Thorne goes in search of Rowan
Who: Thorne and Rowan Where: The stream When: Just prior to the meeting. What: Meeting and finding more edibles Rating: G
Once they'd reached camp again, Thorne parted from Helena to go in search of Rowan. He figured it wouldn't be too hard to figure out which one of them was the pregnant woman. He wandered along the stream, which seemed to be the "road" people followed until he saw someone, obviously female and obviously pregnant contemplating a plant. Smiling, Thorne walked up to her, "Hello, I'm Thorne." He held out his hand in greeting, deciding immediately that Rowan looked like she'd fit right in back on the farm, which made him feel immediately at ease with her. Not that he didn't really feel immediately at ease with most people, but it was different. Maybe it was just the whole pregnant thing that made him more relaxed.
"Rowan." Rowan grinned brightly, shaking his hand. Much more friendly! Not like that redneck twit at all. Excellent. "Pleased to meet you. Give me a hand here?" She was actually contemplating the plants in the stream, which she didn't want to put her hands in because of that icky looking unfish thing that was there previously. "See any ugly bastard beasties that I might be missing?"
"You share a name with my twin," he announced mostly happy, but it reminded him that Rowan, his brother was very far away at the moment. He stepped up to the bank and looked around for anything, but saw nothing. The stream, to him at least, seemed almost sterile in it's lack of animal and insect life. "Nope, no unfish or the like. Helena says you're a botanist?" He kept scanning the stream just in case something came along.
"Oh, good. I scared the little things off then. Ugly, and I don't know if they bite. Bleh." Ro laughed, and pointed at the wispy, hair-like plants that made the water look much more murky if you didn't know they were plants. "I want to dig a couple of these up, see if they're edible, y'know? With the number of people arriving, the odds are pretty good that the roseberries and the citruscress and everything we found so far are going to be stripped down or killed within a couple of days."
Thorne was glad that someone else was worried about the food situation. He rolled his pants legs up again and waded in a little ways to help dig up some of the bulbs. "If they bite, they aren't very aggressive. Bazzer and I were trying to catch some earlier." Thorne worked his fingers into the mud, pushing the rocks aside to feel a sort of rounded tuber under the wispy leaves. "Even if they aren't edible, I might be able to use them. I'm a doctor, naturopath, which is sort of why I came looking for you. Offer my help with anything if you need it. I don't know if you're as worried about you as Helena is."
"I'm not, really. My doctor said the baby's doing fine, and the little twerp seems to find kicking important internal organs highly amusing. Kicking me right now, in fact. And I've got a couple months before I'm supposed to go into labor, too. Isn't that right, baby?" She patted her tummy and got a kick for her trouble. Or maybe a punch. Whatever. "Thank you, though - oh, would you look at that? It looks like a waterlogged potato." She tilted her head and took it from him, examining it curiously.
"Excellent! No complications so far is good. If we're stuck here that long and you want, I can at least attend the delivery for you if you want." He dug into the muddy bottom again, figuring they should get a couple of specimens at least. "Definitely starchy looking," he agreed. The next one was slightly larger and he handed it over to Rowan as well. Out of the water, the leaves were lightly slimy, not all that unexpected really.
Rowan shrugged. "Hey, as long as you know what you're doing, I'm all for that." It was pretty firm, but Rowan was able to get her fingernails under the skin, and broke it open. And found lightly purpled flesh beneath. She sighed. "What the hell is with this planet and the color purple? Honestly." Shaking her head, she licked the now exposed flesh of the bulb and looked thoughtful. "...definitely starchy. I can almost taste the stuff, like with a raw potato? But it's a little sweeter. Like a cross between a potato and a yam."
"We have those back home. Purple potatoes." Thorne dug up several more and broke open one himself. "Let's home it's more along the lines of yam in terms of nutrition." He hadn't missed what Rowan had said though and looked at her thoughtfully. "So, I'm not the only one convinced we're not on earth any longer?" Really, that was the only thing that made sense to Thorne. Yes, there were some odd plants on the planet, and the sun could be brighter in other places, but given the climate it was more equatorial, but the sun really wasn't the same quality as it should have been in an equatorial location.
