The Finest Oil
Posted on 17 Sep 2025 @ 11:39pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Loki III, Itonian Bajada, outside the city walls
1544 words - 3.1 OF Standard Post Measure
Not being himself a botanist or especially given to the study of wild herbs in favor of his formerly full scale farming operations, Loki III’s ‘tri-lobed filnettle, minor’ looked to Xerne to be alike in kind to any other stubby, grassy bush. It had a dry shuffling sound like most of the brush in the thirsty steppes, though mercifully without the piercing thorns of many of its neighbors. The most notable thing about it, was the series of center stalks with their rattling seed pods shaking and fluttering in the breeze as a kind of pale standard. Near the root of it, Xerne wound a stand of filnettle up in one fist and with the other hand hacked the plant down with a small sickle. Separating stems from leaf, he left the felled bush near the stubble of its own remainders where his wife would follow behind him and tie the bundles.
Resettling his brimmed hat, Xerne stood up to flex his back, catching a glance at the skyline as he did; he squinted against Loki’s ever punishing glare.
“The flower pods produce oils,” Xerne’s wife was explaining to him from a few feet away where she was straddling the bundle she was wrapping down in twine. Ayalou handled the roll of twine, letting it spool out in her hands as her mother drew from it. Enaryi, the toddler, was wrapped closely to his mother, a dried plaster of slobber and sweat further securing the boy to her torso.
Xerne held up one of the seed pods in question. He rubbed away the papery husk and it cracked off to flutter away in the wind. Remaining in his palm were wide, flat seeds, as black and glossy as the volcanic rock the planet took its common name from; he tested one of these large flat beans, pressing between finger and thumb. It had just the slightest give, barely enough to hint that it was organic matter and not itself mineralized.
“Are they yet green?”
“These ones are perfectly ripe for the press,” Mizia replied.
He looked doubtful. Although he did allow for the possibility that the centers were more tender than the seed casing. “We have no press.” Xerne said, although he sounded uncertain in his claim. He was daily learning that Mizia made trades and business arrangements for her little operation without necessarily consulting him.
“Carlotta has a press.”
“Carlotta has a press.” Xerne echoed, imitating ever so slightly his wife’s tone which hinted to him as if he was supposed to have known about this Carlotta and her oil press. He hacked another grassy stand, laying out the leaves once more— these for basketry and such— while separating the seed stalks beside.
“I will only need those bottles I asked you to order.”
“Bottles?”
“For the filnettle seed oil, yes.”
Xerne frowned.
With his mere twist of facial muscles, Mizia knew. She pulled a secure knot even tighter and twisted the bundle to throw it in the nearest cache with the others, taking out her irritation on the work. “You did not order the bottles.”
“I am sorry, Mizia.”
“Think nothing more about it,” she retorted.
But he did. As he continued at his efforts, arms surrounding bushes and shearing them off in the hook, he thought for sometime back over the past week or two weeks, beating the imaginary bushes in his brain to try and recollect when it was Mizia had asked him to order any bottles. “How many did you say we would need?”
Mizia sighed, taking the roll from Ayalou to flip it over in the proper direction. “Let the twine unwind from the top, Ayalou. To keep it from snarling.” And to her husband she said, “Nevermind the bottles.”
He wiped sweat off his face with his forearm. “Were they to be a certain size?”
“My Love,” she murmured, flushed against the heat. “Forget that I ever mentioned them.”
“That is better than done, it seems,” Xerne affirmed, his brow knit with consternation at his failed memory while instinctively glancing at the horizon. Again. It was necessary to be ever watchful for changes in the sky. To the other gatherers in the outcroppings of the hills, Xerne's evaluation appeared as anyone else concerned about the possibility of a building dust storm or a wild flock of ortanini ready to render fresh from bones, or even the remote possibility of a raiding party from a bold, antagonistic tribe with some cause to excuse the violence by. But Xerne was listening for the hum of a drone or searching for the glint of a phaser-rifle scope. Such had caught him flat footed before and he much disliked being out in the open, his back against a literal stone wall, though it be a naturally occurring one.
Mizia knew such thoughts, and shared them. Xerne had little room in his head for the count of oil bottles. This she forgave him for, preferring his vigilance. Besides this, his help in cutting down the wild plants would speed her efforts by double. She continued to make swift, even movements through her task.
The faster they bundled and filled their carts, the sooner they could move back within the relative safety of Itonia’s stone walls.
Xerne’s was one family among many such working groups on the cliff sides. The vast majority were cooperatives of older women, organized loosely with one another for mutual benefit, although many would compete in selling the final product. They relied on one another even while they would set their prices and elbow for the best locations in the market later on. Still, there were other men like Xerne. These occasional sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, and grandfathers dotting the trails did much of the heavy lifting into the pull-carts which were arranged into a caravan on the narrow escarpment, and prevented the youngest 'helpers' from racing around on the cliff-sides, believing they were invincible, although, Xerne had to admit, those who had been born in this territory seemed nimble and sure footed as young mountain goats.
All the same, the current arrangement had sufficed, having provided Ayalou with a nominal role in the collecting effort. The girl seemed best kept out of trouble by being included in these things and Xerne made a mental note to to find her other such tasks. Yet she was having difficulty holding the twine out straight, her little arms weary of the minor effort and her interest waning...
Xerne, ever watching, spied one of the older white-beards checking under his cart. Xerne at first thought he might be re-securing the hairpin of the wheel, but instead he spied a rifle barrel. This caused him to examine closer at other carts where more guns and swords seemed to be fastened. The men had come armed, he surmised. Xerne felt under prepared, but looked to the sickle in his hand and felt the weight of the sharpened tool.
He imagined the stokes it would make in defense and his arm tensed.
Though he could employ it, the sickle was thin reassurance as he considered the others anticipated a violent interruption, although the white-beards seemed primarily concerned with any foot traffic on the narrow road itself. Robbers— Xerne thought them most concerned with that likelihood. They expected some highwayman might rough them up for their coin purses or try and steal one of the pack animals, though most of the roughly assembled carts—made out of thin metals, cast resins, and carved beetle carapaces, but rarely any wood— were brought up the mountain by foot and would go back down by the same effort.
It was fortuitous that they had come uphill empty and would travel down hill when heavily laden, at least.
There. He’d thought of something for which to smile. And so he did.
Xerne began to hum, and then to sing, in Rihannsu. Neither his sweat nor his aching back were forgotten, but his heart grew a little lighter.
A light coming to her eyes, Ayalou remembered this song; it was one her father sang coming home from the barns, in their old home. She joined in, although her memory of the lyrics faltered and was imperfect, the tune was wound deeply with her memories of home and a time like this, close to her parents. Together.
Mizia wanted to sing, but her voice could not make it out of her heart’s pangs. Neither could she cry through her dry eyes. Instead, she took a long drink of water, intentionally drizzling some over the baby’s head before re-coving his pointed little ears with a rag to protect them from the sun. Capping the canteen, she listened a moment to the old work song her husband and daughter sang. The landscape around them was harsh, stone and thorn abounding, but they had brought something with them. Something she began to wonder at in Ayalou’s little voice. The little girl couldn’t even begin to conceive of all that they had left behind, but maybe... maybe they were like the hard filnettle seed. The best would come out in the press.
She had only to find some bottles to catch it in.
