Chapter 30: Frostbite and Foraging
Chastity sat with her feet soaking in a bucket of warm water (a feeding trough, really–the halfling buckets were too small). A dry blanket lay draped over her shoulders in place of her customary cloak, and the cup of barley tea clutched between her trembling hands had never tasted so good.
She was thankful, SO thankful not to have lost any digits. Her fingers and toes were red and swollen, blistering in places, but the telltale black of dead tissue was nowhere to be seen. Charlie fared even better, owing to some advantage of his halfling physiology or else having grown better accustomed to freezing temperatures over the past six years under this accursed winter.
Chastity thought,
She hadn’t gained any experience points from surviving the ordeal either, but that was little to complain about when the possibility of amputation was on the table. She pulled the blanket tighter against the painful tingling of thawing flesh and took a deep, grateful slurp of the pungent brown tea.
And so she sheltered in the welcoming embrace of the Underfoot home and waited out the fierce storm.
?
At last the blizzard subsided, and the inhabitants of Goldenberry Village dug themselves out of the heavy drifts.
Almost at once they descended upon the Underfoots’, ravenous for any morsel of gossip. Soon the tales of ‘Goldenberry’s own duo of intrepid adventurers’ were told and retold, until the stories scarcely resembled the original events–remarkable enough though they were without embellishment. By the end of it, you might have believed that Charlie Cucumber single handedly slew a ninety-foot-tall Tree Giant with bark for skin and a beard of moss.
Although the snow never went away, the sun shone enough at times to loosen the snow into more malleable slush before refreezing overnight. On the next such morning, when the sun’s light felt more generous than usual, Chastity encountered the Underfoots by the breakfast nook, tugging on their coats, gloves, and scarves, with several woven baskets by their feet.
“Are you all going out?” Chastity asked, stretching and yawning.
“Good morning, to you!” Mrs. Underfoot enthused. “Would you care to join us? Certainly understand if you don’t, what with all you’ve been through.”
Mr. Underfoot, a halfling of uncommonly few words, puffed his red cheeks and gestured with one of the baskets.
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“Pine cones,” he grunted.
Chastity looked to Charlie for further explanation.
“After a big storm, the whole village goes into the woods to search for pale pinecones. Hard for us to climb up the big trees and get them, but the storms always knock ‘em down.”
Uh oh, Chastity wasn’t sure she liked where this was going.
“Charlie… you all don’t… EAT pine cones, do you?”
she thought with alarm.
“I do have a recipe for candied pine cones, come to think of it,” the young halfling answered, scratching his chin. “But I’ve never made them. Not good for the pale ones, I reckon. Need a different variety. We harvest the seeds!”
“O, aye! It’s a delicacy,” Mrs. Underfoot added. “We can make pine nut soup, even a pine nut porridge if we gather enough. With a great storm like the one we ’ad, there are bound to be plenty of pine cones about.”
Mr. Underfoot gently prodded Chastity with the basket in his hands.
“Basket?” he asked with a smile.
?
There was an almost festive air to the village as the bundled-up halflings crossed the river in shifts before bounding off into the Silfurfast, baskets in hand. Pennybun manned the simple ferry. Although the sight of the Deep River brought back unpleasant memories of the blizzard, the river was now calm and serene–the nearby waterwheel of the mill inert as ever.
Despite her initial trepidation, the ferry was sturdy enough to bear her weight and Chastity rode across with the Underfoots and a couple other villagers she recognized but did not yet know by name. Of course, they were beside themselves with excitement to be riding next to the ‘famed’ Paladin, but too shy to properly introduce themselves. Once on the far bank they skipped off into the treeline, the younger ones laughing. Another foraging party was already on their way back to the ferry with a basket spilling over with long, pale cones.
“It’ll be better to split up to cover more ground,” Mrs. Underfoot instructed. “We usually stay in pairs for safety, cause there are wolves in these parts, but of course a mighty Paladin can ‘andle ‘erself!”
Chastity nodded. The wolves she first encountered in these same woods seemed positively quaint compared to the recent hazards she’d endured. Best to be mindful anyway.
“There’s no rush, of course,” Mrs. Underfoot continued. “Take all the time you need. When you fill your basket, meet us back at the riverbank. We might break for a wee picnic and head out again as long as the light and finding is good!”
As the halflings hurried off, Chastity called after them.
“Just any old pine cones I find lying in the snow?”
“The longer and firmer, the better!” Charlie shouted back.
Chastity turned and breathed in the rich balsam scent of the woods. It was actually quite lovely here, at least on this day. And despite the urgency of her quest(s), there was something idyllic about taking time to simply gather pine cones in this pristine slice of nature, a quaint village and burbling river as her backdrop.
Searching the snowy ground, Chastity didn’t spot any pale pine cones in this section of the forest. The areas closest to the river had likely been picked over by earlier parties. As they say, the early halfling gets the pine nuts.
Reaching into her quiver, Chastity drew a javelin. She gently flipped it in the air before her and watched it land softly in the snow, the head pointing in a random direction. Retrieving the weapon, basket in hand, Chastity set off deeper into the woods.
