STRAKE - TIMELINE #823010736

(Timeline Tuesday #156)

Strakes are a species of invertebrate who have found themselves in an unusual role on this timeline thanks to a few creative culinary minds. Originally, this species was known by the scientific name of its home reality, Xylentha Urmissa, but eventually the colloquial title was widely adopted.

In their natural form, strakes are strange, wet masses of writhing muscle, difficult to understand as they squirm in a semi-shapeless mass. If you were to untangle this web of parts you would find three distinct sections, starting with the creature’s two heads. Each one looks like a long appendage that sports a bulb at the end, and each bulb is covered by a collection of bumpy sensory organs. These are how the strake sees and hears, and it eats through mouths located just below. 

Next is the central body, a small orb from which the various strake appendages protrude.

Lastly are the twenty wriggling tendrils that this creature uses to maneuver through the world, each one of them ending a in mushy, yet muscular, point. A strake body is pale yellow in coloration.

Of course, those familiar with strakes from exotic timeline kitchens might not know this is their true form. On their home timeline, strakes live out the course of their lifecycle using meat and flesh as a host body, sliding inside and then piloting this meat as if it was their own. They carry this out by finding corpses to infest, popping out their heads on either side of the meat and then running their other appendages through the bottom, like feet.

Conceptually, this is quite horrific, but there’s one thing many adventurous eaters know: this process also makes the meat taste great.

Over time, strake steaks have become a delicacy, an unconventional way to soften and season beef by grilling it up and then allowing a strake to infest it. Diners will eat their meal with the living strake still tucked inside, reporting a distinct “salty cilantro” flavor.