Cultivating Plants

Whilst tedious, chores brought peace to Aloe’s mind. And it wasn’t like she could go instantly back to evolving plants, she needed to recover her reserves before.

She started by boiling water from the oasis as she was running out of drinking water, so she was back to endless sessions of water purification. Taking advantage of her position, Aloe gathered all her dirty clothes together and moved to a spot far from where she normally bathed to clean them.

Karaim didn’t have much possession beyond his gardening tools, but washing was made infinitely easier with soap, a washing table, and some buckets. Her clothes weren’t in poor condition, except her desert garb which had seen some battlefield judging by its looks, and her socks.

For living in a desert, they were way muddier than they had reason to be.

That was basically why she didn’t wear them. Not only was it too hot most of the time to wear them, but it also meant more clothes for the laundry.

And as the youngest member of her family, she had had a lot of laundry to take care of.

Soon enough, Aloe went through the few pieces of clothing she had to wash. However, she also took the time to clean her sheets as they became quite dirty after sleeping on them whilst being dirty and clothed herself.

By the time she had set all the textiles on the drying rack, she had already gone through two rounds of boiling water – which she poured into the amphora – and topped her vitality deposit.

“Ugh.” Aloe groaned as she cracked her neck. “Alright, evolving time it is.”

Her arms were tired and her hands numb from all the repetitive movement, but thankfully, Evolution and Infusion weren’t demanding to the body unless the vitality costs were greater than the ones she could naturally provide.

“Evolution test number four, starting now.” Unlike before, Aloe’s voice was deadbeat. The Thousand Cuts had something to do with her current mental state, but the actual cause was more simple and rather physical. 

She was simply tired.

And it wasn’t like the seed had given her any reasons to be excited about. As she had expected, the infusion of vitality with the intent of evolution brought no results, no changes. The seed answered by walling her off.

Aloe sighed, leaving the last black seed pair of the collection and passed to the dark brown ones.

“Two out of four black seed evolutions have worked; I shouldn’t be this negative,” Aloe commented with two new seeds in her hands. “Who knows, maybe Evolutions prefers black? Just kidding... unless?”

Aloe chuckled softly and left one of the seeds on the desk next to the three remaining Cure Grass pills.

“Yeah, I should do more next. I don’t wanna have another Blossomflame scenario again.” Her voice was soft and weak, she wasn’t yet in peak conditions, but she continued to push herself, making her rather sleepy. “Evolution test number five, starting now.”

Intent was all that mattered when evolving a seed, yet even then, Aloe couldn’t overcome a seed’s own intent if it decided that it didn’t want to evolve.

Her vitality fizzled out as a fundamental wall stopped her.

Wordlessly and – more surprisingly – sightlessly, Aloe grabbed the other seed and left the pair together on their spot. Her hand shifted a few centimeters to the right and she picked up the next pair. Dark brown and ovoid, these new seeds had nothing special to themselves.

“Evolution test number six, starting now.” Nevertheless, she tried them.

Not two seconds later, Aloe left them on the desk, it had refused her vitality. She went to the next pair.

“Evolution test number seven, starting now.” 

Nothing, next pair. 

“Evolution test number eight, starting now.” 

Same results. None at all.

By now her tests had left a dent in her samples, sixteen seeds were already used, and whilst she was thankful that she had gotten two evolutions in such a small pool, Aloe was greedy in her core. She wanted more. She could never be satisfied, no matter what she told herself.

“Come on, nine’s the lucky number.” But also the damned one. She left that unsaid.

Aloe shook the seed clasped in her hands. This one was bigger than the rest, almost nut-sized, and more chestnut than dark brown. 

“Evolution test number nine, starting now.” As it would seem, nine was indeed the lucky number.

Vitality started to be sucked away from her hands toward the seed. It was a greedy suction, not as absurd as that of the Blossomflame, but it instantly became obvious to Aloe that she would need external help. She reached for the Cure Grass pills, holding one in her hand just for the right moment.

