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Grains of sugar. Grains of sand.
In the language of another land, the words for “desert” and “dessert” are homophones. A single letter separating a vast, arid biome from a sweet delicacy.
Nahida smiles to herself: a desert of sweetness. A whole landscape of table sugar, fine as dust.
Desert sand probably wouldn’t taste good on candies the way sugar does. Sand isn’t sweet. It isn’t good for human digestive systems. Nahida’s never actually tried tasting it though, so she can only make educated guesses based on known data. Still, hypotheses and conventional wisdom can only go so far. Without firsthand experimentation, her conclusions remain theoretical. There’s just too many variables, too many unknowns, and axioms are pale substitutes for real world experience.
On tiptoe, Nahida leans over the table and moves the spoon through the sugar in the ceramic jar, enjoying the mundane sensations. It’s fun. The visual stimulus; the grains shift and sparkle like a trillion stars, reflecting light from the window and the lamp above.
Little hills and craters rise and fall. Sand dunes. Ocean waves. Tiny disruptions in a flat sea. The sugar hisses softly as it moves—one direction giving a low, scratchy drag, like a crab scraping through sediment; the other direction almost silent, like teensy gusts of wind passing through leaves in the canopy.
How curious: the spoon glides easily when concave-side down, as if riding a current. But with the convex side pressing into the sugar, the granules beneath resist, giving a distinct, gritty drag.
Nahida repeats the movement, fascinated.
Interesting. In air, the convex side would be more aerodynamic, cutting through resistance. But in sugar, it’s the opposite. The reason likely lies in the grain compression within the jar—the flat surface presses down, while the spoon's edges cut through the fine grains, allowing displacement. She understands the mechanics well enough—it makes sense when she thinks about it—but the realization still surprises her. Were it not for such a mundane experience and spark of intrigue, she may never have considered it at all.
For five hundred years, the God of Wisdom learned this world from inside a one-way bubble of non-perception. Data, diagrams, chemical compositions, the chirality of sugar crystals, processing procedures, the neural pathways involved in taste—all of it just weightless information filed neatly in memory. Knowledge without subjective sensation is hollow. Conceptual understanding alone is not enough for her. No lecture or textbook or bleached floaty wisdom from the Akasha can compare to feeling sugar herself, feeling it shift beneath her fingers, or tasting sweetness on her tongue.
Real understanding lives in experiencing the world for oneself.
Nahida kicks her feet off the ground and leans all her weight on the table. She muses aloud as she plays with the sugar, “what if there were sugar storms like sandstorms or snowstorms?”
She pauses. That would hurt, wouldn’t it? Sugar in your eyes would probably sting. Eyes of storms. Some grains might slip through the eye of a needle. Others wouldn’t. “Mmm,” she hums. “If sugar blew through the air at high speed like desert sand, it probably wouldn’t feel very pleasant.”
Mini Durin pads in barefoot from the kitchen, setting down a half-full jug of milk. “What if it snowed sugar instead? Snow doesn’t hurt. Or rain! Sugar rain!” His eyes light up. “Oh! There was a storm in the rainforest once and it rained mushrooms—so it could rain sugar, right?”
“Huh?” Nahida blinks. “Rained mushrooms?”
“Yeah!” Durin grins and flops over the back of a chair, making it tilt precariously. “When I went to Apam Woods with the culinary quartet—except Arasaka, ‘cause his berry bush was being fussy—Araphala told me it rained mushrooms!”
“Raining mushrooms…” Nahida giggles, imagining little capped mushrooms tumbling from the sky. “When was this? Where?”
“I dunno. Arapas thought Araphala dreamed it and was just being confused, but we did find mushrooms on the trees that Arachatora said they said the same thing too! Arapas thinks the mushrooms were dreaming. Do you know how it rains mushrooms, Nahida?”
She touches a finger to her chin, thoughtful. Her logical mind spins through potential scientific explanations and semantic differences in Aranara communication. “Hmm. Maybe Araphala meant airborne fungal spores?”
