“Do you want anything to eat before you head out?”

Micah Vonté, in all the things that matter, is the head-of-house between himself and Grant. It can’t be helped; he is Grant’s father, after all. Grant stretches way above his head, his vertebrae popping in a satisfying whisper down his spine, and they’re thusly accompanied by a pleased sigh.

“I suppose I could stay long enough for a cup.” He hops up onto the seat closest to him. He’s eager to leave, but who would he be to pass up a titillating glass of tillyjuice? A fool, is what. Micah pads barefooted to the matter-morphing device, typing into it a few keys before dropping what looks to be the remains of his own breakfast down the chute below. While the morpher surely has enough particles to work with right now, it’s always safer to dispose of trash as quickly as it’s created such that its matter can be manipulated into whatever is needed next. It’s easy to keep up when a family of two inputs more than the resulting output.

Once the cup is generated and the juice is subsequently poured into it, Micah wastes no time in delivering it to an eager Grant, whose hands are upraised and spasming in the universal “give me, give me” command. Micah chuckles at the gesture.

If there’s one thing that fascinates Grant more than the idea that Hox somehow warms Molt more than their sister planet, Wist, which is closer to the red sun than Molt has ever been, it’s the fact that tillyjuice has such a strange combination of motion in its atoms that it feels simultaneously hot to the touch and cold.

It’s even more strange when the liquid touches his tongue, where the heat burns his tongue but the cold soothes it immediately. It’s the perfect balance such that, although causing sensory confusion in the process, no discomfort befalls those who drink the finicky beverage. It’s no wonder that humans, with their proclivity towards danger and all things idiotic, have a particular staking claim of favoritism on tillyjuice, despite Molt being (at this point) natively home to at least three wildly different Terran Union species living in harmony.

“So,” Micah begins as he flips through the automatically generated newsholo emitting from the device installed into the table. “Today’s the big day, huh?”

“Yes! Isn’t it just exhilarating?”

Micah, though visibly worried by all the space travel talk he’s been subject to for over a decade, smiles. It’s soft and genuine, even if it isn’t a very big one. “Ah… certainly exciting.” Here, he begins to twirl his dark hair between one of his fingers absently. It’s up right now in a high ponytail that waterfalls down his back and brushes delicately at his shoulders. Despite how feminine the hair style makes Micah look, he still has strikingly masculine features in the cut of his jaw, the stubble on his chin, and his rugged, worn shirt. “Are you walking alone?

“Well, I have no one to walk with so… I guess so, yeah.”

There’s a beat of silence where Grant wonders if Micah is going to speak up about the something he obviously doesn’t want to say. In the end… he doesn’t.

“Would you like my company?” Micah asks, all cheer and not even a trace of concern on his face. “I’ll be heading toward the office anyway, so it wouldn’t be a hassle to walk you to the office.”

Grant grins sheepishly. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“I’m never too busy for my only son.”

~ . . . ~

"Do you desire sustenance at this time, Aremant?"

It's the same, exhausting question, day after day. It really is a shame that a one word response is truly the greatest obstacle that finds him avoiding the kitchen on a daily basis. "I can take care of my own needs." He sounds irritated, but he can't seem to shake the tone. As he primly seats himself on one of the many, unused chairs placed around the upraised table, he arranges his hair carefully to frame his face. He tucks the longer strands behind his ear and even further around the small, rounded bone formations protruding from the space behind his ears. Horns, the humans call them. Aremant has always found the term distasteful and somewhat unfitting; after all, the termhorn  is used primarily to describe keratinized outgrowths in a pointed fashion. Aremant gingerly -- and pointedly -- traces one of the bones, his finger sliding jerkily across the perfectly smooth surface. They're tucked close to his face, for which he is grateful; he isn't sure he would tolerate them to the extent he already does if they were a constant hindrance to his field of vision and auditory functions.

"Perhaps a glass of tillyjuice will wake you up."

Aremant raises one dark eyebrow as he eyes the ceiling. "When did you develop a sense of humor? I don't remember programming jokes into your personality."

"Hm. Perhaps I have evolved sentience. It would be best to terminate my functionality."

Here, Aremant very nearly laughs. As it is, a smirk twitches at the edge of his lips. "Funny. No, I would prefer not  to be subjected to a glass of tillyjuice." He stands, cracking the vertebrae in his neck as he tilts his head from side to side. "I think I'll take a glass of water. Old-fashioned, but it will do the trick."

He rights his shirt where it has ridden up on the side and kicks a few chairs back into their rightful place on the way to the morpher. It's sleek and black, but still so subtly modest in the expanse of the room; minimalist, but homey all the same despite Aremant's feeling of being a stranger in his own house. It isn't the house's fault, anyway. If he didn't feel so trapped, it would be easier to accept Molt as his new home, but he's a prisoner to a decision his parents made long before Aremant had the ability to decline.

In the grand scheme of things, Molt is a paradise when he remembers the life he lead on the surface of Nenivus, where he is a social pariah and a dirty, despicable by-product.

"You are dwelling, Aremant. If it will benefit you, you may speak your mind. It may help."

Aremant gazes at the morpher, eyes glossy and unseeing, as he punches in the code for water. "Ah, it isn't anything important." He watches the glass generate from the bottom up, like it's being stitched together by tiny, invisible hands. "I was just wondering what kind of person you have to be to like tillyjuice."