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“Oh hey, is that what I think it is?” He pinched off a long tapered leaf growing on the ground in a sunny spot, took a bite out of it, and smiled. “It is. Here.” He handed her the rest of the leaf. Eris took it from him. She smelled it and then nibbled the end of the leaf.
“Oh!"
“Yeah.”
“How is it lemon?”
“It ain’t lemon. That’s sorrel. Grab all the leaves that look like this.” He picked another leaf as an example and kissed her fingertips as he put it in her hand so she could find them by touch if she wished. “We can either make you a sour leaf salad or it goes nice in soup too. Either way, perfect find. Once we got that I wanna go across the water. I think those might be blueberry bushes over there.”
The Drifter’s ghost flew up to eye level and opened its shell, turning it to get his attention. He frowned at it.
“What?” he growled.
It emitted its single tone, floated a few feet away, and then turned back to look at them.
“I think he found something for us.”
“I didn’t ask for his help.”
“I would like to see what he wants to show us.”
“Fine. Sorrel first.”
***
“All right. You’re forgiven,” the Drifter begrudgingly admitted as he looked up the side of the tree his ghost had lead them to.
The ghost emitted its single tone and hovered near Eris’ shoulder.
“Yeah…” He paced around the tree looking up at it and nodding. “...you have more than redeemed yourself on this one. Good job.”
Eris reached out a fingertip and pet the ghost’s shell. It shuddered and leaned into her touch.
“What is it?” she asked.
The Drifter pointed up.
“All I perceive is a rotting tree. Is it the fungus?”
Orange-Yellow frills erupted in bursts all along the trunk, looking like gills or gatherings of poofy skirts.
“Not just any fungus. This…” the Drifter reached up and grabbed a branch, pulling himself up into the tree. “...is chicken of the woods. Easily one of the most delicious things we could have found out here.”
He cut some of the gills free from the trunk with his knife and reached down to hand them to Eris but she wasn’t on the ground.
Her hand reached down from above him.
“Damn. I didn’t see or hear you move, Moondust. Can you teleport?”
“Yes… But in this particular instance, I climbed.”
She took the fungus from him, put it in the cloth bag hanging from her shoulder, and then proceeded to almost flow up the trunk to the upper branches of the tree.
“Fuckin’ hunters climbing fuckin’ trees.”
She smiled down at him from her perch. “You are slow, Rat. I have not climbed a tree in centuries. This is fun.” She pulled a knife out of her boot and went to harvest the highest blooms of the fungus.
“Careful,” he called after her, “it only grows on rotting trees.”
He grabbed a branch above him and it broke off in his hand.
“Of course, as soon as I say it, it happens to me. Typical.” He tossed the branch down onto the ground.
The entire tree shook violently as she jumped to a different treetop.
“Hey! Don’t fall. If I bring you back with a broken leg from climbing trees, Ikora will never let that one go.”
Eris looked down at him and then leaned back, bending her knees. Then as the tree swayed she jumped to another, taller tree, climbing even higher to where it poked above the canopy.
The Drifter watched as she got near the top. She grabbed hold of the trunk with one hand and leaned away from it, one leg straight, the other bent at the knee, both feet on the trunk, her free hand dangling open, feeling the wind. The tree top leaned at a gentle angle. The breeze flicked her hair around the bandage over her eyes. The calm smile on her face was lit by the sun.
She looked like she was about to take flight.
“It’s cuz I told you to be careful, isn’t it?” he called up to her.
She craned her neck from side to side as the treetop she was hanging off swayed back and forth in the wind. She listened to the creaking of the tree trunk and the sounds of the forest below, feeling the sun and the wind on her face, breathing it in with wild abandon.
The Drifter, now on the ground, looked up at her with a mixture of awe, pride, and mild anxiety. She looked so… happy.
“Fuckin’ hunters climbing fuckin’ trees.”
