Interesting Village

With Olivia instructions, I maneuvered the car around the periphery of the clearing to the left gate. There, we entered through the big open doorway they called the left gate and headed straight to their own communal garage.

"You can park your car here for your entire stay. After this I can show you where you two will stay."

Grabbing our luggage, the four of us got out of the car and headed out of the garage through a small door. Outside the small door, we could see several adults walking about, and a handful of children playing near the houses.

Unlike the children from Media Luna, these kids did not react much at all as we passed by them. The most they did was give us a curious glance before going back to their games. I wonder if guests here were quite frequent?

We walked to a simple wooden house, far enough away from the others such that it had its own privacy but not obviously isolated from all the other houses, and Olivia handed us a set of keys.

"This house used to be Linda's house when she visited. So I would recommend not digging around the house too much. Also, since you are going to meet Amanda later, I'll just show you what her house looks like."

She pulled up her alternative personal terminal and enlarged a picture of a comfortable looking house built similarly to ours. It had a triangle shaped roof, with two windows on each side of the wall. In front of the wooden door was a small deck that was only slightly elevated from the ground. However, the most obvious difference in this house from the rest would be the excessive amounts of security. From the outside, I could see a couple of cameras, both obvious and inconspicuous. There were at least 4 visible locks on the door.

"She lives not too far from here, can't miss her. Just head a little further away from the left gate along the edge of the clearing."

Olivia pointed a certain direction and drew a curve in the air. She and Pansy then left us to move in. But before they left, they gave us their personal terminal numbers.

[This village is ...interesting.]

With a face that showed her complicated feelings, Sazzy commented as I closed the door.

"The village certainly feels more 'modern' than the Venenum village or the Media Luna village."

Those two villages felt more 'rural' compared to the other places we had visited. Even Ken's house on Aquarius was larger and more advanced. But in Fluvius, although the houses were not that significantly bigger than the other villages, they had more modern infrastructure.

The inside of the house had a wide corridor leading to the kitchen. And there were only two bedrooms in this house. The bedrooms were much bigger than the ones in Media Luna, and were much cleaner. The house looked well kept, even though the two sisters had said that this was Linda's house. And since Linda was the village chief, she probably wasn't visiting often enough to warrant such a well-maintained house.

Going into our randomly chosen rooms, I placed my luggage bag beside the door and scanned the room. A queen sized bed, a wardrobe, bedside table, chair, the whole room was decently furnished. With not a speck of dust in sight.

When I exited the room, I saw the kitchen lights on. Walking there, Oliver was in the middle of carrying the ingredient bags onto the kitchen table. Since we were interrupted in the middle of gathering, we had a little less supplies than I wanted. But it was still enough for a couple more meals.

I washed my hands in the sink and went over to the ingredient bag to pick out a couple to make a simple meal with.

"What are we eating today?"

Slightly excited and most probably hungry, Oliver went to the sink to wash his hands.

"I was thinking of making some simple dishes, like stuffed mushrooms and berry dips."

Taking a couple of berries and mushrooms, I then looked through the bag and realized we ran out of red nuts.

Looking through the ingredients available, I then saw the jade fruit and the lilac fruit.

Experimenting right now would be a little risky since if it failed then we would have less things to eat. But at the same time, I had an intuition that including these ingredients into the dishes may bring about some surprising flavors.

Or maybe that was my brain just wanting to mash things together and see if they would work.

I was hesitating, but soon gave in to temptation and grabbed the two ingredients. I would only experiment on one of the dishes. We had to at least have something edible if the experiment failed.

Bringing the ingredients over to the stove, Oliver had already prepared a pot of water when he heard we were making stuffed mushrooms.

"I see you're really hungry."

As soon as I mentioned that, a gurgling sound came from his stomach. Blushing, Oliver quickly rushed me to start cooking.

I cut the caps of the mushrooms from their stems, and used a spoon to empty out the middle of the cap. Then, chopping the berries and mushroom stems into small pieces, I then poured out the little bottle of honey juice that I had used before all over the ingredients.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Oliver leaning forward in curiosity at what I was doing.

