Julio nodded in agreement, Mirac ignored her completely, Gruff stroked his beard contemplatively, Clemmy stood and walked off without saying anything, and Jereb only frowned. “That makes no sense,” he murmured.

“Just wait until she passes you,” Aliza said, clearly enjoying the moment. “At this rate, it should be some time tomorrow.”

Perfidy felt a bit uncomfortable by the girl’s declaration. She also felt bad about Clemmy, who still only had just the one leaf. “It’s jest a fluke. Prolly won’ git anuther fer months, if ever. I still cain’t git my Ability to cooperate.”

“We’ll see,” Aliza said, as if she didn’t believe a word of it.

“Hungry?” Julio asked, seeming to have recovered more quickly than the others from the shock of seeing two leaves rather than one on Perfidy’s face.

Her stomach was growling something fierce. She was no stranger to a half-empty belly, but it had been more than a day since she’d eaten anything, and she could feel that hollowed out space inside her. “Aye, please. Whatcha eatin’?”

Jereb stood and held out his hand. He was clearly trying to meet her eyes, but she avoided it for some reason she couldn’t quite explain. Maybe she expected to find some sign that he’d seen right through her lie. “Remember when I mentioned power surges yesterday?” he asked.

“I think so…,” Perfidy said, racking her brain. So much new information had been fired in her direction that it was hard to sort through it all. She accepted the object, which turned out to be a strange sort of fruit, maybe? If it was, it was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It had a thick, leathery outer coating the color of a bright pink sunrise, covered in wartlike bumps. Protruding from the bumpy skin were sharp blue spikes that she had to be careful not to get poked by. Every bit of it was warm to the touch, and she swore she felt a sort of pulsing emanating from within, as though there was something living inside it, heart beating.

As she peered at it, the wind changed and a fierce smell wafted from the fruit to her nose. She almost dropped it but managed to hold it with one hand by a spike while using her other hand to pinch her nostrils shut. She almost vomited as well, but somehow held back the tide of bile. If her stomach had been full rather than empty… “Blech, whut is this thing?”

Everyone present was laughing at her reaction. “Who knows? We call it bloodfruit,” Aliza said.

“More like stinkfruit.”

“I wish I could say it tastes better than it smells, but that would be a blatant lie easily proven wrong,” Jereb said.