51 Ymiden 721, morning
Continued from here
"Are you going to turn those into fishing rods?" Emily asked, indicating the thin, flexible, stems of willow that Dan was.packing away.
Dan shook his head. "Fish traps, actually. They're more efficient."
"Oh?" her focus snapped to him. "Should I get some too?"
Dan waved the focus away. "Right now is not the time or place, but I can show you - and any of the others who are interested - how to make them later, if you want. Get them from the other side of the tree, if you want to, best to keep things relatively even."
Emily nodded, used her knife to cut herself some, packed them into her basket, made a note on her slate, and turned to gaze out at the grassland between the river and the settlement. Dan turned too, sweeping his gaze across the greenness, senses alert and scannng for anything - texture or colour or height or scent or sound - that might indicate something edible. Judging by how Emily had looked past the garlic on the riverbank, if there was anything to be found, it was probably up to him to find it.
A patch of brown alerted him to a cluster of wild spinach, most of which had gone to brown seed, and he headed for it with Emily at his heels. He crouched, pointing it out to her. "Wild spinach. Those that use it for fattening birds for slaughter call it fat hen. It grows new from seeds each arc, so as long as you scatter some of the seeds to grow, you can take as much as you like of the rest. Leaves and flowers are both edible as greens. The seeds can be either washed and cooked like beans, or dried and ground like grain."
Emily nodded, and tossed her first handful of seeds into the grass before gathering more into a small cloth bag along with the plant itself. She made her notes, looked around, and pointed to a thicket of bushes and brambles not far away. "I see blackberries."
Dan followed her gaze and grinned. He liked sweet things, though he rarely got them. Probably because he never got them. They were a rare treat. Only a handful of the blackberries on these brambles, the ones on the top on the sunniest side, were ripe as yet, but there were a lot of unripe ones waiting for the coming warmth to sweeten and swell. It would be worth someone's while to come back here later in the arc and pick as many as possible when they ripened. He picked one, popped it in his mouth, and used his spear to pull a small, ripe, spray down to where they could both get at the berries more easily. "Main harvest is probably end of Ymiden, beginning of Saun." The bushes, on the other hand, proved to be mint, and he pointed that out to Emily. "Mint for flavouring food or drying for tea. Pick as much as you want, both mint and brambles grow very strongly and hang around for arc after arc. Hard to kill, easy to grow."
Emily popped a berry in her mouth too, a conspiratorial smile curving her mouth as she stored a few more in the basket and leaned in to sniff the mint with delight. She cut a spray of it and made notes on both on the slate she carried, before easing it back into the basket, careful not to squash any of the soft berries under the slate's more solid weight. Dan smiled shyly back, waited until she was done and wandered off again, meandering back and forth across the ground with one eye on the mountain that they needed to get back to. It wasn't so much a formal quartering of the ground as a casual questing to get an idea for what was around. Precise detail could wait until he - until those that needed it, he corrected himself, still not used to working with people rather than being able to keep all the necessary information inside his own head - had a general knowledge of what was roughly where and could use that to narrow down the search.
He stopped in his tracks and put out a hand to halt Emily as well, as the pungent smell of wild onions, sometimes called ramsons, reached his nose. Retrieving a short and sturdy digging stick from his gathering bag, one end of it roughly sharpened one to a point, he followed his nose to the patch where they were growing.
Emily wrinkled her nose and followed. "What is that?" she wanted to know.
"Wild onions," Dan explained. "Good for flavour and easy to store, but you have to be careful how much you take because you're taking the roots. He knelt, then winced as a flat thistle dug painfully into his leg through his thin trousers. He shifted sideways a little onto a different bit of ground and ran his fingers through the leaves of the wild onions, counting the number of plants as best he could so that he knew how many he could take without devastating them for later use. "Just a couple for now, can come back later for more though." Once that was done, he used the pointed digging stick to dig the wild onions up by the roots. He jabbed the point into the dirt, and then leaned on the stick to lever up the dirt in a small area without damaging either the roots he was harvesting, or the plants around them. He scowled at the thistle that had hurt him, but it wasn't the season for thistle roots, so he couldn't dig it up in retaliation. Glancing around, he caught sight of leaves that were more feathery than stiff like the onions or thin and straight like the grass, and grinned, recognising a patch of wild carrots.
Emily watched him dig up the onions and asked, "Can I have a go at digging? It looks - useful."
Dan nodded, pointed to the carrots, which were always easier to prise out of the ground, and passed the digging stick over. "You do the the carrots, then. Should take those too. Mind the thistle."
Emily took the stick, moved over to the carrots and copied Dan's actions, jabbing the point of the stick into the ground and levering the resulting clumps of dirt away. "Should I assume the thistle is worthless, since we aren't digging that up too?"
"Thistles have edible roots," Dan told her, "but only really between mid-Vhalar and Ashan. They store up starch to live on while it's too cold to grow, but once it's stored, late in the arc, you can take it and eat it yourself. Same with things like burdock."
"Got it." Emily pulled the carrots free of the ground, stored them in her basket and added another note to the list of resources she was making on her slate. "Got these too," she said, returning the stick to Dan. Where next?"
