Hell of Lora

Giant vegetables, ten and twenty and thirty and forty and fifty peds tall. A Titan's worth, even. Hustling hyacinths hurtling towards her, and carrots of both meaty and tawny varieties alike threatening to upend themselves and bonk her unceremoniously over the head. Starpeppers skimming through the sky and leaving tiny iridescent trails of smoke and lusterdust behind them.

The garden, the cornucopia, sounds its terrible bell. A lowing, a dawning, rends the sky.

To others, it might be magical, even beautiful. What a sight! Plenty, and boundless it is. Arise and rejoice, for the food of life be the food of love. In this, we signal good health and good weather.

To Lora, jerked awry with hands jammed over her eyes and ears like a scall of thunder has just sounded too soon after the lightning's split has surreptitiously ripped her awake, it's terrifying, and not even comical in all its cartoonishness.

Vegetables. You have to eat vegetables. Everyone has to eat vegetables. But Lora hates vegetables - everyone hates vegetables, right?

Or...no, no. Haze and Hugo love them, whether prepared artisanally and traditionally by Aegaeon or plucked up as scavenges from the fertile ground by Jin.

And why is she so afraid of them? They're only a part of nature, after all.

A prickly pineapple gleams scarily replete jewel tones somewhere behind her, and she is caught in the revolution of a stem being snipped.

You cut off part of a plant, and it keeps growing. That's fascinating, isn't it? They can just keep flourishing, anywhere.

Lora won't lie; she does prefer the choicer rations they can find in marketplaces of the more populated areas of Torna, and Coeia, and Spessia, and wherever have you, the farmed animals always making an extra special substitution into that beloved ruby stew. If beggars can't be choosers, then she's neither and both, but she would so love not to have to be flourishing anywhere and everywhere all the time. She'd like to pick her place, and stick with it. Preferably a place where the groceries are gorgeous, and so on and so forth.

So maybe it's not all that deep. Maybe she's just dreaming about being attacked by monstrous vegetables, and it doesn't play into her life philosophy or her core flaws. Everyone dreams of nonsense, once in a while.

But that's not actually possible, now, is it? Everything's got to come from somewhere.

Oh, how horrible. There's a Buloofo in front of her, and it's grinning with those gray-brown teeth fit together in a perfect jigsaw-scissor pattern.

It opens its mouth, and there is a little miniature noblewoman inside. Their face is...not distorted. Are they unbothered? Or, perhaps not... In fact, it's less smooth than she would have expected. Little jagged bits stick out all over one side of the face, over the nose and crest of cheekbone.

Vegetables have those pointy, knobbly bits, and they stick in your throat and make it ever so hard to chew and swallow. Meat's not like that - it goes easily, practically melts in your mouth if it's cooked and cut properly, sliced along the grain with an enjoyer's eye.

Lora swallows, and gulps, and swallows again. It won't go down. It won't go away. Oh, why won't it go away?!

Then her eyes are open.

"Everything alright, Lora?"

Ah. Jin.

"I've prepared Deviled Onions and Barbed Tomatoes in Platinum Shroom broth to go with the meat for your breakfast. I hope you'll taste it."

He sounds almost to be...fretting. Why is he worried? Does he know, somehow?

Oh, the meat! Mmm, crispy lardons of Ardun bacon, with all the gristle neatly trimmed and just the right amount of chewiness to the rendered muscle. The sensation of her mouth watering is wonderfully present and real.

But, what's that...? Are those...Lactonuts mixed in with the protein? Something hard and woody sprinkled atop disrupting the perfect bliss of all that delicious meat? Something that takes consideration, and concentrated effort?

Augh!