We all gather around the campfire and sit down either on the logs that my sister has just brought in or on some pieces of cloth that Hilda had carried with her. Sam and I had picked the log option.
“Brianna, what is this fruit? I don’t know what it is.” Sam says as she picks up a round purple fruit.
“Ah, that’s what I call a glompa fruit.” Briana picks up one for herself.
“A glompa fruit?” Sam giggles. “That’s a bit of a silly name.”
“I’m the one who named it…” Brianna blushes. “I’m not very good with inventing names.”
“Oh… Does that mean it’s a completely undiscovered species of fruit?”
Brianna nods. “As far as I know, it only grows in this area, together with a couple of other fruits and plants I’ve found here.”
“Wow. It truly feels like we are exploring new grounds here.” Sam studies the fruit from a bit closer. “And you are sure it’s not poisonous, right?”
“No, I’ve eaten them all before and I’ve done the poison tests before that.”
“Poison test?” I tilt my head.
“Ah, it’s practically an edibility test.” Sam explains. “You generally start by rubbing a little bit on your hand to see if your skin reacts to it. A taste test with a very small amount of the food you are testing. Wait five minutes to see if you notice any burning, tingling sensation, stuff like that.”
“I see. So these things can definitely be eaten safely?” I ask.
“Yes.” Brianna smiles and gives me a nod.
Sam takes her knife from her belt and quite quickly splits the fruit in two, giving one part to me.
“And what does it taste like?”
“It’s very sweet.” Brianna says and does the same to her fruit. Taking a big glomp out of it. “But I can’t really tell you what else it tastes like.”
“Sweet? Can I have one of those too?” My sister asks after which Brianna gives her other half of the fruit to her. My sister then takes a big bite out of it. “Oh darn, that is sweet indeed. It’s nice though.”
I look at Sam and Sam gives me a nod back. We both try the fruit at the same time. The moment it touches my tongue the sweetness hits. Just like Brianna had said, it is a terribly sweet fruit. Although not too sweet so that it becomes too sweet to eat. As for the taste, it somewhat tastes like a mix between a strawberry and a kiwi. It will take some getting used to but it does taste quite nice.
“What do you think, Ami?” Sam asks.
“It’s nice.” I smile and stick out my tongue a little.
This makes Sam laugh.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s just that your tongue has turned completely purple.”
“Ah right, I forgot to mention it tends to do that.” Brianna giggles. “It’ll go away after a bit or if you drink salty water.”
“How did you find that out?” Hilda chuckles.
“I was trying to test out if it would manage to neutralize the saltiness of sea water…”
“And?”
“It didn’t.” Brianna pouts.
We all start laughing.
Stolen novel; please report.
We try another couple of fruits that Brianna brought along but I definitely have to say the glompa fruit is by far my favorite. In the end there’s only one type of fruit none of us have tried yet. It’s a big reddish fruit with a rather elongated form with a slight curve to it.
“This looks suspiciously like a chili pepper, doesn’t it?” Hilda takes one of them in her hand.
“What’s that?” Brianna asks.
“Uh, it’s a kind of fruit from the area we are from, although those are a lot smaller than this one is. They are rather spicy.” Hilda says.
“Are chilly peppers fruits?” Lise asks.
“Botanically, yes. Since they have seeds and they grow from the flower of a plant rather than from other parts. Culinary speaking you could make the argument that they are vegetables though.” Nikki explains.
“Interesting.” My sister nods.
“It is in fact a spicy fruit.” Brianna replies, getting back to the point. “But still tasty.” Brianna takes one of the fruits and cuts a piece for herself and puts it in her mouth. It doesn’t seem like she’s reacting too badly to the heat.
Hilda does the same thing Brianna did and pops a piece of the fruit in her mouth. “Hmm… oh yeah…” Hilda chews a little and sniffs. “It’s spicy alright, not too bad, though. I’m surprised about the flavor.”
The remaining four of us look at each other and then decide to follow Hilda and Brianna in partaking of the fruit. Sam cuts off a piece for herself and a piece for me after which we both put it in our mouths at about the same time.
At first I don’t really notice the heat but after a couple of seconds it does start to come at me. The heat stays mostly in my mouth rather than going down my throat which is my prefered kind of spicy. The taste, like Hilda said, is really surprising. I’ve not eaten many peppers in my life, but it’s definitely the first time I’ve eaten a pepper that tastes like tomato.”
“Oh My Goddess, you could make totally amazing salsa with this.” My sister exclaims. “Hilda, we need to take seeds of this plant along with us to plant in our mansion.”
“I do agree, but would that work?” Hilda looks at Brianna for confirmation.
“I’ve not tried to plant this fruit back home yet.” Brianna admits. “The plant it grows from is rather big though. So it might be difficult without the moisture and heat it needs.”
“Hmm. We can always take trips back rather quickly if we have Ami around. If we can make a little farm for those fruits here, it should be fast and easy enough to get our hauls back to the capital.”
“That sounds like a good idea.” I agree. “Maybe we could even make some money with it as well.”
“That’s surprising coming from you, sis.” Élise laughs. “I’d have expected this coming from Hilda.”
“That’s fair.” Hilda chuckles. “Just a little question, Brianna, what do you call this fruit?”
“I hadn’t really thought of a name yet.” Brianna replies and thinks for a second. “What about vördur fruit? It means guardian fruit.”
Sam looks at me. “That’s a bit on the nose, but if Ami doesn’t mind…”
I shake my head. “It’s a bit embarrassing, but it’s fine for me.”
“That means it’s official now, from this day on, this fruit is called vördur fruit, or guardian fruit for those who don’t like learning other languages.” Hilda smiles.
The group continues planning a bit more, talking to Brianna about potentially setting up a couple of growing fields for the plants that made us come here in the first place. Meanwhile we eat a couple of strips of dried meat that we took along with us. After dinner Nikki and my sister decide to turn in already as it has been a rather exhausting day. Especially for Élise. Hilda and Brianna chat about the peculiarities of business in the Dwarger capital. Because I’m not really interested in that I decide to take a little walk on the beach, with my girlfriend joining me of course. Though Hilda did make us promise not to stray too far away.
The ocean is really calm and on a cloudless night like this, this world’s moon lights up the beach quite easily, helped by our darkvision. It’s a pretty beautiful evening and it’s not too warm or too cold either. A pretty perfect night if you ask me.
“I wonder how far this beach goes on for.” Sam asks herself while she walks hand in hand with me.
“Who knows, maybe it goes on forever.” I smile at her.
“I wouldn’t really mind that, it’s such a gorgeous beach. The only thing that’s missing our those tiki torches and coconuts filled with some kind of mocktail.”
“That sounds great too, but I very much like how it is right now.” I stop Sam for a second so I can give her a quick kiss.
“Fair enough.” Sam smiles and gives me a kiss as well, after which she smirks at me.
“What’s the smirk for?” I giggle.
“For this.” Sam suddenly picks me up and guides my legs to wrap them around her waist. She then kisses me again. “Beautiful, just beautiful.” She smiles and boops her nose against mine.
“Make sure you don’t fall.” I giggle and then I kiss her again.
“Eh, it’s sand anyway.” As if on queue she dropped herself down on her bum in the nice soft and still relatively warm sand with me still around her waist. “How about we just sit here and make out for a while?”
In the distance we can still see the light of our firepit flickering away. “Hmm. I think I like that plan.”
Sam smirks once more and then takes me in for a very long, deep kiss and drops to her back so I fall on top of her. “I do too.”