Sadie sighed. “Was I always this paranoid and I just didn’t know it?”
Heather laughed. “Hah! No, not paranoid. You were never one for big groups, though, so maybe there’s a little of that too?”
“Maybe,” Sadie admitted. “Did you actually get out the written copy of the charter, Danielle?”
“Oh, oops, I kind of forgot,” Danielle admitted. “It’s OK, though, I know where it is. Just a second.” She went to her footlocker and got out the journal with the charter in the front.
Cassy stayed on her stool while Danielle brought it over to her, and read it over quickly. Danielle saw her frown slightly as she got to the bottom. “Let me make sure I understand this part,” Cassy said. “Right now, the org is just you four, and you’re all members of the Council. So the Party and the Council are the same thing, unless and until you let someone else join.”
“That’s right,” Akari said.
“And it says the council can assign people tasks, or assignments, and if they think the task is unreasonable, they can appeal to the next lower group – the Trusted members – to revoke it. But right now, there aren’t any of those,” Cassy said.
“Oh – I can see why you’d worry about that,” Danielle said. “For now, you’d just appeal to us; and we’d try not to put an unreasonable burden on you in the first place, since we’d prefer you to stay a member of the Party and become Trusted yourself. Remember, if you decide you don’t trust us, you can leave just by telling us you’re leaving.”
“But obviously, you still have to keep any party secrets you know,” Heather said. “If you don’t, then we won’t have to keep your secrets either.”
“Let’s not start in with threats,” Danielle said. “I mean, yeah, the secret thing kind of goes without saying, but we don’t need to rub it in. The goal is to build trust here, right?”
“Can anyone give the council assignments?” Cassy asked.
“The rest of the council,” Danielle said immediately.
“Right now, we’re basically all working together anyway,” Akari added. “That rule is kind of just an anti-freeloader clause. We added it when we got to thinking about what would happen if the Party ended up with a dozen or more Welcome members. I don’t know if I think we’ll realistically ever get big enough for it to become a real thing.”
“Speaking of assigning each other tasks, can we agree to put off the tomato thing to tomorrow?” Heather said. “I’m wiped out. I want a quick shower and a long night’s sleep.”
“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Akari said. “Today involved more walking than we realized, but we got plenty of stuff. We should toss everything in the cold box and go to bed.”
“Without supper?” Sadie protested.
“Let’s settle the matter of whether Cassy’s a member or not before we decide about supper, huh?” Danielle said. “We might want to make something with onions.”
“I request that the council of the SHAD Party vote on my request for membership,” Cassy said formally.
“As a member of the council of the SHAD Party, I hereby initiate a vote to add Cassy, uh, who is standing right here, as a Welcome level member of the organization,” Danielle said with equal formality.
“Cassiopeia Stellana,” Cassy supplied.
The system prompt came up, inviting Danielle to vote “as a member of the Council of the SHAD Party” on the membership of “candidate Cassiopeia Stellana.” The options showed up as “Accept / Reject,” and she chose “Accept.” A long breath later, the System gave her the confirmation, and she grinned as she told Cassy, “I am pleased to announce that you have been unanimously accepted as a Welcome member of the SHAD Party. So! How many onions did you actually find?”
“Um, 40 points of mana worth,” Cassy said, pulling her Decision Day satchel around from her back and holding it open to show them the size of the pile of onions inside.
Akari came over and put her hand in to rifle through the pile. “What was it, one per onion? Two maybe?”
“Just one,” Cassy said. “Not exactly earth-shaking, but hey, 40 mana and no big-burst weirdness, so I’m not complaining.”
“Well, it so happens I think we could use some onions,” Akari said. “My mom makes this fish recipe that takes onions and garlic and cherry tomatoes and the common kitchen spices. It’s real easy, you just fry up the veggies a little and then add in the fish and fry it some more. We don’t have fresh garlic, but we do have tomatoes and fish, and apparently onions, so I think we can do a decent rendition.”
“We have four fish fillets, Akari,” Sadie reminded her frustratedly.
“I’ll cut them into five strips each,” Akari said. “It’ll be fine. We’ll each get four fish sticks and a big spoonful of veggies. It’ll be healthy and stuff.”
“I’m going to nap while you cook, all right?” Heather said.
