The Fox and the Berries and the Mushrooms
#1 of Humblewood Fiction & Poems
Sunflower, my PC in a Humblewood game, spends time on the battlements after a rough fight, reminiscing about his younger days in the Bandit Coalition. Wrote to practice food porn scenes.
Marmalade in jars,
Preserves of summer's sweet fruit,
Recalled on sour breads.
It would be disingenuous to suggest that times were always hard for Sunflower. He kept all his fur and he kept his sword arm strong. He had not just unwavering determination, but a hearty appetite and that was what kept him strong enough to afford the blunders of his determination. The crisp air and long cold hours behind the machicolations and battlements and in muddy ditches and in dark forests only made him savor tastes that once repulsed him.
He longed again for the sweet berries of summer; the ripe pops of flavor and color that one could hold aloft in their paw. However, they were dangerous sport. He'd eaten a quite stomach-ruining berry once when he was younger and was put out for a week, so he distrusted them somewhat. Yet now he pined for them, since he could only covet them and had to be content on strong yeasty wine, which he'd had so much of since he arrived here that he was worried what the other bandits would start saying about him. 'Drunk and howling in the night,' like a vulpin stereotype.
Then there were mushrooms, which he once abhorred the texture of, but changed his mind when the old bandit cook whipped up a piping hot mushroom soup after Sunflower and Reive and some of the other ne'er-do-wells had been on the run for a week in the cold wet of early winter. Since then he found the taste and texture of well cooked mushrooms lovely and nostalgic; a true comfort food that warmed his heart and spirit. He could easily recall the taste of that one soup, where the grumpy, crafty, old as dirt mapach cook had tapped into a reserve of dehydrated treats especially for their triumphant, yet soggy return. When the rain had just begun to turn to snow, he made the kettle boil gummy strips of pocket stock apart into a broth, which was strengthened with scraps of bones and ends of wild scallions and thickened with the stale dry ends of old bread. Then there was the dried mushrooms which he kept in bundles tied together with string for when he needed them, similarly to the way someone would keep braids of garlic or bundles of exotic peppers.
Then the old mapach shredded an old bit of salty cheese rind on his tarnished grater and held it beside the bowl, and Reive, Sunflower, Davy, and the other aching, shivering lads lined up and got a bowl and a sprinkling of cheese each. The soup was the triumph of evading the Perchguard, and the first thing other than soggy biscuit crumbs and cold water they'd eaten for a week. The soup was the reward for getting everyone back home, it made traipsing through all that mud and cold worth it. Those rehydrated mushrooms tasted better than roast venison that night. They ate and drank and warmed up by a fire and slept well.
Back then, there was a camp follower, a tag-along vixen. He was sweet on her and she wrung her paws the whole time he was gone. Sunflower knew she was sweet on Reive, too, but it didn't matter. She had a warm, dry blanket especially for Sunflower, and a change of clothes, and that night her bosom was warm and soft and the only place he dreamed of laying his head. He didn't even have the energy to try anything slick with her that time, and after he was dry he immediately passed out on her. What was her name? She wasn't the same vixen he knew in Saltar's Port, she was someone else entirely. Hopefully, she was perfectly fine, both her and the child she insisted was his, but wasn't.
She had this summer drink she made with vinegar that was wonderful. Old wine that had gone off, she'd stuff it with herbs and fruit or berries and let it go for a week, then water it down with cool spring-water. Ah, back to the berries again. Sunflower smiled and thought of how she made him eat them from her outstretched paw while humming a handsome bandit tune. She knew a hundred songs, and he could only ever remember a few. Sunflower laid under trees with her on painfully hot days when he was on watch, and she played with his fur. Why was he so weak to vixens that could sing? Not just vixens, either. Davy, rest that old buddy's soul, could carry a lonesome tune, himself, and this isn't even taking into account the lovely luma bard he was now in a party with.
Hell, Sunflower thought to himself. He knew too many people. Is this why old salty bandits were always so quiet? Always introspecting like this?
And he still really wanted a berry.