"Keep looking for a bit. Unless that basket's getting heavy?"
"I can manage." Emily got to her feet and hoisted the basket up to rest on her hip. "See?"
Dan held up his hands in apology. "Wasn't suggesting you couldn't." He got to his own feet, oriented himself and started off again with Emily at his shoulder.
She dragged her fingers through the long grass as they walked. They were drawing close to the settlement again when she yelped and stuck a finger instinctively in her mouth. Dan whipped round at the sound, reaching just as instinctively for his spear. Emily had the grace to look embarrassed and apologetic, pulling the finger out of her mouth and holding it out to display the white bumps where a nettle had stung her.
Dan grinned crookedly. "You want to bite it back? Nettles are edible, you know?"
"They are?"
"Yes, the younger ones are best but even the older and tougher ones can be turned into soup."
Emily nodded fiercely. "Yes! I want my revenge."
Dan's grin widened. He used the wooden shaft of his spear to beat down the tall grass enough to see what they were doing, rather than risk getting stung himself, and then sliced the sharp edge of the spear tip across the stem of the nettle, felling it. Where there were nettles, there were also often dock plants, and he spotted the huge leaves with relief, growing next to a young dandelion. Picking a dock leaf, he used it to shield his hand as he lifted the nettle and stuffed it into one of Emily's small bags, and then passed the dock leaf over. "Not edible, these docks," he explained, "but they're good at soothing nettle sting. Better than spit."
Emily rubbed it on the stings and the relief was clear in her face.
"Might as well take some dandelion while we're here. Again, best eaten young. They get pretty tough and bitter as they age."
She obeyed, and then looked up from her notes with a teasing grin. "And you? Do you get tougher as you age too? Like your namesake?"
Dandelion raked his free hand through hair sun-bleached as pale and as fluffed out as a dandelion clock, and shrugged. Dandelions were both as free as the wind and deeply rooted in the land, strong enough to survive anything, bright as joy, and hard to get rid of. Being like one wasn't an insult, not to him. "Maybe," he admitted. "And then again, maybe not."
"Signed words" Spoken words
Continued from here
"Are you going to turn those into fishing rods?" Emily asked, indicating the thin, flexible, stems of willow that Dan was.packing away.
Dan shook his head. "Fish traps, actually. They're more efficient."
"Oh?" her focus snapped to him. "Should I get some too?"
Dan waved the focus away. "Right now is not the time or place, but I can show you - and any of the others who are interested - how to make them later, if you want. Get them from the other side of the tree, if you want to, best to keep things relatively even."
Emily nodded, used her knife to cut herself some, packed them into her basket, made a note on her slate, and turned to gaze out at the grassland between the river and the settlement. Dan turned too, sweeping his gaze across the greenness, senses alert and scannng for anything - texture or colour or height or scent or sound - that might indicate something edible. Judging by how Emily had looked past the garlic on the riverbank, if there was anything to be found, it was probably up to him to find it.
A patch of brown alerted him to a cluster of wild spinach, most of which had gone to brown seed, and he headed for it with Emily at his heels. He crouched, pointing it out to her. "Wild spinach. Those that use it for fattening birds for slaughter call it fat hen. It grows new from seeds each arc, so as long as you scatter some of the seeds to grow, you can take as much as you like of the rest. Leaves and flowers are both edible as greens. The seeds can be either washed and cooked like beans, or dried and ground like grain."
Emily nodded, and tossed her first handful of seeds into the grass before gathering more into a small cloth bag along with the plant itself. She made her notes, looked around, and pointed to a thicket of bushes and brambles not far away. "I see blackberries."
Dan followed her gaze and grinned. He liked sweet things, though he rarely got them. Probably because he never got them. They were a rare treat. Only a handful of the blackberries on these brambles, the ones on the top on the sunniest side, were ripe as yet, but there were a lot of unripe ones waiting for the coming warmth to sweeten and swell. It would be worth someone's while to come back here later in the arc and pick as many as possible when they ripened. He picked one, popped it in his mouth, and used his spear to pull a small, ripe, spray down to where they could both get at the berries more easily. "Main harvest is probably end of Ymiden, beginning of Saun." The bushes, on the other hand, proved to be mint, and he pointed that out to Emily. "Mint for flavouring food or drying for tea. Pick as much as you want, both mint and brambles grow very strongly and hang around for arc after arc. Hard to kill, easy to grow."
Emily popped a berry in her mouth too, a conspiratorial smile curving her mouth as she stored a few more in the basket and leaned in to sniff the mint with delight. She cut a spray of it and made notes on both on the slate she carried, before easing it back into the basket, careful not to squash any of the soft berries under the slate's more solid weight. Dan smiled shyly back, waited until she was done and wandered off again, meandering back and forth across the ground with one eye on the mountain that they needed to get back to. It wasn't so much a formal quartering of the ground as a casual questing to get an idea for what was around. Precise detail could wait until he - until those that needed it, he corrected himself, still not used to working with people rather than being able to keep all the necessary information inside his own head - had a general knowledge of what was roughly where and could use that to narrow down the search.
