rejam
He held up the plastic cup, turning it a little this way and that to admire it in all its many-colored pastel beauty. He also had the empty plastic spoon in his teeth, because - it was obvious very soon after meeting him in this guise - he nearly always needed something in his mouth, and if it was not the stick of a lollipop he’d procured from his bag and polished off ten minutes ago, it was a knuckle or the plastic ring from the top of a bottle of water or, now, an empty spoon.

It had been a source of silent, inward pain to cough up enough money for two cups of Dippin’ Dots at zoo prices, especially on the heels of two tickets, but he’d done it for the sake of sharing the Beauty of Humanity.

“Genuinely one of the greatest things to come out of collective human ingenuity,” he said with sincerity. “But you gotta eat it pretty fast because once it starts to melt all the fun goes out of it.”


Kalani watched with as much curiosity as she had observed the black-and-white large furry creatures (‘pandas’, Morgan had said) and the large brown creatures with very large horns (‘moose’, Morgan had said, which was such a funny word that Kalani kept repeating it under her breath and giggling about it, long after they’d passed the enclosure) and every other animal they had seen at the zoo.

She took her little bowl, studied the strange little eating-tool (it looked a bit like what they had in the kitchen at home, but also why was it see-through? why was it pink?) for a moment, and then scooped up a small helping of the–

Well, she wasn’t quite sure how to describe them. ‘Dipping dots’, Morgan had called them, and she understood the ‘dots’ portion - they did, in fact, look like dots - but she was unsure what she was supposed to dip them in. Or what was to be dipped into them, maybe? She watched Morgan take a bite first, to see how to do it, and then put the spoonful of Dots in her mouth.

The startled squeak that emerged from Kalani surprised herself and everyone in a five foot radius. She took a physical step back, but did manage to hold onto her cup, if just barely. Her eyes, still golden, went comically wide as she clearly struggled to swallow the Dots, enough to say, half-strangled.

“They’re cold!” Kalani had never had anything so nearly-frozen in her life, except literal ice, and that hadn’t had any flavor except ‘cold water’ flavor. This was - this was like if someone had taken the brightest flowers in her forest on Kua’kua, mashed them up, left them out during the cold season, and then sprinkled them on top of–of–of–

Nope, there was no Kuanian comparison to what was happening in her mouth right now.

After the surprise of the temperature, though, Kalani looked back at her bowl. The flavor was…good. The flavor was very very good.

She took another bite, a bit smaller this time, and still let out the startled squeak, but this time it was a joyous one, and the grin on her face was multicolored and ecstatic. She turned from Morgan to the person who had provided this incredible treat, and as genuinely as she had ever said anything in her entire life, she said:

“Thank you for these amazing Dipped Dots.”

rejam
“Dippin’ Dots are worth saving the world for on their own,” he repeated, his own bite having been more sedate but apparently just as pleasant. “I remember back on - at the tournament, you said you hadn’t gotten hooked on coffee yet. How’s that one coming?”


Kalani shook her head and took another bite of the Dipped Dots. “I cannot get past the smell of it,” she admitted, golden eyes still locked with intensity upon the freezing-but-rapidly-melting cup of magic she held. “My roommates have told me that there are places to get other kinds, that do not smell or taste so - so - ugh,” she said, letting out an irritated noise. Would she ever have a full vocabulary? She doubted it. “So icky,” she finally settled on with a roll of her eyes. “But I have not yet found it for myself. I understand that it costs money, and I do not have any of that yet.” She took another bite of the Dipped Dots and gave an appreciative shiver, smile back on her face.

“I did not know cold could taste so good. If there is coffee like this, I will happily drink it.”