She hadn’t eaten in a while, so her stomach would digest right away the pill, providing her swift vitality. The more she waited, the more efficient the pill would be and the more vitality she would get out of it as a result.

Her hand remained steady as her reserves slowly dwindled. Seeds had sort of a reverse consumption of vitality rate; the emptier they were, the faster they absorbed vitality. But this also meant that after the first few seconds, their absorption slowed significantly. This was what allowed Aloe to consume pills with a full stomach when she was evolving the Blossomflame without running out.

Evolutions were normally measured in seconds, but the Blossomflame – always the outlier – was better measured in minutes.

After half a minute, she made it to a tenth of her reserves, and as that number approached five percent, Aloe downed the pill.

The reaction was instantaneous, her deposit almost brought to two-fifths of its total in a blink.

And as the rate of vitality consumed slowed further on, it was clear that no more pills would be needed.

At half of what the pellet had recovered her, the seed finally stopped drinking from her vital energy. Aloe was way calmer than with the Blossomflame and the Thousand Cuts, and she reached for the Aloe Veritas leaf jar. Only two leaves remained now.

Her movements were confident as she dyed the newly evolved seed with ink, and the cut leaf responded to her desires. It read:

Species: Grace’s Exaltation

Sobriquet: Her Divinity’s Ecstasy

Description: An evolved member of the Acanthaceae family, a species known for its ability to bring daylight and take creatures into bliss.

Alignment: Life, Light

“This... this is just a straight-up drug, isn’t it?” Aloe commented as she held the evolved seed in her hands. It had forgone its chestnut tone for a black with golden accents. “And the name, both of them actually... they don’t... well... they sound weird.”

Many thoughts formed and vanished in Aloe’s mind like clouds, but a core idea remained. Still, she wasn’t wholly against it.

“If it works like I think it does...” she added with a blush, “then this may be the very first true medicinal plant I evolved.” 

Even though all of her test seeds – not only the current ones but also the first she used when learning the vital arts – were medicinal in origin, this was the first time she saw one of them keeping that property, that idea.

Without wasting more time as noon approached quickly, Aloe continued to do some chores. She wanted to infuse the Grace’s Exaltation, but it would be dangerous to do so without at least being full deposit. And she wasn’t precisely close to that metric.

First thing in order was to rekindle the hearth to heat the soup, she was already growing hungry, especially after having consumed almost two whole deposits of vitality when the day was only at its half point.

Next, Aloe made another boiling batch, not before refiling her waterskin with some water from the amphora.

Taking advantage of her location, the girl uprooted a handful of blades of grass. Cure Grass, obviously. If Karaim was to be trusted, common grass no longer existed in the oasis.

Once she sat back down on the desk, it was time to process the grass. The first step was to remove the roots of some blades she had pulled too hard as she didn’t need them. She had already rinsed them beforehand, so now it was as simple as mulling the grass into a paste in the mortar.

She wasn’t as skilled with the pestle as with the knife, but there wasn’t much mystery to smashing grass until it turned mushy.

“Oh, right,” The knife reminded her of something. “I guess I need to make another pipe for this new seed.”

Thankfully she still had some material lying around, so she wouldn’t need to gather more leaves, but she sighed nonetheless at the prospect of more work.

Chores kept piling up.

By the time Aloe managed to get a good consistency with the Cure Grass mush, the water in the cauldron started bubbling audibly, so she allowed herself to rest for lunch.

She still had half a day before her and a thousand tasks she wanted to do.

There was no time limit, no deadline pushing her forward, but she continued anyway. Until exhaustion, until she dropped asleep; working was better than thinking.

Epsilon_Twilight

Not gonna lie, listening to Two Steps From Hell again is making me write longer chapters. There's nothing better than an orchestra blasting off the greasiest bangers to ever exist to motivate a person.

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