47. Flourishing (Patreon)

“Ugh...” A groan left Aloe’s mouth as she woke up. She guided her hand to her head, her thoughts ridden with confusion. “W-what happen-“

Her words were cut off as her stomach and throat decided to protest at the same time as they engaged in a culinary discussion. Or in less eloquent terms, Aloe puked all over the desk.

“Ughhhhh...” She lingered with her eyes looking to the ceiling, her back resting on the chair in exhaustion. “That didn’t taste like beans and potatoes at all, augh...”

The awful taste lingering in her mouth was only making her feel even worse.

“I have puked twice in two weeks... that must be a record or something... I... I fucking can’t...”

Aloe stayed still, her gaze dead as a fish, for a few minutes. It wasn’t until the stench of the drying vomit woke her up from her stupor. Groggily, she stood up and drank a glass of water. A sensible person would have rinsed her mouth before downing a full glass after puking, but Aloe was not sensible nor in the state to dally around with bullshit.

Using one of Karaim’s old clothes as a rug to clean the desk’s mess. As much as Aloe currently wished for the sweet release of death, she was immensely thankful that nothing had been ruined by her vomit. Well, everything except one item.

“Eww...” Aloe added with a coarse and dry groan as she took the seed out of the pool of vomit.

She didn’t even care if the evolution had succeeded or not, she just wanted to sleep again. Looking through the window, it looked like...

“Fuck is it morning already? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah...” Aloe groaned as her lungs were relieved of all their air. “Fuck all of this.” Aloe walked out of the house and jumped into the oasis.

She couldn’t recall what bizarre decision-making prompted her to do so, perhaps because she felt incredibly dirty – splatters of vomit still lingered on her cheeks – but what mattered is that the cold water refreshed her mind.

“FUCK THAT’S COLD!” A bit more than refreshing.

Aloe rushed out of the oasis with her sanity regained and hastily removed her shirt, the last thing she wanted was to die of hypothermia. With her sight now clear, she was able to discern the time by looking at the heavens. The sky was mostly dark, with a hint of blue, and the sun made an orange appearance on the horizon. Sunrise was nearby.

That also meant that old the coldness of the night remained in the oasis, a fact her body had painfully experienced. Aloe hugged her torso as a cold breeze caressed her. She rushed inside her home, her pants dripping wet all the way into the house.

“Hashish!” Aloe violently sneezed as she dried herself with a towel and then covered in her bedsheets. “If get a cold... I swear I’m going to kill someone.”

Choosing to not suffer in the cold, Aloe lit the hearth. The small, contained flame didn’t provide much heat, but it was more than enough. The coziness compensated for it.

“Oh yeah, I should wash the bedsheets. They must have been... months without getting washed. Ugh, that sounds even more disgusting than the vomit.”

One wouldn’t think of eating sweet things just after puking, but that didn’t stop Aloe from having dates and coconut water. Her main excuse was that she needed to replenish all the lost food, even if such food was likelier to make her feel worse than better.

Her empty belly was able to hoard surprising amounts of dates, so much so that after Aloe emptied the bowl, she had to go outside for more. At that point, the sun already had come out and Fikali wandered around.

“Oh shit.” Aloe was left agape as she noticed the dweller. “I did not tie her up!”

“Hro?” Fikali raised her face from the grass after the human’s cry.

“Oh, great heavens! That could have gone really bad.” Aloe stuffed a date in her mouth to ease the stress. “I mean it isn’t like I could have avoided it. I cannot control when to not pass out.”

As Aloe didn’t elaborate further, Fikali went back to her breakfast.

Aloe sighed. “I guess I should leash her before experimenting. I wouldn’t like to have a surprise next time I woke up in vomit...”

There was something in her wording that worried Aloe, but she couldn't exactly point out why. She stopped lingering in thoughts half-naked in the oasis and rinsed the dates. The morning sun wasn’t exactly sundering, but it was better to not tempt the celestial body.

“You know, the hunger theory has some merit,” Aloe told to no one as she had more dates on the desk. “Every time I have depleted my vitality I have suffered from unnatural hunger. Karaim didn’t linger much on it, but this amount of hunger isn’t normal. I don’t even know how my body is able to fit this many dates. But I guess it makes sense. Vitality is some kind of esoteric inner energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere. Meaning that the more I use, the more energy I need to recover.”

