“At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground.” — Clarissa Pinkola Estes
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River marvelled at the folding fan Na’reem held out for her. When spread out, the half arc circle unfolded to a painting of muscular women in various states of nudity with flowers and pearls adorning their long, flowing hair. Gold, peach, and faint dotted brushstrokes like an expensive Rennaissance painting.
She heard someone groan in frustration, “Get on with it already. We don’t got all day. We need to be home by the next hour. Do not delay.”
Pulling at her mental bootstraps, she made a quick jab at the pepper using her face with a bite. It seemed like forever before someone in the room dared to breath. A small, charged silence in the room as she chewed, picking up the flavor profile. The heat levels came in slow, burning up and ratcheting up knot by knot until wildfire spread across her tongue but it was bearable. She gave it another tentative bite. There was an unmistakable sweetness locked underneath the molten heat of fire, if she could—
“It must not be real, then. It’s a fake.” An accusatory glare from a guy who swiped the pepper off her hand and bit into it instead. He wore a blue sweater with chocolate-brown hair twisting into a size of a meatball on top of his head. Immediately, he doubled over, spitting its chunks to the floor. “Poison!” Mouth hanging open, face blushing red. “Oh Brumcia, it’s coming. I’m going to die.”
“It’s not that bad.” She said, nibbling on the blue pointed tail “Give it a little butter and it is right as rain on a juicy steak.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “My nose. My ears. Fuck I can’t.” Others stepped back away from him as he wriggled his neck and shoulders loose, bouncing on his heels.
“Here have a milk. It will help.” Pushing to him a glass of milk in a strange shade of orange. “It helps with the heat but it’s not going to make it all go away.”
He downed the milk glass, then grabbed for the whole pitcher before burping loudly.
She giggled at the sound, but a wash of horror dawned upon them. Beads of sweat trickling down the sides of her temple, “Is there any more of those devil’s fruit?”
Ylia brought in an opened crate filled to the brim with blue peppers. “Eat another one. Wait. This one.”
At that moment Maxi appeared, striking a pose for an ensuing fight.
“Maxi?!” she covered her mouth when she almost sputtered chunks of pepper.
“We have U’tu to thank for your swift rescue.” He trailed off, scanning the room. “I figured you were in danger.”
She wrinkled her nose, “Thought I told you I was doing fine. We were just having a light snack. Everybody say hi to my husband, Maxi.”
A muscle ticked underneath his eye, he folded his arms over his bare chest. “No one who just been blindfolded to a secret location is ever fin—“ the words froze in his lips the moment he set his sights on what she was plucking out from the box crate. At this point, she was basically popping them off like popcorns. “Put that down right now.” he said, his rough voice going octaves lower than normal.
“I told you we were eating a ligh—“ she popped it in her mouth, catching him off guard before he could stop her.
He grabbed her head with both hands, jaw setting. Whatever he was about to do, Na’reem stepped between them to stop it. “That was her 3rd fruit she has been lunching on. Raw and freshly-picked. Never having a drop a water after it. She’s got this.”
She shrugged, “Na’reem doesn’t speak for me. But he is not wrong. Have a little faith in you wife, husband. I got this covered.”
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His grim expression was stone-cold. “I would if my pretty little wife would stop running off without telling anyone. Disappearing into goddess knows where without even so much as a clue to wherever you were, do you know, do you have the slightest idea how long it took me to find you the first time? I searched for you for days.” He took a sharp inhale, gaze turning to a hundred-yard stare as he became lost deep in his past memories. “I didn’t know where to find you. So I looked everywhere. Literally every space I can find and beyond.”
“Space?” hissed someone in the crowd, apparently still waiting on her to react on what she was munching on, “That’s a strange wording.”
“Maxi.” she pushed a strand of stray hair behind his ear, careful not to touch his face with her spicy touch. “You looked for me?”
“Searched for you. Anywhere I can think of.”
“At what point would you have stopped, given up on me?”
Defiantly, “Never.”
The intensity of his reply struck alarm bells in her, prompting for an awakening of some kind of evolution. And she had to tamp it down. Pushed it out of existence. What he offered was too new, too precious and it required a certain kind of surrender to her newfound freedom. And she wasn’t all too ready to give that up. Not when she had just realized she can summon portals with a tip of her voice.
There was a needy part of her spirit that ached for him, longed to grow near him. But as Dr. Malia had told, it was an urge borne out of loneliness and neglect. A consequence of a deprived state of abandonment that somehow her spirit recognized would have been answered in his. But it was wrong. No one can fix her. Not even him. Hadn’t he told her that himself?
“Like I told you. Give it time. It will wear away. This thing between us, do not give it so much power. It will not stay for long. Not if I had anything to do with it.”
“If you insist.” He leaned in, resting his forehead on hers. “However I must insist spending each moment with you until it lasts.”
“So clingy” she said soflty, “I like it.”
“Teh?” He breathed, unsure.
“Teh.”
“Somebody get the healer! I’m burning from the inside.”
The man next to him gave a playful nudge to his shoulder “Look, man. It is not that bad, look at her she’s perfectly fine. You’re
overreacting.”
“Overreacting? Overreacting! Fucking you do it then. See how you do. Fuck. Burns like fire. Thousands of fire. I can’t. Tell my family I love them.”
River grew alarmed, “Wait no don’t touch your face!”
Too late he wiped the sweat off his face with his hands, and he screamed like the very shop was collapsing around him.
His friend wiped his face off with a towel as the poor guy was screaming expletives, dropping curse bombs like nobody’s business. His friend eventually pulled him onto his back, carrying him on shoulders before sprinting off.
Since River promised a spectacle, she figured emptying a box crate full of devil’s fruit would do the trick. No one took their eyes off her for even a second as she was munching on pepper after pepper like popcorn. After a short while, she downed an entire glass of strange orange milk with Maxi, a cute nickname for him that came to her naturally, was dabbing a towel on the sides of her face when her sweats came freely trickling down past the sides of her cheeks. He continued his minstrations brushing off the coolness that started prickling at the back of her nape.
Ylia edged next to her, eyeing the fruits curiously before taking a dainty nibble in the pointy end. Immediately, her face morphed into regret. She pushed out dry coughs, and fell into fits of hiccups. Soon she ran off to another room, leaving a storm of harsh winds as she left in a flash.
“Anybody else want to try?” River sighed, her jaw beginning to ache in sore. Eager to finish it quicker, she popped two peppers into her mouth.
A resounding echo of disagreement filled the quiet space.
Maxi’s tone was dry when he finally said, “I’m gonna go take a walk.” His eyes glazing over, a tired look falling over his features.
Are you going to be ok? She asked at his retreating back in mind-speak. I’m almost done with it see? Only four devil’s fruit left to eat.
His back turned rigid, he didn’t twist to face her. Instead he replied, I am just gonna go process a few things in my head.
Having a behagthi for a wife starting to get to you? she jibbed, continuing to eat without alerting anyone to their private conversation.
He didn’t answer, disappearing into a flash.
River turned to her audience and asked, “Can I get more orange milk?”
At her request, the elder Leo’nido lifted the empty pitcher off the table. “Around here, we merely call it ‘milk’. You sun tribe people are weird as fuck.”