Disguised Intent

The next day when I woke up, Oliver was still asleep in his room. I opened the door and sneaked inside. His distress from last night was still bothering me, so I went right up to his bed to check on him.

Seeing the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, I moved my sights to his troubled sleeping face. The corner of his eyes were slightly red and looked quite swollen. The frown on his face seemed to hold a lot of frustration, helplessness and worry.

It reminded me of the times where I was on the fence about cutting off both of our financial sources in favor of possibly having a better future. I had cried myself to sleep several times over that decision, but to this day I still think that it was the better option.

Creeping back out of his room, I gently closed the door and headed for the kitchen. Briefly glancing around the house, it seemed that both Sazzy and Ava were gone.

In the kitchen, I pulled up my personal terminal and keyed in 'Food to eat after crying'. Glancing through the long list of blogs and news articles, I spotted a familiar website. WonderFood.

Clicking onto that blog post, I saw her signature banner, the words 'WonderFood' written in cursive inside of a bowl of what was probably Jasmine milk in front of a pleasing pastel pink banner. Under that was the title, 'Foods to help you after crying'.

Briefly reading it, there were many tips available, and some were even specifically added for certain ethnic minorities. But the two I was going to focus on was to eat something you like, 'comfort food', as well as to apply some types of food ingredients to your eyes.

I walked over to where our ingredients were kept and gave them a one over. I didn't really want to make it too obvious, so applying cool foods would have to be off the table.

Grabbing a handful of dirt stars, some clam powder, green berries and red nuts, I turned on the stove and placed a saucepan on it instead of the usual pot.

I then flatten and chop the red nuts, before dumping them into the pan. Almost immediately, I saw a red colored juice start to leak from the nuts and spread evenly throughout the pan. In contrast, the nuts were starting to fade in color.

Once there was a decent level of the juice, I slit the green berries open and squeezed them against the knife to extract all the juice into the saucepan.

When the green berry juice and the red nut juice met, there was an immediate reaction where it seemed to form a white colored foam. Using a fork, I separated the foam and mixed it with the red nut juice. Once the foam stopped growing, I would take another green berry, squeeze it, and stir. I ate the remaining flesh of the grapes.

Once I saw no more foam forming even when I added green berry juice, I put the berries aside and started whipping the foam with a fork. While whipping it, I occasionally mixed in clam powder until the mixture seemed less foam-like and more cream-like. Taking a small taste test, I nodded my head as I tasted pure sweetness.

Grabbing a spoon, I scooped out the cream into another bowl, leaving the unreacted green berry juice behind. Then, I took some of the dirt stars and crumbled them up, before sprinkling them onto the mixture.

Usually, according to the recipe I found on WonderFood, this was used as a topping on certain bread and even desserts. However, I didn't have the ingredients for bread and it wasn't so bad once in a while to have a sweet breakfast.

However this amount was surely not enough to be full.

Going back to the ingredients area, I took out the noodle mix. Pouring about 2 servings into a bowl, I added just enough water to form a nice dough. Then to this dough I added some green berry juice to sweeten it. Pinching off a little bit of the dough, I put the dough on my palm and used my thumb to press it into a bite sized oval shape. I then placed them in a bowl, making sure they didn't touch each other so they didn't stick together.

Once I had filled up one bowl, I washed the saucepan and added in a little oil. I then dropped the little ovals in to be fried.

This seemingly weird dish, sweet cereal, was something Jack had told me about on one of the occasions we spoke to each other alone. He had mentioned that it was the go to breakfast for the family for special occasions, as it was sweet enough to make everything else taste bland.

Frying the sweet cereal, I placed the finished ones in a bowl. Then when I finished frying all the ones I had, I would make another batch and immediately fry them, until I ran out of dough.

Scooping the last sweet cereals into the bowl, I took the roll of paper towels we had and poured them out onto the towels. To absorb all the excess oils.

Drying the sweet cereals, I placed them into two bowls just in time. The moment I turned around , I sawOliver was walking into the kitchen, hands rubbing his eyes, as his nose led him to the food.

