There were no words to describe how much Aloe had needed to draw. Not just as an activity to pass the time, but as an outlet for her stress and frustration. Her skills were crude – even if she had good calligraphy from her previous profession – as she was working with a knife instead of a quill, but she promised herself she would get better. She wanted to stay here at least until she evolved all the plants she had gathered so far, so she still had a while to get good at 'veritas etching'.
For now, she practiced her strokes as she didn't have much parchment to work on. The veritas healed slowly and healing it with Forced Growth was a misuse of her much needed vitality, so until the rest of the Aloe Veritas she had planted grew, she would have to limit her parchment usage.
But overall, she felt happy. It was a flawed happiness, definitely not one a person should have as she only was escaping reality to the best of her ability, but it was happiness, nonetheless.
Who would have thought that eating warm food and drawing could do so much for someone's mental health? That was what Aloe told herself as she kept practicing to pass the days.
Her new blood infusion priority was the Blossomflames. All being said, she should be growing an aloe vera or two to make new vitality pills as she already had a Blossomflame, but the slow cooking and lack of light were killing her. If she had multiple Blossomflames then she could allow herself to light them without worrying about them withering from overuse.
She expected her Blossomflames to grow significantly in the coming days as she planted every seed she evolved, which was several seeds each day. Though she still had some in reserves in her little heat bag as temperatures were still low in her crevice and she preferred to have some external heat source to not suffer from hypothermia.
Almost a week after having grown the first veritas – it was hard keeping track of the time as she couldn't tell how long a 'day' was – the first Blossomflame finally grew. It took a lot of time as the blood infusion's power was spread between multiple flowers, and like before, she also had to share the blood with the potatoes.
And talking about food, it surprised her how fast her edible mushrooms were growing. Fungi growth time had never come up in her research, but Aloe was pleased to find that after a week under the effects of accelerated growth, the 'liberty caps' – she had never heard that sobriquet before – were mostly grown.
They still looked a bit small compared to the ones she had found naturally growing on the riverbed, so she decided to wait a few more days before risking a high by consuming the hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Aloe wanted to do something with the Blossomflames. Not just use them as makeshift hearths, but also as lighting and heating. But there were some problems with that. The main part of her camp that would benefit from the heat of the Blossomflames was the crevice where she slept but planting them there presented some issues.
Namely the lack of water and soil.
It seemed stupid to behave as if water was a problem when she lived next to a river, but she had no way to transport it beyond her saucepan. And the capacity of such ceramic was limited. Now, she could make the soil in the crevice more fertile with multiple blood infusions, but that was an even more limited resource.
In her greatest strike of brilliance, Aloe tried searching for clay. By all means, it was a good idea. If she found a deposit of clay, nothing would stop her from making more ceramics even if they were poor quality. But that meant being able to find clay.
She wasn't exactly a cosmopolitan as Sadina wasn't that big, but Aloe was far from a survivalist. She didn't know what clay looked like in nature, or where to look for it. She only had a hint that there should be clay at a river like the Tehen, but that was where her knowledge ended.
For now, she left the idea on the side. It could be useful, but she had to organize her thoughts a bit first.
"I could grow Flourishing Springs for irrigation…" That was the compromise she settled on. "If I plant the Flourishing Springs seeds I already have evolved and let them grow by their own account, maybe then I'll have enough time and resources to spare some blood infusions for my crevice."
Her top priority was getting enough Blossomflames to sustain constant fires, using them as a heating system for her litter was a secondary goal for after the former had been accomplished.
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At another point in her life, she would have been stressed out of her mind from having this much work, but her current enlightened self couldn't help but appreciate the mindless and difficult work. Keeping herself occupied was what kept her from collapsing and crying herself to sleep.
After having grown the second Blossomflame, food became more delicious. Because she could use two of them to cook instead of one, that meant that she was no longer left with half-cooked food. She couldn't even care that she burnt her potatoes on the first try, charcoal tasted divine.
A few days later, two more Blossomflames finished growing naturally without her assistance, alongside a patch of mushrooms. Now that her potatoes were many and that she had enough of a backlog of food and evolved plants, she allowed herself to only perform blood infusions every other day to recover herself.
