(no subject)

[sunbaked_baker]

Young Rae Seddon comes in through the back door from the forest looking thoughtful and carefully carrying a small piece of vine. The short length of woody vine includes four small but wide, rough-edged leaves, almost in the shapes of hearts, and an irregular cluster of small, round, dark purple fruits. Climbing up on a bar stool, Rae asks, "Bar? What kind of vine is this? I found it out in the forest."

But there is no napkin with an answer - instead, a book appears on the counter top: Forage: A Wild Guide to Wild Foods.

"Of course," she says, grinning wryly. Why tell when you can make the kid educate herself, right? "Could I get a strawberry milkshake, too? Thank you."

The girl is soon curled up in the corner of the couch, sipping her milkshake and leafing (no pun intended) through the book, looking for leaves and fruits similar to the ones she has found. She has tucked one of the heart-shaped leaves into her hair like a barrette.

Comments

[imthepilot]

Bodhi is passing by, a bottle of some sort of orange red juice in hand. He sports the book and turns his head to read the spine. Kyber, less concerned with not disturbing her, climbs onto the table to investigate her drink.

[sunbaked_baker]

The girl looks up, spotting the cat, and closes the book with her finger keeping her place. The cover of the book shows a variety of wilds plants and fruits surrounding the book's title.

She reaches out to stroke the small feline, hoping to distract it from the pink milkshake. "Hey kitty, that's no good for you. You might not like it."

[imthepilot]

"Kyber!" Bodhi calls, exasperated. "Get you nose out of Rae's drink!" He shakes his head with a smile. "Sorry about that?"

[sunbaked_baker]

The girl laughs, gently plucking the cat from the coffee table and settling him in her lap for scritches. "I can't be angry at him for being curious," she smiles down at the cat, then up at Bodhi. "I'm chasing curiosity, myself. I found some sort of fruiting vine some ways into the woods, and I'm trying to find out what it is, and whether the fruit're edible."

And being an at least somewhat sensible child, she wasn't going to try tasting the fruit first. She sought out a book, instead.

[imthepilot]

Kyber will accept scritches instead of milkshake. He curls up, purring loudly.

Bodhi brightens, "Oh? What have you learnt?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"So far, I've learned a lot of plants it isn't," she grins. "I think it's a kind of wild grape, but I don't want to, you know, taste it until I'm sure it won't make me sick."

Rae extricates one hand from Kyber's fur and picks up the short length of vine with its wide, heart-shaped leaves and it's loose, irregular cluster of dark purple fruits slightly smaller than marbles, to show Bodhi.

[imthepilot]

"I have a kit for testing for poisons? That might be a good place to start. I made a nasty mistake in the greenhouse so I've been more careful since."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Could I use the kit to test it? At least until I figure out what it is?" The girl looks startled and concerned. "What did you find that was poisonous in the greenhouse?"

[imthepilot]

"Of course." Bodhi goes to the bar and grabs a simple small sampling kit. "You just clip off a bit of the plant with this and it turns black if it's poisonous. But you have to sample the leaf and fruit separately."

Bodhi colours a little. "There's a big tree with purple flowers. Myself and a friend were... Um, talking under it. Turns out the flowers made our skin blotched and itchy."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Oh no! I'm so sorry," she says, wide-eyed at his tale. "I've gotten into vines that did that, before, pulling poison ivy out of mom's back flowerbed. It made me itch so much! And I couldn't scratch because that'd make it spread."

Rae carefully clips off a bit of the leaf and looks at the kit. "Leaves... are okay, it looks like," she remarks, seeing no sign of anything turning black. "Though I suppose that just means they're not poisonous, not that they're necessarily something you'd want to eat. Let's try the fruit..."

She clips off a bit of the purple-skinned fruit, revealing the pale green interior, and watches the kit. "No sign of poison from the fruit, either."