“Yeah, go ahead and rest. Danielle can continue her penance by helping me prep the veggies, though,” Akari said.
“What about me?” Sadie asked.
“You can help prep, or just sit and chat until we need your Purify skill,” Akari said.
“You didn’t even ask if I’d already eaten,” Cassy said bemusedly.
“You’re contributing, you get a share,” Akari said. “If you want to go get your mug and keep your share for breakfast or something, I’m fine with that.”
“No thank you, I’m starving,” Cassy said with a grin. “Can I help chop veggies? How on earth did you get your hands on tomatoes out here?” She picked up the stool she had been sitting on and moved toward the kitchen.
“We found cherry tomato plants growing wild,” Danielle said. “Listen, I need to tell you a couple of Party secrets now; this is stuff you’ll get kicked out for blabbing, OK?”
“OK,” Cassy said, “Though it can wait for after dinner if you prefer.”
“It actually can’t,” Danielle said. “See, the cherry tomatoes are one of the things. There’s a kind of big patch not too far away, and we don’t want people to realize that, because it’s plenty big for four or five or even a dozen people, but not plenty big for the whole camp of 1200, you know? Especially since we can’t trust all 1200 to pick responsibly and not trample the plants.”
“Oh! Yeah, OK, I understand now,” Cassy said, setting down her stool. Behind Danielle, Sadie and Akari were moving the rain ponchos from the counters to the beds.
“The other thing is this: the SHAD Party made a deal with the Rangers on Saturday, when we went out after the town charter was registered,” Danielle said. “We went – ah, I’m kind of nervous to say it out loud now. We went to,” she dropped to a whisper, “Geardump Hill to see if we could scavenge for stuff other people dropped.” Cassy’s eyes widened as she realized the implications. “Yeah. The Rangers said we couldn’t have anything we dropped, but our guide was in the cleanup crew, and she vouched for us that we hadn’t dropped anything; so they made us a deal that we could have anything we could carry off that day, but first thing Sunday they were going to finish their cleanup job.”
“And Sunday you were all super sore,” Cassy said, obviously putting the clues together already.
“If you come in far enough to see into our kitchen area, you’ll see why,” Danielle whispered. “It’s seriously a secret. When Akari told you the whole party helped carry the Party supplies? We all made four more trips back up and down the hill on Saturday. That’s the stuff we’re calling Party Supplies, not the stuff we chose at the Necessities stores ourselves and brought through the first hike.”
Danielle stepped back far enough to let Cassy see into the kitchen as she spoke, and as soon as she laid eyes on the pile, she let out a low whistle. “Look at all those bags with crystals!” she said, half-whispering along with Danielle. “How many - ?”
“Over forty,” Danielle whispered back. “I had the mana enhancement Skill: Lesser Expand Volume unlocked, so we knew I was going to need practice materials.”
“Whoah. You’re going to be rich,” Cassy said. “Even out here. You’re going to be rich in Sending Base trade stuff.”
“I know, right?” Sadie said, softly but not quite as softly as them. “I’ve been telling her she’s going to be Sent-rich.”
Cassy giggled. “She totally is. That’s incredible. You have to get that Skill advanced right away, Danielle – use that hidden trait we share and save up to go to the Access Point so you can start practicing!”
“Actually, I leveled up from the disaster last night with the healing and the guy who went crazy in building one,” Danielle said. “Lesser Expand Volume was my level 2 Skill choice.”
Cassy’s eyes went wide. “No way! Have you used it yet?”
“No – we were busy today. All those vegetable-print bags are full of cherry tomatoes we picked, and we also checked our snares and set new ones, and hiked all the way out to the river and tried out a fish trap, and got in a fight with a mana-monster,” Danielle said.
“That, um, wow. That does sound like a busy day,” Cassy said. “Is the river very far? My dad said it could be a day trip if you were lucky, but it was better to plan on camping overnight.”
“Where we left the fish trap was about three hours hike,” Danielle said. “If we’d gone straight west from here, probably only two hours, although more of it would be in woods instead of the road, so maybe not. That’s why I’m doing penance. The snares are an hour in the opposite direction, and we spent a couple hours picking tomatoes which was also tiring, so we’re pretty wiped. Heather has the lowest Body of the group – well, you’re tied now, but only since Heather and I both raised ours from the mana bursts with the thing.” She paused, mumbling, “Don’t wanna talk about that.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Someone died, huh?” Cassy asked with a frown.