"I used this honey juice back when we were traveling on the sea. Usually, the honey juice is sour until it is boiled into a sweet and viscous substance. However, this honey juice is going to be our substitute for red nuts. Another use of the honey juice, although not as well-known as its sweet properties, is its ability to act as a sort of oil in cooking. Although the final product would usually be either covered in the sweet thick viscosity of the honey juice, or it would be extremely sour."

Stirring the three ingredients together, I made sure the honey juice was distributed as evenly as possible before I scooped it into the mushroom cap. Then, once I couldn't fit any more of the berries and mushroom stems, I filled the rest of the cap with the honey juice. This time, I also didn't add the white flower on top. Not because we ran out, but because I didn't think its type of sweetness would work well with the ingredients.

Placing the stuffed mushrooms in a bowl, I set them on the boiled water and closed the lid of the pot.

"Now that we have set the stuffed mushrooms to steam, I want to try something new."

I pushed the mushrooms aside and took out the large amounts of berries that we still had.

"I'm thinking of making a sort of hybrid dish between the berry dips and the lilac fruit and jade fruit."

The moment he heard about the lilac fruit, Oliver made a face.

"The lilac fruit usually isn't spicy. But it reacts with the dirt star to make the whole dish spicy. In fact, both of the ingredients have quite sweet tastes when eaten apart or in other dishes. We must just make sure that we avoid certain combinations if we don't want our dish being spicy. Besides, what we want from the Lilac plant today is the round fruits inside. The actual fruit."

Taking another spoon, I reached into the Lilac plant and forcefully detached all the small round brown fruits inside it. Putting all these brown balls into a bowl, I then added the Jade fruit and then used the back of the spoon to mash both of these ingredients together.

Every once in a while, I would add a little bit of the berries inside. Finally, when the whole mixture was only one color, peach, I put it aside with aching arms.

[How peculiar. How does mixing three dark colors produce a light color?]

Sazzy and Oliver leaned forward to look at the mixture, Oliver didn't dare touch it, he was aware that he was currently on a planet where almost everything was poisonous. And if I didn't tell him something was edible, it probably wasn't.

Sazzy on the other hand, taking full advantage of the fact she was incorporeal, stuck one finger into the mixture and gave it a lick. Not that she could taste anything.

I walked over to where we were steaming the stuffed mushrooms.

This new dish I had in mind was currently incomplete. It was edible, but it was currently only a dip. Eating a dip alone wouldn't really count as a meal.

Taking out the stuffed mushrooms quickly, I then took the premade noodle mixture and added some clam powder and green berries. Then, I kneaded everything together really quickly and took chunks of the dough and rolled it into oval shapes.

Dumping these ovals into the boiling water I was reusing, I then served up the stuffed mushrooms to Oliver as we waited for the oval mixture to cook.

Oliver took one of the stuffed mushrooms using his hands and looked curiously at the thick honey juice on top. Then, after giving the dish a good whiff, he smiled at the scent and popped the whole thing into his mouth.

I smiled as he opened his mouth slightly to cool down the food on his tongue. But this still did not prevent him from biting down on the food now and then.

Following him, I popped one of the mushrooms into my mouth as well. Different from the first variation of the stuffed mushroom, this dish only had two major tastes. The meat-like taste of the mushroom cap, and the sweet but sour filling on the inside. The mixture of the sweet green berries and the meaty mushroom stem were homogenized by the sour but sometimes sweet honey juice. This was because not all the honey juice was steamed, which meant both its cooked and uncooked flavors appeared in the dish. This contrast also helped accentuate the overall flavor of the fillings.

Glancing down as Oliver reached out his hand for a second serving, I saw his eyes stop at the dip. It then shifted to the stuffed mushrooms, and then back to the dip.

"The dip, this dish, is edible right now. If you want to try dipping the mushroom into it, go ahead."

Seeing Oliver blush as his intentions were seen through, he nevertheless dipped his mushroom into the dip and popped the whole thing into his mouth.