She pointed at the sun. "Our sun - rather, our native sun - is yellow. It's why the world is green; it absorbs the light the best. This one is white. Besides that, you can be in the middle of the ocean or in the amazon rainforest, and you'd still smell car exhaust, factory exhaust, whatever. That shit doesn't leave you alone for five minutes. Here? There's nothing. There was a bit of smoke when they got the fire going, and then it went away again. This world is clean. Either we experienced a bloody miracle on earth that changed the fundamental atmosphere and solar system itself, or we're on another planet." She paused. "Or maybe we're just all dreaming it."
"I'm voting for another plant for the same reason." He nodded toward the sun. "That and the chances of ending up in a place where there is not a single plant I recognize is, to be totally conceited...odd considering I've studied all North American and Chinese medicinals." He bit into one of the tubers and let the bit sit on his tongue, but didn't chew. After a moment he spit it out. "Seems okay...if it is a yam like though, I'd feel better if we cooked it first."
"Oh, same." Rowan nodded. "It'd be nice to have a hot meal anyway. There's only so much of eating of raw stuff I can do before I want to have something nice and hot. It'd be different if it was summer, but I don't think it is." She glanced at the sky with a slightly concerned look, but then shrugged it off. "But hey, more food is always good. Thumbs up for more food. We won't strip the area bare like humans tend to do."
"I don't suppose you've seen anything that might be used like a banana leaf have you?" Thorne walked a few steps away and picked up some of the handy bowls the Climber trees had left and waded back out to begin filling them. "I wonder if I could use the leaves for poultices. I'll save them and see. You know what would be super handy? A pot. I wish someone would arrive with a big pot...that would be fantastic." He grinned over her, "While I'm wishing, maybe some bows and arrows. That would be handy as well."
Rowan grumbled good-naturedly while taking the grass cord that was holding her hair up, and started tying several of the plants together once she got them out of the water herself. Without an unfish, the water was much more friendly. Tied, she shook them out in the water to clean them, and slung the entire thing over her shoulder. It was surprising how strong the grass cord had turned out to be. "Well... if we get a big enough animal, the stomach can be used for a pot. As icky as that sounds."
"I'd really like to try and take down a laugher. I've got a few ideas that might work, but I'll know more when I see them tonight. It would give us some protein, some skin and bones that we could sharpen." He finished digging, rinsed his hands and stood up. "And a stomach, not to mention a bladder. Also icky, but useful." Gathering the plants he smiled, "So, Ms. Botanist lady, what do we call these?"
"Well, I was calling them mirkweed, because it makes the water look murky." She tapped her chin. "So I guess we'll just stick with that. Mirkweed tubers. It's too bad I can't find a lot more of those beans, though. Hopefully they have a protein content similar to legumes on earth. They don't taste half bad, either. But at least we'll be well fed tonight." She blinked. "Oh, here's an idea. If someone breaks a bone and needs a cast, why not wrap them with fresh leaves from a climber tree? That'll harden up slowly, but it might work."
"That would work really great...except I'm not sure how I'd get it off later. Unless we can make some sort of saw. I think the vines and leaves of that tree are going to be totally amazing in what we can really make with them. I told Helena we should try cutting some of the live leaves so they have an edge, then letting them dry to see if we could get some sort of dull knife or hatchet type blade."
Thorne pondered the beans for a moment, "Helena and I also talked about sending out scouting parties, maybe you could let everyone know which plants to keep an eye out for."
"Eh." Rowan shrugged again. "I'm not the doctor. If I get back to school, I might go for my Ph. D. though." She grinned and patted a nearby climber tree, though it was young and not particularly big yet. "They're like mothers; Give us everything that we need so far, except for food, and even then there are little critters near the canopy that maybe one day be food. I don't know. Good little mothers." Then she nodded. "I could definitely tell people want to get, but whether or not they take the food responsibly is something else entirely - for all I know, they might strip the place."
"Do you think it's winter here? If this place has seasons. If it's spring...maybe we should dry and plant some of the beans. Even if it's not, might be worth it to dry some and plant them just in case. I'm pretty good with growing things. Grew up on a commune slash farm..and hey, you're a botanist. Between the two of us we should be able to work out something." Thorne smiled and watched Rowan pat the tree. She reminded him of Aspen, his youngest sister.
"No." Rowan shook her head. "I think it's autumn. The sun doesn't rise all that high, and the nights are pretty cool. And there are a lot of things ripe right now, as far as I can tell. I don't know if the purple is the leaves changing colors, but the other points make me a little on the nervous side. I don't know what winter'll be like here." She stooped down to pick some of the bean pods - there weren't many, but there were several plants around the area, and there'd be enough for a few each, at least. She added them to the bowl with the tubers that Thorne was carrying.
