Communal Living and Fungus Food

So far Lazga is a bit boring, though that might be just because I have a tough time seeing in the corridors as we tour through. I think I do have to share some of things. The Tzállö seem to be rather communal. They all live in these underground tunnels and caves in big groups. I've seen some of their little barracks, there are quite a few people in there. They also have a big communal mess hall where they all go to eat. In fact, though I've been given a special room that has electric lights and some special accommodations to keep me comfortable, I'm still required to go to the public mess hall for two meals a day.

Going to the mess hall is a bit of a strange thing for me. Tzállö can't see, but some of them can detect light on their skin somehow (the yela'kaja told me something about light-sensitive cells or some such). Now, me and the yela'kaja both have very bright lights strapped to our heads--which are very good, by the way. They don't penetrate the corridors as well, but they throw light all around the mess hall, and my batteries haven't worn out yet despite the amount of use this thing gets. Anyway, since light isn't a very common down in a Tállö mess hall deep underground where you can't even get sunlight through the ventilation shaft, whenever one of them "feels" our lights, suddenly about thirty pairs of ears start shifting in our direction and some heads turn to get a better "look" at the aliens.

Then we get special attention from the cooks. The Xala have cleared a few Tzállö foods for me to eat, so when I go to get my food one of the servers pulls out this little sheet of paper with the list in Fbeki and starts running his fingers along each little entry, making suggestions as he finds up with stuff he particularly likes. Note that, while he's reading the paper on the table with his fingers, his nose and ears are firmly aimed at me -- he apparently can read and stare at the funny alien at the same time.

Most of what they serve is fungus and maybe some small animals. In fact, as I'm writing this, I'm sitting in the mess hall eating a big plate of mushrooms with some moss harvested from the tunnel entrance, along with a Xala protein bar, of course -- none of the meats are cleared, yet. Apparently Lazga has dozens of varieties of edible mushrooms. The one's I'm having are called zbugy (something like ZHBOO-gyu), and they're not so bad, for mushrooms. The food's not quite as good as on Kesata, but it's definitely not as nasty as the protein bars the Xala give me.