“Yeah. Room had three guys instead of four. Guy one picked a fight with guy two, and guy three tried to intervene. Guy one killed guy two and wounded guy three, but guy three gave him a nasty wound in return and called the Rangers,” Danielle summarized. “You were there for the part where the Ranger recruited us. Heather healed guy three, but guy one was still awake and talking smack. I offered to bandage him so he’d have a better chance of lasting until the Ranger Healer got there, because Heather was down to zero on mana and his wound was too big for her to handle anyway.
“I start work, the guys yell at each other, then guy two dies and they start shouting about who does and does not have the right to whose death mana, and guy one decides to draw his sword right in front of the Rangers. The Ranger was fighting pure defense, because guy one is dying on his feet, right, and she figures he’s not good enough to get past her, but then he realizes she’s been defending guy three real well, but she’s just a little out of position if he goes for Heather.
“I saw him realize it, and I’m on the floor with my staff – he kind of punched me, dunno what the Skill in it was, it bounced off this Trait I have – anyway, I went to knock his feet out from under him so he couldn’t kill Heather. Worked too well, he fell and cracked his head so hard he died on the spot. So the instigator dies, the least involved guy survives, I level, and Heather gets like 40 mana and her staff picks up a cool enhancement. Don’t talk to Heather about it, it’s all over except for the nightmares, you know?”
“Got it, thanks for the summary,” Cassy said. “I won’t bother you about it again, either.”
“Thanks. I’ll have to tell you more about the level-up later,” Danielle said. “But I was supposed to have time tonight to go over it more thoroughly and stuff, and I just haven’t, because with the river being further than I thought, and then the monster fight, and then noticing there were fish already and not wanting to leave them to maybe escape, we just got home way later than planned.”
“And I kind of ambushed you when you got home, too,” Cassy said with a grimace.
“And that,” Danielle agreed. “So let’s get dinner going, and then tomorrow, the revised plan is to not-fish and possibly also not check snare lines, but instead we’re going to prep cherry tomatoes for drying and hopefully make our first preserved food – yay!”
“Heh, that will be worth celebrating I think, but you sound so tired right now,” Cassy chuckled.
“Staying out of range of the nutjobs turns out to be tiring,” Danielle said. “I can understand why your dad thought fishing might work better as an overnight thing – if you have to go a ways to get to a part of the river that isn’t overcrowded, it could be a lot easier to just plan an overnight trip than get back on the same day.”
“Time to wash veggies!” Akari declared. “Put away that journal and get your pot, Danielle, and wash up a frying pan’s worth of each kind, please.”
“OK, I’m on it,” Danielle said, going over to her footlocker. “Give Cassy a frying pan for reference, so she can start figuring out how many onions that is. Oh! And make that token for the party reserve, unless your mana is lower than I think it is.”
“Oh, right – I almost forgot,” Akari said. She stopped what she was doing and made the token, then walked over and set the token on the corner of Heather’s footlocker. “Done!”
“Good thought,” Sadie said. “I’m due to make one for my savings, too.” She also made a mana token on the spot, and put it in her footlocker.
“Just don’t forget to put some in your Payment Plan, too,” Cassy said. “You can only add Skills with tokens at an Access Point, but you can add Skills with Payment Plan anywhere. Oh, thanks,” she added, taking a frying pan from Akari.
“That’s a good point, but the Skills will take a month to save up for at least. More, if we use mana on the Skills we already have. The catalog un-fair is happening in four weeks and then not again for four more months,” Sadie said. “Excuse me, Akari – thanks. I’ll get the stove set up. Anyway, we have to make sure we have tokens for the catalog thing – it’s our last chance until nearly winter to bulk up our emergency rations, maybe get doubles of some first aid supplies. There are things we would’ve doubled up on but couldn’t because of the one-per-customer rule at the Necessities store. That kind of thing.”
Danielle quietly added a few points to her Payment Plan, even though she agreed with Sadie. As much as she wanted to be able to buy whatever was good in the catalog, she also didn’t want it to be too obvious that she was, as Sadie kept putting it, “Sent-rich,” and that meant not going too wild with mana purchases. Besides, she had 300 mana in tokens just from selling the Skill token to Ranger Flo.
