She didn’t want suffering to turn into the norm rather than the exception, but when Aloe woke up the next day, she still hadn’t fully recovered. The damage had quite literally inverted. Whilst before her calves ached and her hands were numb, now her calves were numb and her hands ached.
After waking up, she lingered groggily in her bed. She didn’t have enough strength to wake up nor the sleepiness to go back to sleep. In a random thought, Aloe sniffed her bedsheets.
She gagged, jumping out of the bed.
“Dunes!” Aloe coughed repeatedly. “What in the heavens is that? It’s as if a drunkard shat on my bed and then passed away on it!”
The realization of her words, the idea she had pushed unknowingly in her mind, only made her gag more.
“Ugh, I need a bath. And to clean these sheets.” She painfully walked out of her bedroom and opened the main door. “Oh, clean air~” Aloe moaned in salvation. “How much I needed you.”
Her mind had been elsewhere these last days, and it only showed now. Not only she had ridden Fikali for a full day, which would have surely made her smell worse than the most aged cheese, but she then went to sleep for another full day without even removing her underwear.
“I feel so dirty...” Aloe whispered as she leaned her body on the doorframe, the morning sun caressing her naked body.
Then her stomach grumbled.
One would have thought that it was because she was starving, she had after all only had a piece of jerky and some pistachios in two days. But the problem ran deeper than that.
“Oof...” Aloe clutched her stomach and ran outside after donning her boots.
She hadn’t gone to the toilet in three days.
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“Oh my...” Aloe exhaled like she had never exhaled in her life before as she left the latrine. “Life anew!”
It had been a short but intense, mostly messy, experience that Aloe hoped never to repeat it again. She left the door to the latrine open, that place needed some air, and she needed some water.
Her stomach was emptier than desert, but she wasn’t in any haste to eat. Instead, she decided to replicate her routine by grabbing her boiling kit and refiling her water stocks. She only had one waterskin remaining, and judging by how thirsty she was, it wouldn’t last more than an hour.
As Aloe set up the kit and kindled the fire, she saw Fikali lying under a tree. She continued sleeping peacefully, unbothered by the recent events.
After having done the same chores for a month now, Aloe had become quite acquainted with how to light a fire. She was working with flint and steel, so it wasn’t as complex as it would have been with just sticks, but she doubted most people could just kindle embers with a single flick of a wrist.
Her stomach grumbled once more, reminding her that she was on the verge of starvation, even if her mind whispered that she shouldn’t eat.
With a groan, Aloe stood up from her clutching position and did some gathering. That was the advantage of the oasis, instead of shopping in the bazaar, she just picked up the freshest fruits. She grabbed two hefty coconuts, packed with their sweet milky juice, and a handful of dates.
Instead of going back home to eat, Aloe sat under the shade of a tree and started her breakfast.
Opening coconuts was difficult, especially without her ‘strength’ infusion, but after some hits against a rock and the butt of her knife.
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“Ah~” Aloe moaned after almost finishing the first coconut in a single gulp. “I needed that refreshment.” She led her hands to the dates, but instants before she put the fruit in her mouth. “Whoops, I almost forgot to rinse it.”
With yet another groan, Aloe stood up and brought the cluster of dates to the oasis to clean it.
“Getting more dates will be a problem in the future.” Aloe mussed as she dived the fruits into the water. “I have almost stripped the shorter trees out of dates, the rest are way too tall for me to reach them...”
Palm trees were tall overall, especially the date trees compared to the coconut ones. Aloe wasn’t sure if it was just a coincidence, or that date trees were simply taller. Some of them were beyond a dozen meters tall, a height far too high for Aloe even if she intended to climb them.
“I guess there’s nothing like a ‘climb’ infusion.” She sighed before getting to her spot. “I mean, I haven’t tried, but my experience so far tells me... no.”
Infusions, especially internal ones, had been amplifications of characteristics rather than abilities. Toughness, strength, and speed. Those had been the only three ones Aloe had managed to find so far. If she were to make a new one – the idea of ‘recovery’ still lingered on her mind – it wouldn’t be as trivial as climbing.
Aloe took her sweat time for breakfast. Even if she was no longer ‘tired’ as such, she was very much still in pain. By the time she was done, the water in the cauldron was already boiling, which she promptly poured on the amphora and refilled it for a new batch.
Today she would at least do three or four batches at minimum to build sizeable reserves.
“Alright,” she stretched her arms and torso in a half-groan half-moan, “time to check if the irrigation still works and the plants are alive. Damage control, damage control.”
She hoped so, but at the same time, she wasn’t that much worried. Four days without water wouldn’t kill her plants. She thought, or more like, believed.
Her first stop was the potatoes. Not only they were the closest crops, but also the ones who composed most of her diet.
Most of the palm leaf pipes remained in place, but a considerable amount had toppled. Either for the wind, the dwellers, or any other factor, Aloe couldn’t know. The only thing that mattered was that in those sections water no longer arrived.
The damages weren’t as bad as she would have thought after seeing the disconnected sections. Aloe put her thumb into the soil.
“Hmm, not dry, but not humid either.” She whispered in ponderation. “Maybe in a few more days they would have wilted, but they are still fine. I don’t think I’ll water them yet, let’s see if remaking the pipe system is enough.”
The next half hour she spent it fixing all the toppled pipes. But that was not the last of the problems. Some were just misaligned, and that was enough for water to filter through, making it so the outer reaches received less water than they should have.
“I... I think this is enough.” Aloe said as she stood up and dusted off her dirtied hands. “If it’s still dry in the afternoon, I’ll need to come up with an alternative.”
She wasn’t ready to give up the automatic irrigation yet, especially considering the last events in Sadina. She quickly pushed those thoughts aside and moved to the other crops.
The beans and the medicinal plants suffered from the same problems as the potatoes, which took some time to fix but nothing that was beyond her reach. The bananas and pistachios, on the other hand, were perfectly fine. Aloe wasn’t sure how much water was needed for a tree to grow up, but considering how palm trees were able to do so without being watered, she guessed not much.
On top of that, the bananas and pistachios had their dedicated Flourishing Springs for each crop type, meaning there weren’t as many parts as with the other more expansive crops.
“Alright!” Aloe sprang out of her sitting position, getting an annoyed ‘wro’ from Fikali. “Oops, sorry for waking you up, but it was time already, don’t deny it.”
It wasn’t noon yet, but the sun was definitely creeping closer to its apex. Considering the greenhouse still remained, Aloe went back home to fill the cauldron there to start boiling the water.
“Ugh, I forgot to tell Mirah to give me cooking classes.” There hadn’t been much time for that, but she cursed her faltering presence of mind for forgetting that. “Well, it’s time to have more potato and bean soup.”
She lit the kitchenette’s hearth with the same ease as she had started the fire at the outside, though she became worried by the dwindling pile of dry wood.
“Hmm...” She mumbled. “I should collect more thatch and let it dry. Or could I cut down a palm tree? They are big though... I’m scared of what may happen if I cut it incorrectly. It wouldn’t begin to topple all the other trees in a chain reaction, would it?”
Thankfully, she didn’t use much wood. Only for cooking or boiling water, and with thatch from the palm trees she normally had enough. Though she had used a log, or two, from the ones Karaim had stockpiled when the fire wasn’t enough. Her saving grace was that even though it was winter, nights weren’t cold enough for her to light the hearth to heat herself. Even if that was the case, maybe ‘toughness’ could help her.
“I didn’t have enough with money being a problem, now wood is too.” Aloe sighed, leaving the problem for later.
It was now time to check the greenhouse. She prayed that nothing had happened to the highlight of the oasis.