Fingers poised over their virtual keyboard, Skylar was brainstorming. “When life gives you lemons…” Skylar sighed and back spaced over lemons. “When life gives you kwineberries…” Skylar tapped their fingers on a few random letters as they pondered the human idiom.
Backspacing the useless letters, Skylar sighed. The understood the meaning of the idiom, but to bring that to Qwortar, with ingenious ingredients, and make it have the same meaning, wasn’t as easy as they thought it was going to be.
“Skylar!” Benti called from the front of the business. Skylar shouted from the office. “What are you up too?” Benti leaned against the door frame.
“Trying to come up with a tagline for our juice.” Skylar waved Benti over.
“When life gives you kwineberries?” Benti moved their beak back and forth. “What kind of tagline is that?”
“An incomplete one.” Skylar sighed. “See, I’m trying to mimic the Earth idiom-”
“Why?”
“Uh, because, it’s… it’s about perseverance in tough situations.”
Benti leaned further over Skylar’s tablet. “We’ve already persevered through tough times, no one wants to remember them right now. Let’s make it funny.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“Well… what happens when you eat a kwineberry?”
“Eating it is totally different than drinking it.”
Benti rolled their eye. “Fine, what happens when you drink it?”
“Uh, well, without the skin blended in, nothing much, but with the kwinberry skin blended in, well, it certainly makes your tongue curl.”
“And for those who grow lips not unlike your human friends?”
“Their lips pucker.” Skylar switched their beak out for a human mouth, puckering their lips to demonstrate.
“And that’s a funny look.” Benti chuckled. “So, let’s go with ‘When life gives you kwinberries, pucker those lips!’ It’ll be great. We can even post of picture of those puckered beauties.”
“You realize that puckered lips are what humans do for kissing as well as a reaction to sour stuff?”
“Well no one else knows that. And with the picture of your lips it will be funny.” Benti pointed a tentacle towards the back exit. “And Qwortar needs some laughter right now.”
“All right. We’ll go with a funny tagline.” Skylar started typing. “Thanks Benti.”
“No problem partner. I’m going to finish testing our new blenders from Axter.”
Word count: 379
