"Next," Sol announced, getting up and under the curious eyes of girls, grabbing the sack he had hidden the night before. "The heat."
He reached in and withdrew a handful of the bright red, curved berries.
The atmosphere in the hut froze. The comfortable curiosity that had settled over the girls vanished, replaced by instant, primal terror.
"Fire-Devil’s Droppings!" Liora squeaked, scrambling backward on her hands and knees until her back hit the wall. "Sol! No! Those make you breathe fire! They kill you!"
Veyra also took a step back, her face paling "Sol! Are you mad? Those are poison! If you put those in, the steam alone will blind us! We’ll be breathing death!"
Liora looked ready to cry, hugging her knees. "Why do you want to kill us, Sol? I thought ...I-i thought we were family.
The others also had similar reactions, recoiling as if he were holding a handful of venomous snakes, but Sol was dumbfounded by Liora’s reaction.
"Family?" Sol blinked, looking at the teary-eyed girl. "Liora, I’m not trying to kill you. I’m just trying to feed you."
"With death berries!" she wailed.
Veyra also looked at him with wide, horrified eyes. "Is this the plan? We poison the tribe? We’ll be executed before noon!"
Sol didn’t flinch.
"Trust me," he said calmly, though his pulse spiked at their intense fear. He realized he had to sell this hard. He held up a single chili to the shaft of sunlight, letting it glow like a ruby. "They are not poison, The ancestors told me the secret. The poison is only in the fear. If you conquer the fear, it becomes heat. It becomes life. The ancestors showed me that the fire inside them wakes up the blood and cleanses the spirit."
To prove his point, he popped the whole chili into his mouth.
He chewed.
Crunch.
The heat exploded instantly. It was violent. It was a Bird’s Eye chili on steroids, cultivated by a hateful nature to deter herbivores. His tongue felt like he had licked a branding iron. His eyes watered immediately, his nose stung, and a hiccup threatened to escape his throat.
Holy shit! his inner voice screamed. That is hot! That is so hot! Why did I eat the whole thing?!
But outwardly, he kept his face perfectly, stoically straight. He forced a serene smile onto his lips, swallowing the fire.
"See?" he wheezed, his voice only slightly strained, and blinking rapidly to clear the tears. "Delicious. Ancestral wisdom."
The girls stared at him, wide-eyed. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t screaming. He was... smiling.
"Okay..." Lyra breathed, lowering her hand from her mouth, her fear warring with her absolute faith in him. "If... if you say so."
"Trust the process," Sol choked out, throwing the rest of the handful into the mortar stone and crushing them into a paste with a vengeance to hide his burning tongue. He scraped the red mash into the pot. The water began to turn a faint, dangerous red.
The girls stared at him with a mixture of horror and awe. He had eaten the poison and lived. He really was chosen.
"Now for the... earth’s blessing," Sol muttered, turning to the pile of forage to distract himself from the magma in his mouth.
He dipped a wooden spoon into the simmering pot and tasted it.
He frowned.
It was spicy. It was savory from the fat. But it was flat. It lacked the soul. It lacked the one thing that made food addictive.
"Salt," he suddenly whispered.
The tribe got their salt from animal blood or rare mineral licks. But being poor, they had neither. Without salt, the soup would just be spicy hot water. It wouldn’t hook anyone. And definitely couldn’t accept it he needed to make this absolutely addicting.
He looked around the hut, his eyes scanning the baskets. His gaze landed on the pile of rejected wild plants Lyra had gathered yesterday... the stuff deemed "inedible" or "useless," kept only in case of absolute famine.
"Maybe..." Sol muttered.
He walked over to the pile. He picked up a fern. Bitter. He picked up a broad leaf. Sour.
Then, he picked up a handful of succulent, fleshy stalks that looked like thin green fingers. They were marsh-plants that grew near the brackish water of the river delta.
He bit into one.
A burst of intense, briny salinity exploded in his mouth. It wasn’t pure salt, but it was sodium-rich, crunchy and salty like sea asparagus.
"Jackpot," he grinned.
"What are you doing?" Lyra asked, watching him grab the whole bundle. "Sol, put that down. That is ’Tear-Grass.’ It is useless. We only eat that when there is absolutely nothing else. It makes you thirsty and tastes like sweat."
"This," Sol declared, holding up the weed like a scepter, "is treasure, Aunt."
He instantly chopped the salty succulents into fine pieces and swept them into the boiling pot.
"No!" Veyra groaned, burying her face in her hands. "He ruined it. He actually ruined it. First the poison berries, now the sweat grass. It’s going to taste like spicy bog water! No one will trade for this! We are going to be the laughingstock!"
"Have faith," Sol hummed, stirring the pot vigorously.
He watched the succulents dissolve into the heat, releasing their sodium into the broth, seasoning the meat and the vegetables from the inside out.
He didn’t stop there. The base was set.... meat, fat, heat, and salt... but a Great Soup needed complexity. It needed layers.
He turned his attention to the rest of the forage pile Lyra and the girls had dumped in the corner. To them, it was just a heap of random plants. To Sol, it was a chemistry set waiting to be cataloged.
He picked up a bunch of wide, fuzzy leaves that smelled faintly of lemon. He tore a small piece off and chewed.
Citrusy. Astringent.
"Wild Balm," he categorized mentally. "Good for cutting through the grease." He chopped a handful and threw it in.