Bad writing henceforth:

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A beautiful summer evening in the totally unremarkable town of Ostik! Yellow sunlight turned the rocks, trees, and sands more sepia than Mexico in an American movie. Waves crashed, houses weren’t on fire (at least not today), and birds did bird things like steal small children’s food. There was also an alien.

Did I say unremarkable? I meant very remarkable, because the town of Ostik was a colony of (theoretically) mentally sound humans with a rather strong interest in the “distant” planet of Anstrake, its denizens and all. Food included.
Years ago the friendly neighbourhood multiversal empire of Soia made a peculiar discovery: yet another alien world. It was nothing new in that sense, but it was strangely unique and interesting enough for the god-like robot folk to do as they did: set up a semi-imperial presence. Some spicy intra-Anstrake conflict went down, yadda yadda yadda, some of the aliens from there can travel off world now. That’s the short form, at least. Certainly shorter than, say, two years, thirty-three thousand words, and both counting!

Having heard of this occurrence, the 21st century-enduring folk of Earth-1 (The Original(TM)) did as they usually did when Soia mentioned their exploits: Ignored them mostly. But still, a few people HAD cared, at least enough to set up and build an entirely new town of interest-sharing people. Yep. Mentally sound.

Xenophile colony established, and only barely staying below the “Weird Limit” (also TM), thus not getting vaporized in righteous Soian fury, the Ostikans were very pleased when they actually managed to attract a visitor. A visitor that wasn’t yet another influencer looking to get exciting new footage of the ward of weirdos who built a town-sized monument to some tall vaguely fish-looking people. Instead, it was a visitor that was one of the beloved tall vaguely fish-looking people.

Not bad for those who’d accidentally named their town after the aliens’ most common language’s word for “Egg”.

The alien traveller, a slightly shorter (189cm. Laugh.) woman who went by the humorous pseudonym “Kindness”, wandered amongst the gravel streets and log cabins aimlessly, scrutinizing just about everything in sight with more judgement than a kindergartener watching their younger sibling get rewarded for something that they weren’t allowed to do. From sunup to sundown, she spent the Friday trying to figure out what in Geminus’s name she had stumbled upon.

By seven in the evening she seemed to have tired of constantly searching for sense in a people that had none, so she made the perhaps unwise decision to sit by the roadside and eat grass. Not very nutritious, especially considering the vast biochemical differences at play, but it was there and it was free. Surely nobody in a community obsessed with your species would be willing to spare a free meal?

Hopefully not. That’d be weird.

“Oh, hey! You’re the traveller that came to town this morning, right?” A young man approached the fearsome product of evolution and eugenics that sat crouched munching on tall grass and wildflowers. He was average height with short brown hair and was wearing a homemade grey T-shirt with painted purple side stripes to resemble alien skin. Kindness, who’d been going to town on an invasive shrub, froze completely, having seemingly been too engrossed in the suspicious sustenance to take note of her surroundings before they quite literally snuck up on her.

“Yes. What’d’ya want?” She spoke through a mouthful of lawn clippings and twigs, triangular razor-like teeth apparently not well suited to chewing. Shocker.

“Well… I’m aware of your capabilities as a species, but surely that’s not the best food one could get, no?” The young man asked with a mix of cheer and concern, cheer for speaking to the alien, concern for how they were rabidly consuming dandelions.

“No restaurants in this oddly organized outcast community,” Kindness remarked, returning to shovelling weeds into her maw like a vacuum cleaner any% speedrunning a warranty void.

“No, but I’m sure someone would be willing to help a stranger out. Kindness, was it? Why don’t you come with me and I get you something more… proper?” The skin-shirted human offered, finger alternating between pointing at the ravaged vegetation and green-stained disaster before him.

Kindness stopped eating, stood up, swallowed, then spoke while looking at him with only one eye, “One: I feel demeaned and insulted,” she deadpanned, “Two: yes I’ve been going by ‘Kindness’. Don’t bother asking how that started out,” she wiped her lips with her hands, “Three: so long as I don’t have to pay and you don’t have anything more powerful than a 9mm, sure, why not?”
She turned to face the man, who quietly introduced himself as Dave, and motioned for him to lead the way.

Dave led her back to his cabin, a small four-room affair with a bedroom, a living/dining room, and a bathroom, then directed her into the fourth room, the kitchen. It was small, had hardwood countertops, and some very likely unsafely installed power outlets, but was otherwise well furnished, with a small refrigerator and an electric stove courtesy of the town’s miniature hydroelectric dam at the local stream.

“Any preferences? I know a good few recipes, so don’t worry about asking too much,” Dave offered, sweeping an arm across the small food preparation facility.

“Something I can digest, preferably,” Kindness suggested with a shrug.
“Well… nevermind. I’m sure it will be fine,” Dave waved it off. Even if the aliens weren’t perfectly adapted to eat Earth lifeforms, it wasn’t much worse than some particularly greasy junk food was to humans at worst. Besides, even if whatever he made happened to be difficult for Kindness to digest, she’d easily just… expel it. Orally. They don’t have much more than a stomach, and that works wonderfully. Good for them!

And absolutely not good for any poor human visitor or similar finding themselves needing to relieve themselves on Anstrake. A moment of silence, please.

…

Anyways, Dave’s arms flew up to a shelf above the small sink, pulling out a handwritten recipe book. He brushed some non-existent dust off its maroon cover, then flipped to a random page somewhere past the middle.

