“And to conclude our tour; this is the Dining Hall!” Alycia announced with a flourish as she opened double doors (which blended in with the rest of the building and were completely white except for the windows just a couple inches about head height) and revealing a large room filled with tables and people of all shapes and sizes making noise as they devoured food of similarly varying appearances.
Jessica realized that here they took diversity seriously. There were people of every color, including rainbow, a few of them hovered above the ground, and several animals as well as things half way between human and animal, were wondering around in one large mass and not seeming to notice the fact that they were all freakishly different. And all of them were wearing, if clothes would fit on them and they weren’t actually covered in fur, black shirts and black khakis. Jessica wanted to cry at the building-wide fashion epidemic. Once she got over the crowd, Jessica noticed the food. A few were piles of mush or soup-like-things in bowls, but others were alarming. Jessica nearly screamed when she saw a cricket hop around on the pork of a relatively human looking man. The man smiled at the half-cat-woman next to him, turned to his food, opened his mouth, made a small sort of whistling noise, and the cricket obediently hopped into his mouth.
“Wow,” was all she could say.
Alycia sighed, striding past her and to the left, “Come on. You may not have to eat but I do.” Since they had left her room, Alycia had reverted back to pretending to hate Jessica and only just tolerate her.
“I don’t have to eat anymore?” Jessica asked incredulously, clearly forgetting about her transformation.
“Nope. Comes with the whole only needed human blood. Nothing but human blood. Don’t you remember, vampire?”
“Talk about killer diet,” Jessica muttered when she saw the food table Alycia was leading her too. It looked like the standard kind of food serving station at a high school except much bigger and filled with all kinds of disgusting food.
Alycia cut through the lines of people-being that were there and selected a hamburger and fries with a chocolate milk. Jessica stared at it; it was the only normal looking thing there, so normal that she hadn’t even seen the two foot high pile of hamburgers.
“What?” Alycia asked when she saw Jessica staring.
“That’s what you’re going to eat?”
“Yeah,” Alycia stated tilting her head and looking at Jessica like she was either pulling some kind of bad joke, mentally deranged, or both.
“You don’t eat anything that, like…glows?” Jessica pushed on valiantly.
Alycia laughed dryly while walking to one of the crowded tables, “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. You’re made of light, right?” Jessica whispered hastily, trying not let anyone else hear her. Alycia rolled her eyes and sat down in the one seat that was free. A small girl with wings and glitter covering her body quickly fluttered off. Jessica stared for a second; she actually fluttered like a butterfly.
“Something wrong with that?” A male voice asked from the table. Jessica looked and saw a pretty normal looking guy glaring at her with his mouth full of fries.
“What? Oh, uh, no. It’s just, I don’t know, doesn’t seem like she would eat real food,” Jessica stammered. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Alycia cover her mouth in a failed attempt to keep from laughing.
The man glared at her. A was tall, tan, and with bright yellow hair. So yellow it didn’t seem possible. “Oh, so you think just because we’re different to humans we can’t eat the same food? That is the kind of species discrimination that I am so sick of dealing with! If the world was down to you people we would all be enslaved again!” After that, Jessica started to tune him out; there was only so much ranting she could be bothered to register. Alycia’s eyes were watering as she tried to hold down the hysterical laughter. To the man’s left was another human looking man who was eating one of the cricket infested pork’s. Another man came and touched his shoulder only slightly, the cricket-eater yelped and quickly ran away.
YOU ARE READING
Shadow Land
吸血鬼Alexander is powerful, deadly, and legendary. But all he wants is to be left alone after the love of his undead-life is killed. Sadly, his plans get ruined by the rest of the world. First is the problem that the most powerful people of this world...
