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+--- Thread: [G] [C] [EVENT] 745.06.30 | Mutual Foraging (/showthread.php?tid=5518)
745.06.30 | Mutual Foraging - Wynera - 30.Jun.24
Wynera knelt before a shrub and positioned her basket in a reachable position beside her. She always signed up for the wilderness chores to get out of the Weyr for even a few hours. She loved her home of Telgar Weyr, and her time was now filled with learning all she could about dragon-healing, but a break and feeling useful in other areas were always welcomed as well. Foraging was one of the activities that she found to be peaceful, even when she was the one on her knees and collecting everything for the lower branches.
A glance at her fellow foragers that day showed she wouldn’t be able to properly guess why the bush was stripped clean only at the top. Some of the men in the group were tall and some were lazy, some, Wynera suspected, were also afraid of dirt and bugs. Given she didn’t think herself to be any of those things, it was never an issue to follow behind a group and dig deeper into the shrub and along its base to find the missed precious berries. While the Weyr did have an assortment of crops, the wild patches helped ease the burden on what they had so far managed to grow in the caverns while also serving as a delicious treat. It was just a shame that C’dhin had moved to High Reaches months ago or they could have had some of his popular tarts by now.
While humming a popular song that had been played multiple times at the last Gather she attended, Wynera shifted and nearly crawled under the shrub to reach a patch of blueberries. The song was interrupted by a gasp as her face came inches from a creepy crawlier. A beetle, perhaps. She wasn’t well versed in insects, but also didn’t fear them. She grew up in the wilds of Katila where such critters could be playmates as much as another child could be. Besides, it wasn’t harming her and the little shuffle backward before pausing made Wynera believe it was afraid of her.
“Poor fella,” she cooed and scooped the beetle up. “You’re probably just foraging for a meal as well, aren’t you?” Again, she had no idea what beetles ate, but she moved her little friend over to another leaf that wasn’t near where she wanted to work yet still had a berry left dangling from the thin twig. That seemed the safest place for it and with a variety of options for eating. Hopefully she hadn’t harmed the beetle or made it difficult for it to return to its home when done doing its own thing.
Wynera went back to her own task, glancing at the beetle occasionally as she worked until she lost track of it with both her mind wandering and her body moving on to the next shrub. She did encounter some other critters like spiders and something with far too many legs, but she continued to leave them be with the spider even earning an apology when her hand broke through a web she hadn’t seen.
By the time they were all called to gather back around the dragons for the return home, Wynera had her half-bushel basket full and was impressed by the amount they had gathered that afternoon. She might miss C’dhin’s tarts, but the Telgar kitchen staff still made good bubbly pies and she couldn’t wait to get their haul back so they could begin working on the treats.