Cassy, meanwhile, was still talking with Sadie. “Sure, I understand that, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t be making tokens too. The healing angle is a big deal too – I hadn’t thought about that, but now that you mention it, it makes a lot of sense. Dad told me if I wanted to take a Healer Class, I should wait until I was at least level 4 and take it as a second Class, because until then it’s way too easy to get into situations where people expect you to heal stuff when your pool’s not nearly big enough. I think someone he knew must have had problems with that when he was Sent, but now I’m wondering if that person just didn’t know about using tokens.”
“From what Heather was saying, that seems unlikely, but if Payment Plan is a regular part of Advancing – like, part of that token we have to replace to go back in – and if the Un-Fair is a thing they don’t usually do, then it might just be that normal Sent put a lot of points in Payment Plan but hardly ever make tokens early on, and his patients therefore didn’t have any reserve to call on, like we did for Tom,” Danielle speculated. “I’m guessing plenty of people have thought of Sadie’s logic with the catalog deadline, but not many besides other Healers will think about having tokens in reserve for healing.”
“I’m ready for washing,” Cassy said.
“Go ahead and use the sink first, then,” Danielle told her. “I haven’t even figured out what kind of tomatoes to go for yet – what do you think, Akari, shall we experiment with purple ones, or stick to red, or mix it up?”
“I was thinking we should see how the tomatoes handled being carried to the river and back, and maybe use the bruised ones right away,” Akari said.
“Oh drat. That’s a great idea, but it means sorting,” Danielle said.
“I’ll help,” Sadie offered.
The two of them carefully poured out a bag of tomatoes on the counter, and started sorting them by how well they’d held up during travel. Akari was deboning the fish on the opposite counter. Cassy had the onions she was contributing at the sink, washing off the dirt. When she got done, she came back into the kitchen and posted herself next to Akari, where she started chopping them according to Akari’s instructions for the recipe. Danielle took a select panful of slightly squashed or otherwise travel damaged tomatoes to the sink to wash, while Sadie continued her sorting with the bag of purple tomatoes.
Danielle came back with her washed tomatoes and started cutting them into quarters while Sadie took a pot-full of bruised but not split tomatoes in to be washed. Akari had finished deboning the fish and started cooking the onions by the time Danielle was ready to pour in the tomatoes.
“All red ones after all?” Akari asked.
“The purple ones made the trip better,” Sadie said. “I washed up some bruised ones for eating, but none of them were squashed like the ones Danielle cut up for the pot. Are you ready for me to Purify the fish?”
“Yes please,” Akari said. “Is there more sorting to do after that?”
“Yeah, I’ll keep going while you cook,” Sadie said.
“I’ll get back to helping,” Danielle added.
“If you don’t object, I’m going to wash the rest of my onions and keep chopping them while we wait,” Cassy said. “I think I want to try drying some of them, like the tomatoes.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Akari said.
“If you’ll help us cut tomatoes tomorrow, I’ll make enough drying racks for you to use one too,” Sadie offered.
“That sounds like a good deal,” Cassy said a bit cautiously. “Like, I help you dry tomatoes, you help me dry onions? But the onions are still mine, and the tomatoes are still yours?”
“Sure, that works,” Danielle said. “The tomato picking was a room-group thing, and the onion picking was all you, so we’ll trade those as we feel the need, rather than trying to figure out the relative values of tomatoes versus onions right now.”
“Agree,” Sadie said. “Food is probably going to be a touchy subject pretty soon, so we should start right now and make sure that whoever gets the food, controls the food.”
“Yeah, it’s one thing for the room, where we’re all eating together, but another thing once we start adding people from other rooms,” Akari said distractedly. “Um, which is right now! So yes, starting now. Begin how we intend to go on, and stuff.”
“Is it going to be the four of us chopping and you working on the drying racks, Sadie?” Danielle asked. “Because we’ve got way too many tomatoes for those tilting fire-drying logs you made. I do think we’ll get use out of them, but I’m hoping you have another idea for bigger drying surfaces.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking of a kind that uses a lot of cord. It feels a little wasteful, because – well, it uses a lot of cord, and we’ve only got so much. If we had time, I’d make grass cording for it all instead, but if it’s a choice between waiting weeks for me to make cording and wasting tomatoes, or wasting Inside-made cording but getting tomatoes dried now, well.”
