Chapter 22

Gentle Brews

Brewer’s Reputation: 2,123.

Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.

Hawkin

We plummeted.

For 2 full minutes, the very air roared at my face. Abigail’s hair trailed her like the tail of a comet. Our clothing clung to our chests. Tears beaded at the corners of my eyes. She was laughing but I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t even hear myself laughing.

When we angled through a V of geese, they must have squawked when we passed. Their formation broke into a scribble. But they weren’t the only close encounter. We had to look out for the huge branches, large as bridges, that came by at awesome speed. I wondered if Abigail was clutching her Anti-gravity attribute ale as hard as I was.

Of course, a gold rank Brewer must have been used to such circumstances. She seemed entirely relaxed. She had in one hand, the Anti-gravity beer; in the other, a Slow Time beer.

Near the canopy, the beating of my heart competed with the screaming air. My heart raced. By reflex, I put my hands out as though to brace for impact. Once I could make out the definition of leaves and even see the forest floor beneath, terror made me sip the Anti-gravity ale.

My momentum did not stop, but it did slow down. Abigail and I alighted on the flimsiest branches of an old growth red oak. I wiped the wind-pulled tears from my eyes. We shared warm-warm beer because the dive had stolen heat from our bodies. I sniffled and then leapt down to the forest floor. Abigail followed.

We trekked north without hesitation. Our conversation was filled with recounting the dive. We laughed back and forth while we navigated desire-paths and old trails. We remarked things we could forage. A fallen oak was riddled with pink oyster mushrooms. A new growth of hemlock needles were at picking level. Partridge berries offered nothing but crunch. We took some of everything for dinner later.

Everything we stumbled upon was a delight, but one delight made our breathing shallow. We slowed our pace. I brought a hand up my lips as if to help my tongue invent a new word for the spectacle before us.

All that Honey Cocoon attribute beer that Abigail had slung far and wide into the wind, it had fallen into the wilderness like particles of a dust storm. Silver sheening cocoons breathed on every branch and in every nook of branch and trunk. Cocoons dripped from leaves. Orbs of silk wiggled like trapped caterpillars. The sun that could breach the canopy, made some cocoons breathe faster. They littered the trail.

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Single file, Abigail and I continued along the path. We picked our steps carefully. We gazed upon the largest of cocoons, and I had to admit that my hackles rose. Giant breathing cocoons was not an entirely pleasant thing to come upon, however magical it was as an event. Especially since the cocoons pervaded the wilderness. Deep into the wilderness, far from that towering tree, so far that we had to stop at one point for a breather. We stopped where the holly grew. Their trunks were as thick as Thrush and their branches brandished spines and red berries in small breezes. We respected their warning and cut into my Beyond the Cabin plane.

There was daily work to do: Brew goblin spit beer, clone brew Ethereal Dungeon beers, tend to the various planes that I’d made, forge ethereal ingredients, use Brewer’s Harvest on hops and grains. Brewing was much faster with Abigail. She couldn’t help with clone brewing ethereal beers, but she did help me where we had skills in common. However much I wanted to help her brew in return, when we arrived back at the holly, she was brewing gold rank cereal maize beers for her shard quest; a silver rank Brewer would only hold her back. But I watched and learned.

Her gentleness had continuity. She could walk where delicate flowers grew—poppies—and not disturb a single pistil. Honeybees might rear their heads as though they’d heard a foreign whisper, and only then would the flower bounce. When she divided foods—apples, squash, potatoes, mushrooms—she might as well be asking with a “please” for the food to open. What I witnessed was not absent of any gentleness. Maize cereal flowed from her inventory like a long lost dog. Water streamed like the body of a long bottled genie, already bubbling with laughter at a joke she hadn’t yet said. Brewer’s yeast swarmed in a halo over her crown. Hops blushed, perhaps because they’d been chosen. There was even a cardinal, head cocked, that perched among the red berries of the holy. He stayed there like an ornament. I couldn’t blame him and I hoped he couldn’t blame me for being so mesmerized by Abigail’s brewing.

“Instead of forging an ethereal barrel,” Abigail said, “could you forge bottles?”

“How many?”

“Two hundred and thirty, 250ml bottles.”

Cross-legged on the forest floor, I focused my attention and began forging ethereal labels. I stopped when each label was about a foot long. I wrapped them and kept the tip untucked so it could be pressed into the neck for a cork. It was quick work. Using Brewer’s Bubble, I helped Abigail bottle all her fresh beer. She promptly donated each one, via her system, to Potere.

“I’m now six thousand six hundred and seventy-six shards away from finishing the quest,” she said.

Branches rustled in one of the holly trees. I spied a streak of red shooting away. After a moment, Abigail and I did as the cardinal had done, and left. We continued our trek north.

“Could we climb the other tall trees?” Abigail said. “I have enough Honey Cocoon left that all these woods can be covered. Imagine the fireflies.”

“I’d love to.”

“We’ll be away from the cabin for a while.”

“We’ll pop by for weekly deliveries,” I said.

“We’re missing prime weather for planting.”

“Why don’t we spend a few hours on an ethereal plane or two every morning?”

“To plant?” she said. “What do you want to plant?”

“Everything.”

“Cucumbers?”

“Cucumbers, sure,” I said.

“I adore cucumbers.”

“Let’s start with cucumbers.”