"I'm going to regret this, aren't I?" Aloe groaned as she gathered a handful of her edible mushrooms.
The veritas specified they were psychoactive, meaning that she would have a trip at best. What could happen at worst she couldn't guess.
To play it safe, she decided to make a 'soup' with a potato and a handful of liberty caps. She first roasted them in the ceramic pot by themselves over a whole Blossomflame session to make the mushrooms lose their potency. Then she went over two more Blossomflames to make the soup.
She was playing it very safe.
"Come on, flare, you little girls." Slowly but surely, Aloe was getting better at commanding the Blossomflames. Truth be told, she had no idea how she was doing it, but she was maintaining their flames for longer after she had already been healed.
This meant less wrist-cutting, but the toll on the Blossomflames was the same. A normal person would be enthusiastic about suffering less, but at this point, Aloe could no longer feel the pain of her cuts. If she wasn't donning acuity, her sense of pain would be dulled. Even more so if she switched to toughness right after. The constant mistreatment of her body had the positive outcome of her being able to switch faster to acuity and recovery, but she would still need some months before reaching levels equivalent to toughness.
The cultivator was happy enough to continue stirring her soup and 'fan' the flames more.
Overall, the cooking session spanned well over two hours, more than enough time to evolve two cumin seeds as she had nothing better to do as she kept cutting her wrists. This cooking session finally revealed to her the extent of the scars on her wrists. The reason why she had them wasn't because the Blossomflame was losing potency, but because they were utterly decimated. Not even two newly evolved flowers were able to erase the scars.
Whilst… worrying that the Blossomflames could only heal so much sustained damage, Aloe decided to keep cutting herself on the same spots as that was a better alternative than covering her body with scars.
"Well," she started with a hint of fear as she moved the saucepan away from the Blossomflame. "Time for the taste test."
Switching out of acuity was a must when she was eating as her taste would be otherwise enhanced, and her cooking was scrappy enough with good ingredients for her to taste literal garbage with a gourmand's tongue. Even then, it didn't matter what internal infusion was used. Any worked as long as it wasn't acuity. But this was not the case currently.
The cultivator donned toughness in fear of the mushrooms.
Her mind was her palace, her only safe and sacred place, even if she constantly thrashed it herself. But that was more reason for not allowing a substance to denigrate it more.
With a trembling hand, Aloe drank directly from the ceramic pot.
"Hmm~" She moaned with pleasure at the hot liquid. The coldness of the Tehen River always sapped her heat, so any source of warmth was appreciated. "I don't know if it’s the introduction of a new flavor, but this soup actually tastes good." Said the woman with default little-to-no sense of taste, further dulled by her current infusion.
Aloe greedily drank from the soup, swallowing potato chunks and mushrooms whole. She hadn't noticed she had been this desperate for good food until now, even if she could barely taste it.
"Maybe it tastes better if…" In a lapse of judgment, the cultivator switched toughness for acuity. Suddenly her senses expanded. "Oh," she moaned again, "that's way better than before!"
In an epicure trance, Aloe devoured the remaining contents of the pot. Her tongue exploded in flavor, and her senses were way more expanded than before by her recent increase in vitality reserves. It was water with potatoes and mushrooms, but… it tasted so good~
"Ah," Aloe panted. "Yes, it was a good decision growing these mushrooms," she giggled.
The petite woman sniffed the empty bowl, the food may have satiated her hunger, but not her gluttony, so she started licking the ceramic clean.
"I need to do this soup again," she continued giggling. "Ah, the headaches are gone, hehe…"
Aloe left the pot on the ground and stood up, but suddenly found out that her sense of balance which should have been boosted by acuity was mysteriously gone.
"Oh, woah, dizzy," the cultivator giggled as she attempted to regain her footing. "Why is everything so… bright?"
The sense stance allowed her to see better in the dark, but that didn't mean she could see well. Or at least, this well. Aloe turned her head to see her four Blossomflames burst into flames. The deflagration was beautiful, and the flames were friendly, but the sudden imagery was so violent that she couldn't help to backpedal.
A bad idea for someone with a diminished sense of balance.
Before she could become aware of it, Aloe tumbled down and fell into the Tehen River.