“We pick the tomatoes,” Akari said.
“Definitely,” Danielle agreed. “Besides, drying racks should be reusable, right? So it’s not a waste, it’s an investment. We can collect cording materials while the tomatoes dry, and you can spend all winter twisting them.”
“While we eat sun-dried tomatoes!” Akari concluded.
The others laughed. Over on her bed, Heather muttered something incomprehensible.
Everyone got back to work. Danielle and Sadie sorted the tomatoes into nine piles; one row each for purple, dark red, and normal red tomatoes, and one column each of fully undamaged, bruised, and squashed tomatoes. There were hardly any squashed purple tomatoes, though, and even then they weren’t as badly split as many of their red counterparts. Sadie ended up washing them and using her Purify skill on them, then adding them to the pot-full that were designated for eating raw with supper and/or breakfast. Akari, meanwhile, shook and stirred the frying pans, added spices from the Necessities store’s cheap shaker sets, and finally added the fish and stirred some more. Once it was firm, she cut it into strips as she’d promised, and rolled them on each side to brown. With no breading, they didn’t look much like what Danielle thought of as fish sticks, but they were long, thin pieces of cooked fish.
Akari finally declared them done, and everyone helped move the tomato piles out of the way. Danielle woke up Heather, and those with camp mess kits brought plates, while Cassy settled for a frying pan. They ate the hot food quickly and quietly, unwilling to delay their late meal further with conversation. Danielle wasn’t overly fond of the dish, but she was plenty hungry enough to devour it anyway. Heather was wrinkling her nose at it, but she also ate it without complaint. Sadie finished her portion and declared it “Really good.” Cassy agreed, but Akari said it wasn’t nearly as good as when her mom made it, and that it needed oil and better garlic than the dry granules from the cheap spice shaker.
They finished the hot food, and sat around the pot of washed tomatoes (except Cassy, who stood at the end of the counter for lack of a fifth stool), eating them to fill in the corners. Danielle realized, after a few minutes, that everyone was sticking to the red tomatoes.
“I’m gonna try one of the purple ones,” she said. “If nothing crazy happens, we can split the rest of them, all right?”
The others chuckled nervously as Danielle popped the tomato into her mouth.
“How’s it taste?” Akari asked.
“A little bit, hm, I almost want to say spicy? Good, but there’s definitely a little something there that doesn’t feel normal for a tomato,” Danielle reported. Then she swallowed, and suddenly froze in shock.
- > You have absorbed 1 mana from a mana-rich food item.
- > 1 mana added to your mana pool.
“What? What’s wrong?” Heather asked anxiously.
“They’re mana batteries,” Danielle blurted.
“What do you mean by mana batteries?” Akari asked.
“It just gave me mana! Into my pool, not just in the background like you get from a mana burst!” Danielle excitedly reached for another purple tomato, and ate it quickly, though she forced herself to chew it properly even through her excitement. Sure enough, she got the same pair of messages. “It happened again! They might all be like that!” she exclaimed.
The others all reached for one of their own, and Danielle watched as they all swallowed and then obviously read System messages of their own.
“That’s amazing,” Cassy said. “Can I come pick tomatoes with you tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow,” Sadie said. “Tomorrow is cutting day for you and rack making day for me.”
“We need to give the green ones time to ripen anyway,” Akari said. “But when we go back in a day or two, yeah, you can come picking with us. I wonder if they stay like this if they’re cut or cooked or dried or anything?”
“Only one way to find out,” Heather said. “Shall we have rabbit and roasted tomatoes for dinner tomorrow?”
“Mostly red ones, though,” Sadie said. “Just one purple one each, until we’re sure it doesn’t ruin them.”
“Speaking of which, there are only three left,” Cassy said.
“I’ve already had two, so that’s one more for everyone from the room,” Danielle said. “Cassy got the tie-breaker tomato as a welcome gift,” she added with a grin.
Cassy nodded seriously as the others chuckled and ate their purple tomatoes. Then they all went back to eating the red ones until they were full.
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