"I wonder if we can dry some of the beans now then for the winter. We might need to take a look at how we can preserve some of the carbs and veg to last. Meat we can always smoke, that's not hard, but the rest of this might take a little planning. At least if the winter's mild we can always dig the mirkweed tubers." Thorne's mind turned over what they could to, the grape like berry things might be able to make into juice and keep some that way, if they could keep the insects and such out of it. "Preserving the plants we have and not stripping them is also important if we're to have food next year, if we're still here. To be honest I'd rather plan for the long term then go home then plan to wake up at home and not have food."
"Thank you! Someone who wants to plan for our continued survival!" Rowan rolled her eyes. "Okay, that's three people who are willing to talk common sense at me. That's good. You wouldn't believe the conversation I had this morning with a guy named Arlo. From Texas, even." Because that was a detail she wasn't likely to forget. Nor the conversation about getting placenta on him. Jesus. "As for the beans, if they grow fast enough, I think we might be able to put some in leaf bowls with some dirt, put up a wicker-vine-cage thing around them, and let them grow like that. We could even hang them in the tree so we could just sort of harvest them up there if we wanted."
"Depends on how deep the roots go, if they've got deep tap roots, bowl might not be deep enough, but I bet we can find a way to join leaves together before they harden to make real planters." Thorne's forehead furrowed as he considered it, but then his attention was drawn to the tone of Rowan's voice when she mentioned Arlo. "Haven't met him yet...sounds like I may not want to. What did he say?"
Now that it was past the situation, Rowan tried desperately not to laugh. Really hard. And failed pretty miserably. "He wanted to know when I was due, because he was worried I'd get sudden placenta on him and he didn't have a change of clothes."
Thorne blinked and looked rather stunned, then blinked again. "He thought...what? What kind of idiot thinks you'd go launching placenta around? Of all the stupid ass things...holy crap don't let me talk to him. That kind of stupidity makes my brain ache."
"I know. It was. Um. Magical. It was a magical conversation." Rowan put a hand to her mouth. "I'm really hoping that he was just disoriented and freaked out because apparently he just got here this morning, though. Maybe he'll, y'know, be useful and smart later on when the shock wears off."
"I just got here this morning," he reminded her, but joined in the laughter. "Man...from Texas? Goddess, please don't tell me that he's as much of a chauvinist as he sounds?" Thorne didn't tend to do well with people that were closed minded, usually because they believed his family was all a bunch of devil worshiping pervs and that didn't really sit well with him.
"Okay, I won't." And Rowan didn't talk any more about him. She just smiled brightly, and sighed - then eyed a pesk that was gliding overhead. But, happily, it wasn't doing anything in particular that would bug her. "I haven't found anything like garlic or onion yet, unfortunately."
"After what? Three whole days here? Shameful. You should be spanked publicly." Thorne laughed and nudged her shoulder. "I'm sure there's more here that's edible. We'll find it. After all, not like we've got a whole lot of other things to do."
"Ha! Yes. We'll have oodles of fun looking for things to eat. I want to know if there's any plains nearby for grains, though. That'd be particularly nice." She sighed a little wistfully - sometimes those cravings stuck around, and for some reason she was craving oatmeal of all the stupid things.
"Not only for grains, but any kind of medium to large grazing animal would be fantastic for both food source and seeing if we can domesticate it." At the sigh, he rubbed her shoulder briefly. "Thinking of something in-particular?"
"Oatmeal." She sighed, looking faintly downhearted. "You're a sweetie. Thank you for helping me with the tubers!" She looked up and smiled then stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. "Now, if you could just figure out a way to tell the baby that mum doesn't really appreciate being kicked in places that she needs, like her liver, we'll be all set."
Thorne laughed softly and put his hand gently on her belly, "Baby...please stop kicking your mother's internal organs. Wait until you're born and you can do more interesting things...like pull her hair and urp on her." He grinned mischievously. "You're quite welcome," he said to Rowan. "And thanks for having a good attitude. It'd be hard being the only optimistic one." He hugged her gently. "Suppose we should get to that meeting."
"Yes." Rowan agreed, pushing a few strands of hair out of her face, since now her hair was hanging long. "We probably should."