“Nope, ‘cause—”
The chair beneath him suddenly jerks, and Durin flails to catch himself with a startled yelp. He steadies it, making a funny face but acts like nothing happened. Nahida raises her eyebrows and hides a smile for her ‘if I were Hat Guy, I’d say something’ face.
Durin returns her look with a mischievous ‘but you’re not haha’ one.
Balancing on the chair again, he explains, “It wasn’t spores, ‘cause Arapas said the Varuna Contraption was freed from the floaty ones—the ones that hurt the eyes and lungs of the things that lived there.” Then Durin beams. “Hat Guy’s a flying mushroom, you know. That’s what the Aranara call him! Nara Chatrak. Or sometimes Nara Shroompish, like Aranama says.” He watches Nahida stir the sugar again. “When I helped Arasaka with the berry bush, he said Hat Guy’s a sad Nara because he doesn’t like sugar.”
Nahida hums, amused. “Grown-ups like thinking about hypothetical cavities. That’s why Hat Guy can’t see the Aranara yet. Aranara don’t get cavities, so they don’t understand. And plants make sugar from light for food…” She pauses, mock-contemplative. “Hmm…did I just give you an answer to something?”
“Oh!” Durin hops off the chair and plops onto the patterned rug, diving back into the homework they’d paused to make tea.
Nahida smiles at his enthusiasm. Science is a subject he tries hard in—sometimes struggles with a teensy bit—but he’s more determined than ever this week. Ms. Lisa visited Sumeru City the other day and mentioned how Tighnari is hosting a bio-alchemy exchange student from Mondstadt. Not "Glucose," as Durin had originally insisted on the name of his big brother’s alchemy student— “the science word for sugar like plants make” —but someone real and inspiring all the same.
As Durin scribbles words and circles diagrams, Nahida returns to stirring the table sugar, waiting for the water to heat. She enjoys offering guidance—and she’s a pretty knowledgeable tutor when it comes to plants—but she’s found that sometimes, her company is as valuable as her knowledge. Durin is smart and hard-working. Even just the presence of peers can improve focus and motivation.
…
Nahida sits on the counter, kicking her feet idly as the chai steeps—spices curling into the water in swirling patterns like natural calligraphy. She pours two cups just as Durin hops back up from his homework to join her at the table. The door swings open, and Wanderer steps in, dropping his bag with a thud and sliding off his shoes.
“Hat Guy!” Mini Durin chirps. “Oh! We just made chai—want some?”
Wanderer gives him a small wave, then narrows his eyes at Nahida. She smiles sweetly and, maintaining eye contact, dumps a heaping spoonful of sugar into her cup.
“I’ll pass,” he says flatly.
Nahida hums and adds another mountain of sugar—so much that the line between “chai with sugar” and “chai-flavored sugar water” begins to blur. She won’t waste it, though, no! Sweet tea, unsweet tea, sugar water—she likes them all! They’re all different and enjoyable.
Then, without breaking her smile, she pops a spoonful of sugar straight into her mouth—partly because she likes it, mostly because it’s funny to see the instant incredulity on Wanderer's face.
“Nahida!?” Mini Durin squeals.
Nahida bursts into a fit of closed-mouth giggles when Mini Durin turns to Wanderer, scandalized.
“But you said I can only have one spoon of sugar in chai! That’s not fair!”
Wanderer crosses his arms. “Do you want your teeth to rot out?”
“Eh? But Nahida-!”
“Her teeth aren’t your problem.”
Durin makes an indignant noise and scrambles to the kitchen. He returns with the largest spoon he can find—but before he can dig in, Nahida swipes the sugar jar and drops to the floor behind the table.
“Nahida! Don’t eat it all! I didn’t get any yet!” Durin cries, diving after her. She hugs the jar close, shoulders shaking with laughter.
“Get your chai,” she whispers between giggles.
Durin pauses, catches on, and quickly grabs his cup. Behind the table, he scoops exactly two and a half mountains of sugar into it. With a final burst of conspiratorial giggles, they pop their heads back up and return the jar to its spot.
Wanderer side-eyes them both from across the room, arms still crossed. He says nothing.