44. String (Patreon)

Aloe was ecstatic. After more than a month, she had finally made it. She had changed the infusion of an already infused seed. The possibilities... there weren’t many, to be honest, but those that did exist held so much potential.

“Oh dunes...” Then the gift of afterthought fell on Aloe’s shoulders. “Now I have to reinfuse every grown plant I planted!” She let out a groan that could be mistaken for the last breath of a dying man.

The situation was not as bad as it could seem. As Aloe had said, she had only to change the infusion of the plants she had planted and were already grown, not the whole oasis nor those Karaim had planted as he had already reinfused those.

That didn’t leave many plants in need of infusion. Basically just the cannabis, the Flourishing Spring, and the...

“Fuck!” Aloe cursed in realization. “The Myriad!”

She grabbed her head in exasperation, barely holding her instinct to pluck out her hair. Logic prevailed, just by a hair’s width.

Quite literally at that.

“How long has it been that I said to pluck it out?” Days, but she didn’t want to think about it. “I have to remove it now, or else I’ll forget again.” Then as she gazed at the shining sky, she thought otherwise. “Once it’s later. But I can’t just not do it. Today is the day.”

To force herself to comply, Aloe stood up and situated herself in the doorway. She leaned on the frame, not sitting down for fear of forgetting.

“And now we wait.”

She didn’t last two minutes until she sat down and began thinking about the applications of her newly acquired ability.

“So what would happen if I infused the Flourishing Springs with ‘bountiful harvest’? Would they produce more water? Logic dictates yes, but these plants and the vital arts are quite far away from common understanding...” Aloe scratched her head and moved away from the sun, which was burning her mane. “What about the Myriad? Would it make it even more light? Dunes, that would be horrendous.”

The infusion’s name was bountiful harvest, but it was different applying that to a fruit tree than a magical plant that summoned miscellaneous resources out of seemingly nowhere.

“I do want to change the cannabis plants to ‘bountiful harvest’, I want to see more flowers appear, that’s more money. But at the same time, isn’t the plant already grown?”

The only way to know that it worked was, of course, by trying. Aloe stood up from the doorway and walked to the greenhouse as she repeated the “Don’t forget about the Myriad” mantra on her head over and over.

Anyway, it wouldn’t do her any good sitting on a full deposit.

She had taught herself that not using vitality was bad, regardless of whether it was true or not.

“Okay, time to repeat it.” She knelt before the cannabis plants, her filthy dress getting dirtier as her legs pressed on the humid soil. “You can do it, Aloe.” She mumbled. “You’ve done it once already, and with an evolved plant at that.”

Aloe dived into a meditative state, her hands placed on a cannabis stem. After waiting for so long, her body had partially cleared of the effects of the tea. It was mostly her brain that felt it, and nonetheless, calmness overtook her thoughts.

The vitality of the cannabis plant felt cold on her touch, it was far more than the Cure Grass seed she practiced on, but still far less than an infused date seed. Before doing anything else, she pried on the vitality, trying to differentiate what pertained to the infusion and what to the cannabis.

It was hard.

This was a new sense she wasn’t used to, and now she had to distinguish where the consistency of a metaphorical string changed by touch alone when she didn’t even know what the original consistency of that string was.

It would have been easier for an assassin to abstain from drug consumption for a day.

And that was saying a lot if the stories and the snake tongues were to be trusted.

In and out, Aloe breathed trying to handle the vitality of the plant. Prodding it by touch alone proved slow. I can’t believe Karaim did this for every plant. There has to be a better way. Of course, she didn’t know if there was another way. And if there was one, she had too much on her plate with the new and only one she knew to search for more.

Unlike with the tests she ran on the seeds, there was no easy way to check where one vitality ended and the other started. Well, there is ONE way... Aloe groaned mentally at the idea as her finger moved alongside the stem, a useless endeavor, though it helped her guide herself. That way was none other than planting a cannabis plant without an infusion.

That or removing the ‘accelerated growth’ infusion on one of them, but doing so would defeat the whole purpose as she would still need to find the infusion cut point.

“Ugh...” Having grown tired of the prodding, Aloe left behind the slow but so far reliable method and tried something a bit more drastic.

She pulled the string hard, like a fisherman may do after finding a fish with a fighting spirit.

“Uhk!” The cannabis resisted Aloe’s advances with equal force, making her collapse on the ground. “Okay... that was unexpected.”

