Sharing Memories

Caroline paused at the entrance of the cooking area, scanning it with her eyes, before she spotted me and headed over. While she walked, I was placing the ingredients we collected today on the table.

"Hello Chef. Good morning."

Giving a polite greeting to each other, she immediately started diving into the details of the cooking session.

"Today I'll be demonstrating the cooking process for fruit jelly. First, cut several fruits into cubes. Then, cover these fruits with a thick layer of syrup. Remember that the thickness must not be more than the width of half of your pinky finger, but not less than the thickness of your nails. Too thick and the inner syrup will not be steamed. Too thin and the fruits would be steamed as well, which will cause the dish to be sour. This dish requires good control and timing."

Caroline took one glance at my successful experiments, before she turned her attention back to the lesson. She took one of the fruits off the table as well as her knife from her survival belt. She then showed how to cut the fruit to produce cubes.

"Insert the knife at the top, and angle it such that it is just underneath the skin. Then, use a smooth motion to curve your cut along the skin line. This will allow you to remove the skin while making sure most of the fruit flesh is intact. Once you peel the skin, cut it into half vertically, then lay the pieces next to each other before cutting them into cubes."

Stopping step by step, she allowed me to copy and follow her actions.

Next we placed the fruits into the bowl and poured the syrup in. After that Caroline took a pink ribbon and tied it on the plate.

Then Caroline put it to the side.

"The next dish we are doing would be..."

In this fashion, we quietly stacked up about 20 dishes with various timings, ingredients and cooking methods.

Once we had nicely finished all the ingredients, we shuttled between the ingredient pile and the pool, carrying the dishes over and putting them to float. Caroline then passed the metal hook to me and we steamed all of them.

While waiting, she grabbed two chairs, one for herself, and we sat beside the pool and talked.

"We usually calculate the amount of ingredients before we even start cooking. We need to properly control what we take from the forest, because if not we might exceed the rate at which the forest can replenish itself. Even though the forest looks so big, a majority of this is due to the recreational efforts of our ancestors."

As Caroline talked, I used the metal hooks to take out several dishes and placed them to the side. Caroline on the other hand pulled up her personal terminal and showed me some pictures.

The pictures were of a pretty barren land with sparse trees, dried land and potholes everywhere.

"The land here used to be much harder to live in. Around 150 years ago, just when the colonizers landed on our planet, we went through a sort of industrial revolution. Our material consumption increased, and we used and exported a lot of wood from our land. Furthermore some creatures were seen as dangerous predators and we imported other animals to solve this 'issue'. In the process, we messed up our ecosystem. But not the whole planet was ruined yet, so we managed to bring back the forests after around 100 years of cultivation. So all the trees here are around a hundred years old."

Caroline shuffled through several pictures of people from many races, with all their different hair colors and body structures, digging the ground with equipment and planting hundreds and thousands of trees. From the corner of my eye, I saw her scanning my face for my reaction.

After a while, it seemed that whatever she saw reassured her. Releasing the tension from her shoulders, her straight lips curved into a barely noticeable smile as she turned her attention back to the picture.

"This girl over here with the tree in her hands is my great grandmother. Right next to her is my great grandfather. These were the pictures taken by my great great grandmother."

Caroline pointed to a small girl with blond hair and sparkly blue eyes. She looked like a doll. She was also quite short compared to the other people in the picture.

Caroline herself had blond hair, however her eyes were more of a shade of brown then blue, and she was definitely taller.

"My great grandmother was a Tiny Elf, and my great grandfather was a Dwarf. My grandmother was half Tiny Elf and half Dwarf. My grandfather was a halfling himself, a mix between an Animal morphing species, named Animorphs, and a Colonizer. So my height comes from my Animorph genetics but my blond hair is from my Tiny Elf great grandmother. My brown eyes come from my Colonizer bloodline."

Caroline changed to another picture. This one showed two people from different species at what looked to be a wedding. The man on the left had gray hair and brown eyes, while the woman on the right had blonde hair and green eyes. The two of them were gazing deep into each other's eyes, with a fondness so apparent that I could feel it ooze out from the photo.

"This is my mother, who married an ex-Colonizer quite a while back. Both of them met when he came to Ferus for the construction of the AT center. I haven't spent enough time with them. Not with how things are. I'm sure Josh has already told you about our situation."

I stretched out the hook to get another dish.

"He didn't tell me the details, but I roughly know about it. When do you visit them?"

Caroline sighed and opened up the schedule on her personal terminal.

"This month's visit is going to happen in five days. I have a younger brother who isn't allowed out of the safe area for a couple more years. But he's old enough to understand the situation around him so I get worried sometimes that he would try to sneak out and join the camps early. A lot of children around his age tend to try. Most don't succeed, but it still worries me. With the predators and all."

I fished up another dish while staring at the pool. The cloudy surface reflected my face back at me, and I was reminded of my brother.

"I get you. I have a little brother of my own. He's around 7 years old, and sometimes watching him act so mature for his age makes me feel that time flies by so fast. We got separated recently so I miss him sometimes."

Scooping up the last plate, Caroline and I carried them back to the table.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope the two of you find each other soon."

Giving me a pat in the back, we then proceeded to taste test the quality of the food we just cooked. I pulled up my personal terminal to take notes as Caroline gave me some pointers on how to improve on the dishes.

Once we were done, she ended the cooking session for the day and we both cleaned up.

"Tomorrow, we will meet at the same time for the second cooking session. I will send Josh the ingredient list so you don't have to worry about that. Then, see you tomorrow!"

Waving goodbye to Caroline, we parted and I headed into my house. Sazzy immediately jumped onto the bed again and pulled up her personal terminal.

[There's only less than two months to go! You'll get to see your brother soon.]

"I know."

Relooking at and sorting out the notes, I looked at the calendar and flipped to the date which I had marked out his return.

Two months. Just two more months and then I would be able to see him again.

Hearing my heartbeat in my ears, I closed the personal terminal and took a deep breath.

Only two more months.