27. Cooking (Patreon)

As it would appear, the wild dwellers hadn’t thrashed the greenhouse. And for that, Aloe was immensely grateful.

“Alright, the latch is on, that’s good... that’s good...” Aloe whispered to comfort herself. Even if someone had intruded inside it would have been easy to put the latch back on position, but she didn’t tell that to herself.

The glass panels of the greenhouse had gathered a bit of dust, not only because of these few days she had spent away but also from the weeks that had passed since the last time Aloe had cleaned them.

“I should at least dust them off once in a while. But at the same time, do I want the interior to be visible from the outside? I mean, if the light filters through, that’s enough, isn’t it?”

With a sigh, Aloe stepped into the greenhouse. She preferred to leave those ponderations for later.

Changes inside the greenhouse were few and barely noticeable regardless of what Aloe’s paranoia may lead her to think. The cacti remained as normal, she had watered them once before leaving and they were more than satisfied than that. Considering they survived for more than a month without water, yeah, four days won’t even faze them.

The other inhabitants of the greenhouse were more promising.

Aloe hadn’t made full use of the greenhouse in her previous stay, because after a month, she had only planted two new plants – and only one of them being an evolved one.

The Flourishing Spring, the first one she had planted at that, stood as tall and magnificent as she had left it. The towering flower, vaguely resemblant to a blue rose, was truly gorgeous. And the bottom cup composed of light blue petals was even more so.

“Oh, I came in a perfect moment.” As Aloe approached the parterre where she had planted the evolved plant, this one started to jerk.

It felt somewhat unnatural, plants shouldn’t move. And, in a way, it wasn’t. The small motions weren’t actual movements, but something closer to spasms. A few seconds later, thin streams of water poured from the top of the Flourishing Spring into the lower bowl. However, the water didn’t stay static once it reached the bottom. This was her first attempt at automating irrigation, and she had grabbed some of the petals that composed the cup and put heaps of dirt on top, therefore making a slight slide so the water could flow down easily and infiltrate into the soil.

That water was of course used by the growing cannabis plants.

Even though Aloe had just planted them two weeks ago – edging towards three now – they were far more grown than she would have thought.

“Umar said eight to ten weeks, three weeks times two that’s six, they shouldn’t be this grown by any means.”

Sadina wasn’t abounding in flora, for obvious reasons, but especially not in fern-like plants like cannabis, so Aloe couldn’t exactly tell how much the cannabis plants would take to be fully grown.

“He said they should bloom, and there are now flowers around, so I guess they need a bit more time.” Aloe left it at that because no matter what she thought, she really didn’t have an idea of what a grown cannabis plant looked like. “I should have asked for a drawing or something.”

One thing that surprised her was the size of the plants. She had expected the cannabis to be rather small, as when it was seen on the street it was normally in small quantities – a bit of a leap of thought, but the idea made sense in her mind, few drugs equal small plant – but in reality they were quite big, and they showed no sign of stopping.

The cannabis wasn’t as tall as the meter-high Flourishing spring, but they were a good third of the way there. Aloe had thought they would be more fern-like like their leaves showed, but in reality, they were more resemblant to a tall flower like the evolved black seed or a small green tree.

“Well, it’s a good way of hiding the Flourishing Spring... I think.” Aloe sighed as she put her hands on her hips. “And talking about hiding, I should remove the Myriad before I forget...” As she turned to make her way out of the greenhouse, the midday sun met her, shining powerfully. “...Or I can leave it for the afternoon. Yeah, better if I do that.”

Uprooting the Myriad now – if it even had roots, the girl had no clue how glass flora exactly worked – would only end in her getting blinded by a second sun that came from the ground instead of the sky.

As she returned home, the water on the pot had yet to boil, but nonetheless, she readied the ingredients. Aloe didn’t have the best eye-to-hand coordination, but this was by far her first time peeling potatoes. And with all the carving she had done with palm leaves to make the pipes, she had gotten a bit more dexterous with the knife.

The first days in the greenhouse – when she had already run out of jerky to munch and started needing to rely on potatoes – weren’t exactly messy, but neither were they tidy. Sure, she managed to peel the potatoes, but her consciousness weighed down on her from all the chunks she had wasted with her imperfect and crude peeling. At least those potato chunks and skins weren’t fully gone to waste as she had scattered them out around her crops as compost.

She no longer saw them lying around, so she assumed they must have worked.

Only now the notion of that Fikali may have eaten them passed through her head.

“Oh, well.” Aloe sighed as she gracefully peeled the potatoes. The grace of a drunk camel, that was. It still was way swifter than her first attempts at peeling. “’Dexterity’ infusion is sounding better and better by the moment...”

Her sights were still locked into the theorized ‘recovery’ internal infusion, but to even create them she needed to imagine them. And not all were possible. So coming up with more ideas rather than good ideas was a good thing.

After peeling the potatoes, she chopped them into smaller pieces, just in time as the water began to bubble. Potato soup, whilst nutritious, was too bland for her taste, so Aloe also added beans and some strips of jerky to give it a bit more flavor.

“Add spices to the shopping list.” She noted to herself.

Spices wouldn’t feed her, but if they made her food less insipid, that was good. At least Karaim had a sizeable amount of salt still in his pantry, so Aloe wasn’t timid with her ‘pinches’ of salt. Though they were more handfuls than anything.

“Now we wait.” Aloe stretched her arms for the umpteenth time of the day.

No matter how many times she did so, she didn’t feel comfortable, as if she had yet to fully wake up.

“Okay, let’s make a list before I forget everything I have to do today and this week.” She said as she sat down in front of her desk whilst keeping an eye on the soup.

Aloe put removing the Myriad high up on the list because she knew she would forget. It wasn’t a statement; it was a rule of nature. Next was classifying the seeds, Karaim had gratefully gifted her a pot with a myriad of different pairs of seeds, the problem was that they were all together.

“Couldn’t he at least have separated the most similar ones in similar pots?” Aloe groaned as she rolled her eyes.

Ordering the seeds in pairs would be a time-consuming task she wasn’t looking up to. Some of them were just straight-up identical.

“Even if I use Aloe Veritas leaves, it will take me an eternity to just parse them through. And that’s without taking into account that I obviously don’t have enough leaves to go through this many seeds.” Aloe groaned once more. “I should evolve an aloe. Even if Tamara doesn’t approve my ink enterprise, I’ve run out more than once of Aloe Veritas leaves. Ugh, I need a tea...”

She decided to leave that for later. Being high wouldn’t help her whilst cooking, that seemed quite the opposite of responsible. And whether Aloe liked it or not, she was now the head of her house. Not in the noble sense, her family name wasn’t that uncommon. But either way, all the properties of the Ayad were now in her name. The house in Sadina and the lands around the oasis, with all their buildings included.

Normally that would have made her rich, and a noble in some countries, as she possessed not only buildings but also lands. But reality wasn’t as beautiful as it always seemed. Whilst, to her knowledge, the oasis came free of taxes, her house in Sadina did not. Yes, the property had been long paid by her parents, but the land tax was to be paid per annum.

“Oh, how much I hate the expression know... ‘per annum’...” As a banker’s apprentice, she had heard it to the death, but now that she was the one paying the bills instead of the one that may collect them, it felt incalculably worse.

Aloe stood up from her seat before she started crying at the fact that she now had to pay taxes and she still wasn’t an adult.