The plant didn’t hurt her, far from it. It was more similar to the overextension one may feel after moving a heavy set of furniture. Neither her hands nor back hurt, but she was left out of breath and overall tired. Though her butt was a bit sore from the fall.

“Note to self: these plants got hands.” Aloe looked at her hands, they were unaffected by her vicious pull, yet she could feel them tremble under the strain. “Maybe I shouldn’t be that forceful.”

Having been agitated too much for her liking, Aloe went back home and brought with her the teapot to the greenhouse. The place wasn’t that bad to have tea, especially considering the tranquil and soothing sights of the ter’nar and the Flourishing Spring.

There was something special about those plants beyond the obviousness of their alignments.

Even though the ter’nar tea was beginning to cool down, Aloe took it slow with her cup as she sat down on the white tree’s parterre, her back lazily reclined on the curving trunk. She managed to see the Flourishing Spring sprout its produce as she finished the cup, blessing the soil with its water.

“Alright, round... three?” Aloe would never admit having been defeated by a plant thrice. “Thrice the charm?”

That wasn’t the saying, though if she tried sice more, she maybe would have luck at the ninth try.

Her drug-laden mind guided her into being concentrated. Though that wasn’t difficult considering how cloudy her emerald eyes had become.

She quickly found back the string on the cannabis plant, her fingers caressing the sprouting flowers.

And she pulled again.

The lesson had been learned, so she didn’t pull as forcefully as before. And the resistance from the cannabis was also expected, so it didn’t affect her as much as before.

Slowly, unconfidently, but constantly, Aloe pulled on the vitality string, the resistance growing with each push forward.

Now, she didn’t stop there. Aloe infused the cannabis with vitality charged with the ‘bountiful harvest’ intent. The insertion was forceful, the plant even fighting more against her advances, and yet she pushed forward.

If Aloe was one thing, it was hard-headed.

Panting, she continued infusing and pulling. Both activities were taxing whilst separated, but together the load on her body multiplied. Her only saving grace was that the cannabis didn’t have much vitality to its name.

Her head spun around, threatening to end her concentration and lose her progress. She couldn’t know if it was because of the tea, the physical exertion, or a combination of the two. But she stayed with her feet rooted down.

She wouldn’t back down to a plant.

Beads of sweat poured from her temples, her scalp becoming a marshland. Aloe’s chest heaved up and down and her hands trembled as she gritted her teeth.

I. Won’t. Lose. To. A. Plant.

A blade of vitality at a time, Aloe pushed and pulled infusions from the cannabis. It was close, she knew it. The cannabis could only take so much vitality and she had almost pushed enough of ‘bountiful harvest’-charged vitality to replace the established ‘accelerated growth’ infusion.

A blade or two more... It was difficult to do a task as trivial as thinking. That’s all... that it takes. By blade she referred to the vitality equivalent of a single blade of Cure Grass. Not the most accurate method of measurement, but it worked for her.

Go... go... GO! Aloe did a last push-slash-pull with all her strength, not fearing any longer the resistance of the cannabis. As soon as the last blade of new vitality substituted that of the old infusion, the string holding the infusion snapped clean as if it never existed.

Aloe collapsed on the ground with momentum, as if it had been a physical rope she had been pulling before it was cut.

She waited on the soil for long, her hair brushing the humid dirt, her chest heaving as violently as when she evolved the Blossomflame. This wasn’t healthy for her body, she knew, but nonetheless, rejoiced at the feeling of her hands.

Coldness, a comforting chill.

During the whole exchange, she had lost no vitality whatsoever. She fully infused that cannabis plant, yes, but she also recovered the vitality from the previous infusion.

Her head span around, making her unable to stand up, her legs feeling weaker than when the dreaded time of the month came. She had a lot of things to do, like for example uprooting the Myriad or...

“Ugh...” She groaned, the exhalation of air heaving down on her overexerted lungs. “I have to reinfuse all the other cannabis too.”

She almost cried, she truly did.

It was painful.

But a comfortable pain. In a very distorted and morbid way.

The Blossomflame had been torture, but this felt like a finished day of work. Satisfying even.

However, there was a limit to how satisfying a body-crushing day of work could be.

But beyond all those thoughts of work, as she lay on her pool of sweat, the soil making her smell horrible as it came in contact with her bodily liquids, Aloe had only one thought.

“I wanna bath soooo badly.”