He stopped in his tracks and put out a hand to halt Emily as well, as the pungent smell of wild onions, sometimes called ramsons, reached his nose. Retrieving a short and sturdy digging stick from his gathering bag, one end of it roughly sharpened one to a point, he followed his nose to the patch where they were growing.
Emily wrinkled her nose and followed. "What is that?" she wanted to know.
"Wild onions," Dan explained. "Good for flavour and easy to store, but you have to be careful how much you take because you're taking the roots. He knelt, then winced as a flat thistle dug painfully into his leg through his thin trousers. He shifted sideways a little onto a different bit of ground and ran his fingers through the leaves of the wild onions, counting the number of plants as best he could so that he knew how many he could take without devastating them for later use. "Just a couple for now, can come back later for more though." Once that was done, he used the pointed digging stick to dig the wild onions up by the roots. He jabbed the point into the dirt, and then leaned on the stick to lever up the dirt in a small area without damaging either the roots he was harvesting, or the plants around them. He scowled at the thistle that had hurt him, but it wasn't the season for thistle roots, so he couldn't dig it up in retaliation. Glancing around, he caught sight of leaves that were more feathery than stiff like the onions or thin and straight like the grass, and grinned, recognising a patch of wild carrots.
Emily watched him dig up the onions and asked, "Can I have a go at digging? It looks - useful."
Dan nodded, pointed to the carrots, which were always easier to prise out of the ground, and passed the digging stick over. "You do the the carrots, then. Should take those too. Mind the thistle."
Emily took the stick, moved over to the carrots and copied Dan's actions, jabbing the point of the stick into the ground and levering the resulting clumps of dirt away. "Should I assume the thistle is worthless, since we aren't digging that up too?"
"Thistles have edible roots," Dan told her, "but only really between mid-Vhalar and Ashan. They store up starch to live on while it's too cold to grow, but once it's stored, late in the arc, you can take it and eat it yourself. Same with things like burdock."
"Got it." Emily pulled the carrots free of the ground, stored them in her basket and added another note to the list of resources she was making on her slate. "Got these too," she said, returning the stick to Dan. Where next?"
"Keep looking for a bit. Unless that basket's getting heavy?"
"I can manage." Emily got to her feet and hoisted the basket up to rest on her hip. "See?"
Dan held up his hands in apology. "Wasn't suggesting you couldn't." He got to his own feet, oriented himself and started off again with Emily at his shoulder.
She dragged her fingers through the long grass as they walked. They were drawing close to the settlement again when she yelped and stuck a finger instinctively in her mouth. Dan whipped round at the sound, reaching just as instinctively for his spear. Emily had the grace to look embarrassed and apologetic, pulling the finger out of her mouth and holding it out to display the white bumps where a nettle had stung her.
Dan grinned crookedly. "You want to bite it back? Nettles are edible, you know?"
"They are?"
"Yes, the younger ones are best but even the older and tougher ones can be turned into soup."
Emily nodded fiercely. "Yes! I want my revenge."
Dan's grin widened. He used the wooden shaft of his spear to beat down the tall grass enough to see what they were doing, rather than risk getting stung himself, and then sliced the sharp edge of the spear tip across the stem of the nettle, felling it. Where there were nettles, there were also often dock plants, and he spotted the huge leaves with relief, growing next to a young dandelion. Picking a dock leaf, he used it to shield his hand as he lifted the nettle and stuffed it into one of Emily's small bags, and then passed the dock leaf over. "Not edible, these docks," he explained, "but they're good at soothing nettle sting. Better than spit."
Emily rubbed it on the stings and the relief was clear in her face.
"Might as well take some dandelion while we're here. Again, best eaten young. They get pretty tough and bitter as they age."
She obeyed, and then looked up from her notes with a teasing grin. "And you? Do you get tougher as you age too? Like your namesake?"
Dandelion raked his free hand through hair sun-bleached as pale and as fluffed out as a dandelion clock, and shrugged. Dandelions were both as free as the wind and deeply rooted in the land, strong enough to survive anything, bright as joy, and hard to get rid of. Being like one wasn't an insult, not to him. "Maybe," he admitted. "And then again, maybe not."
Emily's list
Resources found:
At the river
Fresh water (sample taken)
Fish
Cattail
Garlic (sample taken)
Watercress (sample taken)
Willow (sample taken)
On land
Wild spinach, aka Fat Hen (sample taken)
Blackberries (sample taken)
Mint (sample taken)
Onion (sample taken)
Carrot (sample taken)
Thistle
Nettle (sample taken)
Dandelions (sample taken)
Dock plant (medicinal, non-edible) (sample taken)
At the river
Fresh water (sample taken)
Fish
Cattail
Garlic (sample taken)
Watercress (sample taken)
Willow (sample taken)
On land
Wild spinach, aka Fat Hen (sample taken)
Blackberries (sample taken)
Mint (sample taken)
Onion (sample taken)
Carrot (sample taken)
Thistle
Nettle (sample taken)
Dandelions (sample taken)
Dock plant (medicinal, non-edible) (sample taken)
"Signed words" Spoken words