"Sister, what's for breakfast today?"

Sitting down at the table, I brought the two dishes to him.

"This is sweet cereal, and this is cloud cream. I thought it's nice to have some sweet things once in a while. Here's some water too, to wash it down.

Placing the bowls, I watched as Oliver instantly became awake and used a spoon to scoop up some cereal. He then placed them into his mouth and closed his eyes as the sweetness hit at full force.

Doing the same, I could even feel my saliva taste sweet after that mouthful. It was as if I was eating pure sugar.

Gulping down the bland and tasteless water as all the moisture was stolen from my mouth, I gave a sigh of content.

The sweet cereal wasn't only sweet, it was the embodiment of the mixture of different kinds of sweetness. On one hand, there was the slightly fruit-like sweetness that came from the green berries on the surface. On the other hand there was the sweetness that came once we bit onto the cereal. The two slightly different forms danced together like a waltz of like-minded lovers. It was just a heavenly taste.

Aiming my spoon at the cloud cream next, I dug out its bouncy form and stuck it into my mouth.

Unlike the sweet cereal, the cloud cream felt like the aftertaste of sweet. If the sweet cereal was a lover's dance, the cloud cream was a memory of love. The cream was so light it almost couldn't be felt on the tongue. The sweetness also came in stages. At first, it was light, before the sweetness gradually increased until a point where it was so sweet the next second you could taste nothing. As if the sweetness had overridden your taste buds and switched them off. After that a small and light sweetness would appear, ever so faintly in the background. Giving you a second to savor its sweetness before it faded.

"It tastes so sweet!"

Grabbing a cup of water, Oliver downed it in desperation.

Alternating between one mouthful of each dish and one mouthful of water, we finished off the food and were about to wash the dishes when there was a knock on the door.

"Sister, I'll wash the dishes!"

Rushing to the sink, Oliver shooed me out of the kitchen.

Opening the front door, unexpectedly, I met face to face with the chief.

"I bet I've kept you waiting!"

Cackling, she winked at me.

"Would you like to invite me inside? I have several things to say!"

Cheekily saying with a grin not befitting her old looks, I stepped back in a daze and she just walked into the house.

Following behind her, the chief walked into the living room and sat down on one of the chairs. She then gestured for me to sit. And when Oliver had the perfect timing to walk out of the kitchen at that exact time, she gestured for him to sit as well.

Sazzy and Ava also had the luck to appear right at this time.

"Well first I should reintroduce myself!"

With a mischievous wink, she took out a piece of wet tissue from her pocket and wiped out all the extra wrinkles on her face. Straightening her back, she changed into someone who was obviously much much younger.

"I am the current chief in charge of this tribe. My name is Linda. And I must apologize for deceiving you when you first arrived. We are quite wary of outsiders, although you were referred to us by Margret and her family, so we just had to make sure. Since we are facing the Colonizers."

Linda had a twinkle in her eye as she continued.

"I also sent in Patricia a while ago. Man! That was quite a show!"

Linda cackled once more, like a child gloating after they pranked their parents.

"And the disguise, it was just to make you let your guard down.

Linda laughed, more normal this time, as she kept the tissue paper.

"Well you could say I wanted to see if you had any previous information about our tribe. Since you would then be surprised by the contradiction in information. The other reason would probably be that our tribe spotted your car early in the morning, and as I couldn't really wait patiently for you to come so I killed some time by putting on some old lady makeup. Also, your expressions when I revealed myself to not be an old lady was priceless!"

[She...does she have some screw loose?]

Making a face of disbelief, Sazzy frowned at Linda.

"You say you sent Patricia in, but what was she meant to do? All she did was to insinuate things about Helen and Kayla."

Linda leaned back on the chair with an even bigger smile.

"Patricia wanted to find out if you had some information on Helen. After all, you suddenly appeared with a younger brother, and the incident with Helen has made her quite vulnerable when it comes to children. Just take it as Patricia's own worries for her friend."

She then laughed to herself. As if she was thinking of a joke in her head that no one would understand.

[This woman is crazy!]