Aloe lingered on the date on her fingers and then reached for her satchels and took out a Cure Grass pill.

“But that means if I consume outright vitality I shouldn’t suffer from hunger. Or at least vitality-spawned hunger.” She rolled the spheroid pill around the desk distractedly. “Why must be the vital arts this gross? I don’t want to eat grass just to check some theories!”

After more than half a day of sleep and a legion of dates, her vitality was already topped so it made no sense to have the pill in sight. Aloe stashed it away.

“There’s some merit though.” She realized. “If I experiment with an empty stomach and instantly consume a pill that means I won’t pass out from lack of vitality. If I’m fast enough, that is.”

Before facing the reason for her unconsciousness, Aloe made a trip to the greenhouse and grabbed some fresh ter’nar leaves. After constant watering, the white and coiled trunk tree no longer looked sickly. Its leaves possessed a brighter and darker blue hue.

Whilst Aloe was opposed to eating grass, she wasn’t to taking drugs. She hadn’t personally taken drugs, besides once or twice when the physician prescribed opium to her parents when she fell ill.

The opium had certainly worked as she felt great after taking it, though she wasn’t in a condition to verify if it was because it had cured her or for other reasons. Anyways, she wasn’t an assassin. The ter’nar leaves may possess slight psychedelic and addictive properties, but they were far from a hard drug.

Aloe was careful to grab few leaves, lest she actually wanted to grow an addiction. She mostly wanted to have the ter’nar because it was the only tea she had at hand, and not because she wanted to go on a field trip.

Her head was still a bit light, so the trip wasn’t exactly undesirable in her current state.

She thanked her cold dip in the oasis as the hearth was already heated and there had been water from yesterday still inside, meaning she didn’t even need to wait for the tea.

“Alright~” Aloe moaned after taking a sip. “Time to appraise this seed.” And then she deadpanned. “Aloe, you absolute moron. There are no more veritas leaves!”

With a groan, Aloe made her way to the greenhouse. She could have brought the seed there, but now that she was there, she decided to trim the Aloe Veritas for restocking.

“Wait. How do I do this?” Aloe faced a conundrum, stopping dead in her tracks bare millimeters before pruning the first leaf. “If I put all the leaves directly on a jar, the ink is going to mix and they are going to identify each other, aren’t they?”

Karaim hadn’t explained any storage method for Aloe Veritas on the cultivation technique besides mentioning that on their extraction she should use gloves and scissors.

“Hmm... I mean it coagulates fast, so I just need them to dry without touching other living beings.”

Aloe carefully cut the Aloe Veritas leaves, not allowing a single drop to touch her or other plants. It was a nerve-racking endeavor as she was in the middle of a greenhouse and the main plant continued bleeding beside the cut leaf. The fact that she was high also didn’t help. Deciding that taking the leaves to the desert to dry them was too much of a risk (and a chore), Aloe left them on the greenhouse cobblestone path. The path was highly packed, so there weren’t any weeds growing between the pebbles.

“Good enough.” Aloe sighed in relief after laying all the leaves in a row. By the time she finished, the first one was already starting to coagulate.

The main plant had been left a shadow of its former self as Aloe had cut every single leaf, which honestly, weren’t many to begin with. Aloe took the first she had cut back with her to the house. She sat down in front of the desk and took another sip of her ter’nar tea.

“Please let it be an Evolution and not some weird Infusion, or worse, a failure.” Aloe prayed to the heavens before letting the black seed pouring with vitality touch the Aloe Veritas ink.

The meaningless ink spots on the leaf’s parchment shifted to coherent writing.

Species: Flourishing Spring

Sobriquet: Eversource

Description: An evolved member of the Nigella Sativa species, a species known for its ability to survive with mana alone and sprout streams of water.

Alignment: Life, Arcane

There were many questions in Aloe’s mind. Why Arcane alignment? Why the description was uncannily similar to that of the Aloe Veritas? Or what was mana and why it kept appearing?

But her first reaction was:

“Wa-ah-tah?” Her confusion and groggy state manifested in an offensive farmer’s accent.