Lolilyuri waited. And waited. And waited.

Eventually, as the sun continued to rise and everyone continued to sleep with no sign of anyone bringing them food, she had to face the terrible truth.

No one was bringing them bread for breakfast.

How ungrateful this demesne was! She'd allowed her citizens to stay up half the night helping them look for their Binder, she'd even contributed with light, and no one so much as showed up with breakfast? Truly ungrateful.

All the searchers had straggled back in by morning, not long after Lori had woken up from her restful sleep, reported their complete lack of findings, and then finally crawled back into their beds. In the light, Lori had finally been able to tell where the house all their stuff was in was located, and had helped Rian and the others go to sleep while she'd waited for breakfast. Alas, there was none.

Well, at least they still had travel rations. That was… something.

…

Maybe they had a centralized cooking area she could get bread from.

Faced with the alternatives of doing nothing and eating travel rations (she never thought meat would ever lose its appeal, but eating nothing but had managed to accomplish the impossible), Lori decided to risk going and finding some bread she might be able to beg off someone. Taking her staff, in case she had to hit anyone, she slipped out of the wood house.

Actually, was it a hut? It was one whole piece of wood with an outside like tree bark, with a roof that was simply the walls coming together in a dome. That was a hut right? You probably needed more right angles to be a proper house…

Outside, Lori's disappointment grew. Despite the sun being well up in the sky, she seemed to be the only person out and about on the streets of River's Fork Demesne save for the two militiamen– a different pair from earlier, both looking tired and just sitting around outside– guarding Grem's prison, who looked at her warily but didn't challenge her. She shook her head, adjusting her hat to block the glare. Did these people have no work ethic? No matter how late they'd stayed up the night before, there was work to be done, civilization to be raised from the ground up, food to be cooked, guests to be fed…

Stomach grumbling, she headed out to walk around the town, smelling for bread, trying to catch the elusive smell of baking. Or… was it cooking bread? It was a flat bread, probably heated in a pan, so it was cooked rather than baked, since baking needed an oven…

Sadly, she only heard the sounds of snoring through the open, unglazed windows of the other wooden homes as people slept in, wasting the day away. So disorganized. Was the greeting they'd gotten yesterday, with so many people up and about, an aberration of some sort? No smoke blew from chimneys now, unlike yesterday.

Movement caught her eye and Lori turned, finding herself looking at one of the tall trees whose branches wove part of the wooden dome above. Smaller branches were already growing from the weave, making the pillar look fuzzy and freshly green. Several children were climbing the woven branches of one particular tree pillar, while others stood below, holding the bottoms of their skirts and shirts out to make an impromptu net and walking underneath the climbers or calling and pointing at something above. Bewildered, and sighing at seeing children left dangerously unsupervised– what if something happened to them?– she made her way towards them.. As she got closer, she saw they were apparently picking fruits from the tree, some sort of small blue fruit with… yellow tendrils?... that grew in clusters hanging beneath the branches, and which the climbing children were carefully picking and dropping down to the ones waiting below. A lot of the fruits hit the ground instead of being caught by the nets, but from the resulting laughter and how they were picked up and added to the nearest child's catch, this didn't seem to adversely impact the fruit's edibility. Some of the younger children, who apparently possessed less impulse control, had peeled some open, revealing a translucent, pale yellow flesh around a long red seed. The flesh they ate with great relish, while the seeds were all thrown into a pile.

Lori eyed the tree. She didn't know what kind of fruit it was, but it was clearly edible. She wondered if it was native to the region or if these settlers had brought it with them from somewhere else. That tree though… she looked down at her shoes. They were scuffed and rather unsuitable for climbing trees. Indeed, on a second look, the children were climbing barefoot. Still, even if she copied them, she doubted she'd be able to pull herself up the tree like they could. Maybe she could use jets of water to get some to fall off? But she'd have to go back to the river first, since she could hardly just pull vapor out of the air here…

"Tah! Stranger! You with the hat!"

Lori blinked, and it took her a moment to realize she was being spoken to. She look around, but no one seemed to be facing her way.

"Up here!"

She moved her gaze upward, following the voice. Near her, on an outstretched branch that honestly looked too narrow to bear his weight, was a boy who for some reason gave a strong brat-like impression. He was hanging upside down by his legs and one arm, his dark purple hair pointing at the ground as his other arm held a huge cluster of the blue and yellow fruits.

