33. Restoration (Patreon)

As she needed to wait for the sap to settle, Aloe continued with her many tasks. She decided to first water the plants, but without forgetting about another type of water, she poured the boiling water from the cauldron at the oasis and readied another batch.

“Yeah, one more and this amphora is done.” What she now noticed is how she was going to carry the water. Because water was heavy, and there was going to be a lot of water. “Ah, can’t be bothered.” In the end, the simplest trick was to dump all her responsibilities on her future self.

Irrigating her plants didn’t take a lot of time, just emptying the watering can on the soil she had planted the beans and potatoes on. But as she finished with the potatoes, another thought struck her.

“The greenhouse.” She said squinting her eyes as she realized she hadn’t watered any of the plants there, and Karaim had certainly not for over a month. “Ooh...” That lapse of thought hurt more than a stab wound.

Most of the plants in the greenhouse were already dead, so fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the point of view), she didn’t have much work to do.

The worst part, without a shed of a doubt, was the multiple trips she had to make to the oasis to refill the can and then give each plant enough water until the soil under them stopped absorbing it. She wasn’t just being petty about it, not fully at least, her thighs still hurt from yesterday and after a while, she felt like her calves had ripped open from the strain.

With a groan, Aloe sat down on the cobblestone path between the parterres as she observed the plants and the soil.

“A nince-damned tree on a greenhouse...” She was still salty because it had taken five trips before the soil had enough water. “In what fucking moment Karaim said, ‘Oh I have a perfectly suitable and irrigated oasis soil outside but let’s plant a tree tens of meters away from it so it needs to be constantly manually watered for all of eternity!’ Ugh!”

Her mumblings only ceased because she decided to hydrate herself by drinking from her waterskin.

“Even the Aloe Veritas says that the ter’nar is a tree! And even if he didn’t check the description it would have been easy for him to transplant it once he noticed it was a sapling and not a flower or a bush!”

Everyone knew that it was easier to blame the dead. At the end of the day, it wasn’t like they could protest.

Groaning her way up, Aloe left the greenhouse to check the cauldron but still had some minutes before having to pour the water, so she moved to the pill plate on the windowsill. She tapped on the sap at the corners of the plate. It stuck to her fingertips.

“Still soft, needs more time.” And then licked the hardening sap. She squinted her eyes at the bitterness, it was mellow but still bothersome. “Well...” Aloe closed her lips in hesitation. “Not exactly good... but far better than the garbage that is Cure Grass. I hope it losses a bit of the taste once it dries though.”

Before getting to work again, Aloe wiped herself with a towel as sweat was beginning to accumulate on her skin and clothes. She would definitely take a bath at nightfall, but currently doing so was meaningless. Wiping the sweat off still refreshed her.

“How do farmers make compost?” Aloe said as she lay her eyes on the decaying pile of plant matter outside of the greenhouse. “I know it isn’t just feces, most of it discarded plants or food, but how do they actually make it?”

It didn’t matter how much she pondered about it; she didn’t reach any solution. Karaim didn’t seem to have any place to make compost, which weirded Aloe, because it seemed like a rather mandatory thing to have in a greenhouse. Reutilizing resources was almost second nature in the desert.

“Huh, I’ve just noticed.” The empty parterres sent a thought to her head. “What did he eat? There are coconuts and dates, but Karaim couldn’t survive just on that, especially with his advanced age... Were there any of the plants I threw edible?”

It was surprising she hadn’t realized such a crucial factor as how her grandfather got his food from.

“He could have gone to Sa... not that’s not likely. It’s a day away from me, and I surely move faster than him by just walking compared to his top speed. So, resupplying by buying at the market doesn’t make sense, the logistics aren’t just there.” Aloe tapped her foot on the ground deep in thought. “Jafar and Umar mentioned he grew cannabis, so at the very minimum one out of the five parterres was occupied with it. And then two others by cacti and the ter’nar, which aren’t edible. Well... not nutritional. Definitely edible though.”

Aloe removed her straw hat and scratched her head viciously.

“The numbers don’t line up!” She grunted. “How did you eat, old man?”

