Penelope—The Nature Manipulator

Chapter 216 - Penelope— The Nature Manipulator

The evening came fast since autumn too was approaching in about a week or so. During this time, the hours during the day would be shorter and the nights seemed to be longest.

The rest of them had collected some wood and was making a small fire to heat up some water in a kettle to brew tea. It was mulberry leaves and berries and the tea was of a reddish colour.

Not only does the tea looks refreshing, but it was also tantalising too. Two heaps of sugar was stirred in and this made a rather sweet drink to accompany the pan-fried bread with onion and chives that the ladies were preparing.

Penelope excused herself from the group as she highlighted that they would have some game meat for tonight. Although the evening sky was getting close to become darker, she insisted on going since she had her own technique on snaring these hares and rabbits, sometimes an occasional hedgehog or a badger.

She was the leader of the Pagan Witches and even though she was younger than most of the Witches and Wizards, her leadership among the Pagan Witches was top notch. She would decide on most things but for the sake of Andy, who was not a Pagan Witch nor a sorcerer, he was able to lead the group through financially.

From a distance, she was able to spot some movement among the clumps of trees and thickets. She knew that these hares were going to about to go hunting in the evening as hares were nocturnal animals.

They would scrounge for herbs, cereals and young grass and normally these hares would sleep above ground which they made a shallow depression to sleep in.

There were a few of those hares and what she would do was to place her fingers an inch inside the ground and she conjures up her vines.

These vines would creep silently and when it's near a hare, it would spring and snare the hare's legs and body and string it high in the air. That evening, she managed to snare 6 large-sized hares and gingerly made it back to the encampment.

"Here you go ladies, 6 fat, yummy hares for tonight's roast. It is fresh and their bodies are still warm. Save the pelt to make shoes, slip-on or a fur hat. Hehehe." Penelope raised her prize high above her head as she heads back to the encampment and went about to dress the hares.

Each of the hares weighs more than 3 pounds each and was like a small jungle fowl. Each hare could be shared between two people and there would still be leftovers as well. After quickly dressing the hares, their pelts were soaked in water to remove the blood and to remove its body heat.

The pelt was removed by peeling the fur back from its hind legs which were hung up from a branch or something. The head had been chopped off and staked to the ground. This act as a deterrence for any small game from approaching the encampment.

Small heads beheaded and on a stake meant to scare small game away.

Once the pelt had been pulled back, it may look like peeling the skin off a banana but you need to have more force on it. A knife was kept handy at the sides to slice off the fat that clings to the meat and pelt.

So now the pelts were being soaked in water to get rid of all those icky stuff and cool it down to remove the body temperature. As usual, after the meat was dressed, it was washed once and then salt, pepper and some spices were rubbed all over its skinless carcass.

A stick was skewered through the carcass and a new fire pit was made by Farah to slowly roast the 6 carcasses simultaneously over it. Drips of fat fell on the smouldering fire as tiny flames ignited on the coal pits and dances around before finally died down.

The smell of roasted meat permeated from the pits and they heard growls and spits some yards away from them. Earl inquired to Penelope, "Do you need me to make a thin wall around us? At least it would keep the cold wind out. We would just expose the wall right here in front of the river bank."

"Sure, Earl. A simple thin wall about 6 feet would be alright. This should keep those wolves from snarling and wishing they could grab the roast out of our hands tonight. Hahaha." Penelope seems excited as they would consume meat like every 3 days once and the rest would be fish.

Tonight was a night they would be feasting so it doesn't really hurt to have more than enough meat with them. They have some miles to travel and it may take them 2 hours before they reach their destination.

As the drips of fat from the roasting meat fell into the coal pits, Andy remembered how Penelope had told about her past. When she was in her teens, she used to work in a horticultural environment, dealing with plants, flowers as well as tending to a small herbal garden.

Her job was to tend to these plants daily and to weed them, water them as well as prune them. In fact, she was actually working for a botanist that deals with medications and all that stuff.

During her course of work, it was normal for her getting brushed on her elbows, scratched on her arms and even pricked on her hands and fingers. There would be roses with thorns, lime trees with their longish thorns, calamansi bush with their short but extremely sharp thorns and of course the Prickly Pear Cacti.

She was clearing some plants when she was pricked several times by the Nightshade and little did she knew that the thorns had a kind of poison on them. The scrapes that she got on her arms and elbows didn't heal that fast unlike from other plants and she ended up having a high fever in 2 days time.

In that feverish state, she was delirious and was talking and mumbling in her sleep saying something like, "I never do anything to you, why are you hurting me so much," and "Give me some resistance at least your thorns won't burn me so much in the future."

"In her delirious state, she was unable to eat as her throat were so swollen that only drops of liquid could pass through. Her fever hit ceiling high and the medicine men thought that she didn't make it. Miraculously, her fever subsided on the third day and she was well clear of danger.