"Can you catch this? It's too much for anyone else and I can't hold on and throw it down at little bit at a time," he called.

"Do I get to have any?" Lori asked.

He gave her a strange look, made harder to identify from being upside down. "Why wouldn't you?" he said. "It's not like anyone owns the tree."

Well. All right then. Perhaps she'd found breakfast. Carefully setting aside her staff, she considered trying to catch it with her hat… but no. It was a useful hat, and if she tore it, there probably wasn't a milliner for taums. As the boy swung impatiently, she took off her raincoat and held the lapels and hem, making a depression. The boy threw the cluster of fruits, which she barely caught, almost having it roll off her raincoat. The fruit was a bit heavier than she had assumed, and she adjusted her grip on her coat to any subsequent fruits wouldn't fall off.

For the next little while she walked back and forth, following the boy and, when other children saw how much her coat could carry, others as they called for her to walk under them, throwing pieces of fruit in and cheering when they managed to get it into the growing pile she was carrying. At first she was worried one of the fruits would break open, but the skin turned out to be much tougher than she had assumed. Very firm, certainly. Thankfully, breaking off the fruits didn't seem to release much sap, for which she was grateful.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Eventually she had to put down her coat, as her arms were tiring greatly from holding it up. She sat down at the base of the tree pillar, the roots of which had apparently been shaped, most likely by the late Deadspeaker, into surfaces at the right height to function as seats. Lori noted that on closer inspection the trunk itself had convenient-looking spurs, as if from the stumps of branches, for climbing up to pick the fruits. She wasn't alone, as the girls and boys not adventurous enough to climb the tree themselves sat with her, dumping the fruits from their skirts and shirts and beginning to crack them open with great appreciation and relish.

Up close, while the yellow-tipped tendrils were… well, slightly disturbing to look at and mildly unnerving to touch, it wasn't that bad. On closer inspection, the dark blue of the skin had a dry, leathery appearance punctuated by the tendrils, which were actually quite soft and pliable. She held the fruit between two fingers like the children were doing and squeezed.

Nothing happened.

"You have to put more force into it," the boy who'd first called out to her said as he sat down opposite the pile of fruits, tucking his bare feet under him. The pile was much smaller than it had been when she'd first sat down, since other children had taken bunches for themselves. Despite that, it was still a sizable pile. He picked up one and twisted it off the stalk it was still attached to. "Like this," he demonstrated, squeezing hard. The skin tore open, and the fleshy inside nearly flew out of the skin. He barely caught it, then popped the whole thing in his mouth, chewing carefully, before turning his head aside and spitting out the seed so it flew with precision on the pile nearby. "And you have to put the seeds there, so it can be planted again."

"Noted," Lori said, examining the fruit in her hand before turning it slightly and trying again. This time the skin tore, revealing the translucent yellow flesh underneath. She raised it to her mouth using the skin to hold it and, rather than popping the whole thing in, took a careful bite.

Her front teeth dug into the juicy flesh, scraping along the seed in the middle, and she tore off and swallowed the bit of fruit in her mouth. It was wonderfully soft and sweet, with a deeper sweet aftertaste. She chewed once and swallowed, enjoying the flavor. It was delicious!

Lori examined the half-revealed seed, which was red and smooth, and covered with yellowish fruit juice. She popped the whole thing into her mouth like the children were doing so as not to waste a drop of flavor, spitting out the seed to place it next to her. In the time she'd eaten one, the boy across from her had already finished four more and was popping open a fifth. What had once seemed like a sizable pile suddenly seemed insufficient for two people as Lori grabbed another fruit and started to pop it open…

For a while, there were only the wet sounds of fruit being popped and eaten, with the occasional spit to the seed pile.

"Thanks for the help, stranger," the brat-esque boy said between spitting out a seed and putting a fruit in his mouth.

"It was nothing," Lori said between one fruit and the next. She spat out a seed and put it on the pile next to her. "I was hungry anyway. No one was making breakfast."

"Yeah, everyone's tota and tyatya are still asleep," the boy agreed. "I guess something must have happened."

"Binder Shanalorre ran away from home last night," Lori provided, putting her fruitskin neatly to the side. The boy had been following her example after just tossing it at first, so now they had another pile between them.

"She did?" the boy looked surprised. "Why?"