“Any interest in… heh, I remember this one,” Dave chuckled at reading the odd recipe he'd made years ago, “Any interest in egg-chicken?”

“The chicken before the egg.”

“Don’t worry, it’s mostly chicken. Your kind likes that, right?” Dave put his hand up, seemingly trying to “placate” the lethargic alien, who was looking this way and that with both tennis ball-sized brown eyes moving separately, like a massive torpedo-shaped chameleon.

“Chicken is fine, yes.”

“Then egg-chicken it is. Chick breast cooked, covered in egg, then fried in a pan. Repeat a few times and voila: egg-chicken. Like chicken strips without the breading and a lot more egg. Think you could get a few eggs and a pack of chicken breasts out of the fridge?”

“I could do that,” Kindness mumbled, turning to the fridge. She opened it and began rummaging around. The door blocked sight of whatever she was doing, so Dave decided to let her be, hoping she knew her way around a refrigerator. Really, he had no idea how old she was. Soia wouldn’t let a child take a trip to Earth-1, would they? No, they wouldn’t.

Would they?

Dave began getting the necessary pots and pans out of a cabinet when he heard the thud of Styrofoam hitting the counter. Knowing Kindness had done her part, he proceeded to do his own.

“Okay, first you bake the chicken,” he started, everything in position with his hands washed.

“I never could have predicted that,” Kindness said dryly, rolling her eyes. A fly had landed on the clear carapace covering one of them, so watching the eye move inside without moving the insect was a bit disorientating.

“Fair enough… So,” Dave began, tearing open the plastic covering the poultry, “You just gotta put these in the oven for a little while. The recipe should say… yes.”

He placed the chicken on the oven tray, then slid the tray inside the oven, setting the timer in the process.

“The recipe doesn’t include pre-heat since I was a moron when I created it.”

“Old habits die hard, it seems,” Kindness, once again, deadpanned.

“Ha! Okay, you got me there,” Dave chuckled, “Anyways, now we just wait.”

One wait later, the timer went off and Dave opened the oven to take out the tray. He had on red oven mitts, but before he could grab a hold of the steel plate Kindness reached in and grabbed it herself. Bare handed.

“Oh. Well, that works,” Dave blinked, bemused.

“No, it doesn’t. Were do I put this?” Kindness said stoically, with some urgency sprinkled in. She apparently wasn’t as immune to the heat as she let on.

“Just put it on the stovetop,” Dave pointed while getting the frying pan ready, “Next is the egg. Just got to crack one…”

Having done as instructed with the chicken, Kindness nicked an egg from the carton, held it over a small cup, and sliced the shell clean in two with a hastily revealed claw. The egg’s contents, also sliced clean, fell into the cup with a schlick.

“That… also works? Is that food safe?” Dave wasn’t sure if the chemicals the alien’s bodies used to sharpen their short, bladed claws would react dangerously with his own biology.

“I washed it beforehand. I’m sneaky.”

“If that’s the case, then it’s probably fine… Probably,” Dave acquiesced. He was making it for her, after all. “So, do that with two more, then hand it to me to whisk.”

She did just that, and he did just that.

“Now we put in on this plate… smear it on the chicken breast… wunderbar!”, Dave laid the now-yellow chicken on the frying pan, “Also no pre-heat, because I forgot when writing this. Again.” He gestured to the book.

“We wait?” Kindness queried.

“You wait, I have to make sure this is done evenly.”

Kindness stood up straight from the bent-over posture her species usually used, getting around 10% taller in the process and letting her see further out the window. Dave Flipped frying egg breasts. What an interesting sentence without context.

“Good, good. Do this a few more times…” Dave used tongs to take the now-fried egg covered chicken out of the pan and dragged them through the unfried egg again He put them back on the pan for another round. This was repeated six times until it was deemed by him as finished.

Noticing it was done, Kindness left her statuesque position, joints evidently having been locked, and peered over Dave’s shoulder. Seeing the… food item, let’s call it, she did nothing.

“Looks good, eh?” Dave said enthusiastically.

Kindness remained silent.

Dave stepped to the side, motioning with the tongs in his hand for her to take a piece. It was, in essence, a chicken breast covered in multiple layers of omelette. Whether such a thing should even be possible was unknown to Kindness, but there it was before her. The Soians spat in the face of the “possible” regularly, but this was a random guy in a small town on the coast of upper British Columbia. It was also an egg-covered slab of chick and not entire universe clusters.

Hesitantly, she reached forward and picked up one of the pieces. She took a bite, comically small considering the enormous size of her species’ mouths, but it was a taste nonetheless.

“I’ve always liked this recipe. I made it years and years ago, one of my first culinary endeavours. I love how the savouriness of the tough-yet-fluffy egg goes with the juicy bulk of the chicken. Not sure if you noticed, but I salted the eggs when whisking them since I heard you people have a lot more salt in your diet. Hope it was enough!” Dave announced proudly.

Kindness didn’t move her jaw, tongue being strong enough to pulverize the Earth meat. She was entirely still for a good half-minute, when she swallowed abruptly.

“Yes?” Dave pressed, eager to hear the alien’s opinion of his cooking. He had been sure to use the two things they apparently loved, poultry and salt, and was praying his efforts paid off.

“You know…” Kindness began.

Dave nodded with anticipation.

“Colour me surprised, I never thought someone could make chicken taste bad.”