But somehow, she had attained something that no one knew. A knowledge of listening and understand the conversation of plants and manipulating them in any way she wanted. With just her speech or even her thoughts, plants would be able to hear her and even bow to her, as if she was a Supreme being.

At first, she didn't realise about this but the moment she entered the workplace, she could hear murmurings as if the plants were jovially talking to themselves as they felt her presence in the workplace. Not only she heard those murmurs but she could understand what every plant was saying...!

She rushed out from her workplace, feeling pale and her heartfelt as if it was like a hundred horses running on muddy flatlands. She had a panic attack and the owner of the workplace asked her if she was alright. She simply nodded her head in reply.

After gaining back her composure, she returned back to the workplace and when seeing her entering once more, the plants began chatting once more and this chatting seemed to buzz and drilled right in her mind.

She clasped her head and wished that all the plants could just keep quiet and not drive her insane because the owner was eyeing her and felt that something was terribly wrong after she recovered from her fever.

Suddenly as she thought of these plants to keep their 'mouths' shut, the plants suddenly quietened down and not a squeak can be heard. She was half thinking — was her high fever made her think of such manner or was she delirious before and had her a few loose screws.

"Plants don't have mouths, so how do they speak? They are not those like Venus Flytrap that had a mouth and menacing looking teeth that smells rotten and invites only flies to it." she thought to herself and the Venus Flytrap plant suddenly took offence and spoke up, "Hellowwww Penny...! I don't have a stinky mouth OK. Its a special excrement from the tiny pores in the trap that attract insects and not just flies, you know..."

"I could eat a moth and closes this trap for 5 to 11 days and what's left of it? A cute little exoskeleton. Have you ever seen one of those before? You should be interested to know how many bones it has and yeah, maybe you should count its ribs too, to determine its gender. Keh Keh Keh... "

Penelope was at a loss as she spun around and looked hard at the Venus Flytrap. "Did you just talk to me?" she inquired and peered hard at the Venus Flytrap to see if it moved its 'mouth' to speak or not.

"Penny, my dear... I don't have eyes to see you but we all could feel your presence. We don't need a mouth to speak but at least, we Venus Flytrap knows how to count. Keh Keh Keh..."

"We all have souls and this is the way we talk to you, oh dear Penny... Keh Keh Keh..." Penelope swore she could see the 'mouth' of the Venus Flytrap twitch a bit as if it was trying to curl up a smile amidst its edges that looked like long sharp teeth.

"Penny...! We need some water over here..." Penelope thought she heard the owner called her to water the plant and she answered her that she's coming. However, the owner asked, "Penny, did you say something, hmm? Are you feeling better after your fever? Do you need to take another day rest, my dear?"

Penelope was confused as she thought the owner had called her. She thought to herself, "Either I'm going crazy or the plants had somehow poisoned me to become crazy...!" and which she got her replies from the rest of the plants as they 'spoke' to her telepathically.

"Alright everyone, don't make Penny panic or she won't be able to tend to us at all. Hush everyone... She can hear us and we can hear her thoughts. She's not crazy but I think her absence gave her a connection — and that's talking to us... Yeay...!"

The plants were as if shaking their leaves and nodding their flower heads jubilantly when one of them cheered 'Yeay'. It was a crazy scene and no one could even fathom anything at all.

Penelope got sick and when she returned to her workplace, all she could do in the first 20 minutes of work was listening to the plants chatting either to her or to themselves.

She hummed to herself to get rid the buzzing chatter that's going on in her head as she began to perform her daily tasks and that was pruning. The moment she got her pair of shears in her hands, the plants started screaming and begging her not to cut off their 'arms' and 'pores'.

Unable to bear the torture the plants had on her mental state, Penelope sat on the ground and wept. She simply doesn't know what to do in her workplace and her seemingly daily task could not be completed since the plants were begging her not to cut off the leaves or prune part of their 'bodies'.

In the end, what she could do was to leave the workplace and never reported to work again. When she was down on the floor, hugging her knees close to her and wept, the plants tried to console her and told her she could just pretend to prune the plants.

"Please don't cry, come dear, you can prune me as much as you like but be careful of those thorns of mine. Its prickles but I could regain back the lustre in a few days, I hope." the bougainvillaea next to her spoke up, thus giving her some comfort.

She stood up, wiped her teary eyes in her sleeve and held in her shears in her hands once more. She approached the plant and when she started to prune some of the dry twigs, something unexpected happened.

The seemingly cool and macho bougainvillaea earlier shrieked loudly and it reverberated inside Penelope's mind...! It was as if the plant was shrieking, "Murder...Murder...I'm being murdered... H-E-L-P M-E...Huuuaaaa...!!!"

Penelope had had it for the harrowing experience since she stepped into her workplace, that she dropped her shears on the ground and picked up the hem of her dress and ran all the way back home...!

Things are different now, for she was able to block out those bickering and filter out what she needs to hear and what she needs to convey to them.

In this manner, she could even grow healthy plants from an infertile land or make farmland ready to harvest within a week even if it was just recently germinated...!