After wasting much of her brain power uselessly, Aloe let the subject slide. She had better things to do than ponder where a dead man got his caloric intake from.

The greenhouse was still not suitable for replanting, and it was due to some restoration. And she would need a lot of water. Though instead of working hard like before, she worked smarter.

Taking out another empty amphora from the house (though it was just a large jar), Aloe brought it to the oasis by rolling it down the slight sand dune in between. She wasn’t scared about the jar breaking by letting it roll away as the ground, both the sand and dirt, were quite soft. And she watched out that it didn’t collide against any palm tree. Though after having thought of the possibility of breaking the jar, she did get a bit scared.

Filling the jar was harder than it would seem because she needed to partially walk inside the oasis to fill it to the top, and then from her submerged feet, heave up the tens of liters of water inside the amphora out of the oasis. And strength wasn’t one of Aloe’s main qualities.

It took her a bit of fiddling and getting her pants and sandals wet (in hindsight she should have removed them beforehand) to get the amphora out, along with some panting.

“Fikali, come here!” Aloe shouted at the dweller as she rested her weight on the amphora.

“Hroooooooo!” Fikali responded violently in protest.

“Don’t ‘hroooo’ me! What’s the problem?” She turned her head to look at the tied dweller. “Alright, I see the problem.”

Aloe limped her way to the date tree, her arms and legs were wasted, and it was only afternoon. Once she undid the knot, she guided Fikali to the amphora by the lead.

“Okay, I want you to carry this to the greenhouse, understood?”

“Wuo?” The dweller added with a lack of understanding.

“Works for me.” The human shrugged. “You just walk there, to the greenhouse, once I put the jar on top of you.” It took Aloe a lot of effort to heave the amphora fifty centimeters from ground level to put it on top of the dweller as it almost weighed half as much as her. “Alright, go.” She held the lead tightly with one hand and the other balanced the opened water container.

“Uooh...” Fikali grunted unenthusiastically as the jar weighed on her back.

“Careful, just a minute and I’ll leave you free.” Having another time of freedom envigored the dweller as she strode to the greenhouse without protesting once.

After unloading the amphora with great difficulty at the entrance, Aloe let Fikali go her merry way.

Karaim, in his overabundance of iron (both in tools and infrastructure), didn’t bother to possess any kind of rag. Though he did have a lot of old clothing. Aloe ripped a shirt, soaked it in the amphora, and started wiping the incrusted dust off the glass panels.

“I hope this wasn’t your favorite one.” She added after taking the makeshift rag away when she ended with the first panel and saw that it had gone from white to a yellowy brown. “It doesn’t matter if it was though.” And then promptly shrugged.

Her short stature limited how much she could clean, and the old man didn’t have a ladder, so after cleaning all the panels from the lower section, Aloe couldn’t do much more.

“I guess if I wet the broom I could do something with the upper ones, but the ceiling will still be untouched.” She sighed, the skylight standing at thrice her height. “I’ll leave that for tomorrow, I’m beaten and smitten. I’m done for today.”

But before truly calling it a day and having a refreshing bath at the oasis, Aloe checked the windowsill. She tapped on the sap and this time it had solidified.

She took the plate inside and with a knife cut one of the aloe-covered grass pellets out of the gestalt layer of sap. As she removed it, a huge section remained on the bottom, prompting her to peel it out with the knife as if it was some fruit.

“This is it,” Aloe weighed down the sticky ball in her hand and sighed, “The moment of truth.”

And she downed the pill.

It was sticky and bitter, still infinitely better than the acid grass.

Her first thought was that it needed sugar.

Her second thought was that she didn’t have any sugar.

Her thought was that she could grow sugar cane.

Her fourth thought was interrupted as the pill dropped in her stomach. It fell down her throat easily and impacted her stomach with violence giving her cramps. She gagged in recoiled, but a few seconds later Aloe stopped feeling the pill in her stomach, a refreshing jolt of lighting traversing her body. It was not powerful, but her body suddenly felt lighter, or rather, the weakness that was limiting her had disappeared.

And now her fourth thought manifested through words.

“The pills work!” And her used vitality was restored.