"I have no idea," Lori said, popping a fruit into her mouth and working the seed out of the flesh, popping the seed onto her hand before she chewed the fruit with gusto. She swallowed. "Everyone was looking for her last night to ask her."

"If she's hiding, no one's ever gonna find her," the boy said with the air of someone who knew what he was talking about. "Shana's really good at hide-and-find. She can climb anything and hide for forever."

"Her aunt will be very distressed," Lori said. She picked up another fruit and began to squeeze. "This is delicious. What do you call it?"

"Hairy blueballs," the boy said with a grin. "Wiz Kosh named it."

"Ah." Lori looked up at the huge tree pillar they were beneath. "Did he do something to this tree besides the obvious? It seems to have a lot of fruit on it."

"Yeah, Wiz Kosh did some magic on it, said it would keep makin' lots and lots of blueballs," the boy said. "A lot of the trees are blueball trees. We go to a different tree a day, and by the time we get back the trees got new blueballs hanging on it for us to squeeze the juice out of." The boy grinned, as if expecting Lori to be shocked.

"Ah. So the name is deliberately vulgar," she said. "Did the late Binder Koshay find it very funny?"

"Oh yeah, Wiz Kosh loved dirty jokes like that," the boy said. "Really scraped Wiz Laven raw though, especially since she couldn't stop people from using the name."

Lori paused. "Wiz Laven?" she said. The name sounded vaguely familiar, like it had come up before but she'd forgotten about it. "I thought Binder Koshay was the only wizard you had."

"Nah, we had Wiz Laven too," the boy said, tapping his head. "She was a mentyist."

"Mentalist," Lori corrected out of habit.

"Yeah, one of those," the boy said. "My tota says Wiz Laven saved us all when Wiz Kosh couldn't, and that's why they're both gone now."

I was there when Laven took his place, saw what she did…

Oh. Ah. Lori should have realized. Shanalorre had mentioned wizards 'like tota and tyatya'. Two wizards. She'd been hearing it, but it hadn't been able to put it together. Binder Koshay was one wizard… and this Laven, Wiz Laven was the other. Both were dead, leaving Shanalorre to be the Binder, because there was no other wizard…

Her parents were Koshay and Laven… Grem had said that, hadn't he?

For a moment, Lori just sat there, and forced herself to imagine what it would be like to lose both her mothers… and immediately stopped. It was too… impossible a feeling.

No wonder Binder Shanalorre had run away. No wonder she had been crying and tired and…

The fruit pile got smaller as Lori sat there, staring at nothing as the boy kept on eating fruit. Finally, only a little bit of the pile was left.

"Well, thanks for the help stranger," the boy said, getting up. He politely kept his bare feet off Lori's coat. Other children were getting up as well, their piles of fruit finished. They took the skins and seeds and carried it with them, its intended fate unknown. The boy picked up the skins of the fruits he and Lori had eaten, but left her seeds alone. "Most old people yell at us and tell us to climb down when we're picking hairy blueballs."

Lori shook herself out of her stupor. "Well, you said you'd give me some," she said. "And I was hungry."

The boy grinned. "I'm Vari," he said, holding out his hand.

"Your hand is sticky," Lori noted.

The boy looked at it and tried to wipe it on his shirt, but that didn't help. "We'll shake some other time," Vari said. "What's your name, stranger?"

"Lolilyuri," she said.

"That's a long name," he said. "Don't you have a shorter one?"

"Lori."

"See you around, Miss Lori," the boy-brat said with a wave. "Maybe you can help us get some blueballs again." He walked off, still in his bare feet.

"Vari," she called while the name was still fresh in her mind. He turned, walking backwards to face her. "Where are your shoes?"

"Don't need 'em," he said. "Climbers climb with their feet! Shoes make you fall off."

The children all walked down the streets under the dome, leaving Lori to her little pile of fruit.

She looked at the pile, then took off her hat and put them all inside, supporting the cone of the pointy hat with one hand. With so little, it was a much better fit. Then she set it down and pulled on her raincoat.

As she looked back over River's Fork, she saw smoke starting to rise from some chimneys. Finally, people were getting up.

Shaking her head, Lori picked up her hat and staff and headed for where Rian and the others were probably still sleeping. Hopefully the lack of breakfast would be corrected with some lunch. It was either that or… rations.

Maybe she should keep these blueballs for herself…