"It's just me petting your hair, it's not like you're getting a shiatsu massage or something," Bella says. "Although I hesitate to name that because now I'm concerned that if you got one you would in fact explode."

"I would not," he says, grinning lazily. "Unless you mean the way humans do."

"Humans don't characteristically explode."

"They do too!"

"Have you been watching terrible science fiction or something?"

"No, c'mon, people talk about exploding with whatever-their-feelings-are all the time, they obviously don't mean literal explosions, work with me a little here."

"I have never claimed to explode with a feeling."

"Yeah," he snorts, "I bet you haven't."

"Well, I haven't," she says. "I don't think it's really a common turn of phrase. My arm's tired, you can eat your taco now," she adds, dropping her hand to the table.

Brilliance goes back to overenjoying his taco.

"Careful, if you eat the whole thing there won't be any of it left for you to marry," drawls Bella.

+I don't wanna marry it,+ he says, +I wanna eat it. Mmmmm.+

"How much food can you hold? Because I can unload some more leftovers on you if you want, we have, what do we have, tuna salad, a pasta thing, minestrone soup?"

"I have no idea," he says promptly, "let's find out!"

"Pff." She gets out the named items, and warms the two that need warming after passing him the tuna and a fork. She explains the mechanics of the fork.

Brilliance only stabs himself in the face by accident once! And he seems to treat this with the same general enthusiasm, if not the same specific intense enjoyment, that he does any other kind of bodily sensation.

Bella permits herself a little snickering.

+What are you laughing at,+ he says, grinning around his latest mouthful of tuna.

"You poked yourself in the face with a fork. I have never seen anyone over age four do that."

+I got excited! You'd get excited too if it was your first time eating food!+

"Which event," Bella says, "happened to me when I was well under the age of four, and involved a spoon in someone else's hand, and mashed sweet potato."

+Ooh, what's a sweet potato? I wanna eat one.+

"We don't have any around right now. There are thousands of things to eat, I'm not going to just run to the store and grab you examples of every single one."

"Where are you going to get sweet potatoes while I sleep?"