Beckonberries {BEH-kin-bare-eez}

plant of the planet Oraea

These grow in the thin Gewareh Glent region of the planet Oraea, particularly across the wider (as well as wilder) moors of the region’s southern half before spilling down into and across the northern foothills of that forest-region called Aliat Erren. 

Beckonberries - clusters of seven spheres that seem to levitate - bob ever so gently in the slow breezes and can oft prove a challenge to ignore. Yet, the closer an explorer gets, the more the berries appear to blend into the landscape; thus leading many of the curious off the known path, leading in turn to new and now much-established paths. More than a handful of hume settlements in the quieter stretches of Gewareh Glent claim their communities as being ‘born of the beckoning to be buried amongst the berries’ - which is not a bad thing but a fact thing, where they’re willing to keep the quasi-ominous tone for a lark and the sake of the overall poetry. 

Nobody this writer has ever met will claim it possible to eat just one berry, hence another facet of the ‘beckon’ in their name: the tongue can never quite remember the total taste-sensation-experience, and always needs just one more to try and complete even a single instant of total-taste-experience. 

It is fairly honest to suggest, that we can most likely and safely say, for some sort of sure at least and anyway, that their taste is something along the lines of… the globular swelling of a sweet memory, warm with juice and midnight hues, the texture soft as velvet (except when it is crisp and dry as a ghost, as if the fruit suddenly forgot its own story, dream, reputation, and history). 


When foraging on Earth, substitute blackberries, marionberries, boysenberries, and/or olalieberries.

Bookfruit   

plant of the planet Oraea

           

Fruits cultivated on the library island of Oe Lira Lira, where the trees themselves are the books and the chronicles.

The size of an average hume’s closed hand, the fruits perch, perky and bounteous, in the upper levels of the canopies, and always glow a strawberry gold in the lights of sunset and sunrise. Composed of thin, page-like leafs, supple yet tough, these leaves are all connected to the core and can actually be almost turned as if they were a biological book. Once separated from the core these must be thoroughly pre-cooked before use in any tisane ceremonies. Please note that the method of cooking, i.e. via grill, with oil, boiling, or other, will change the flavor and overall time-space chemistry of the steeping. There is notably something poetically neat in the observation that these fruits cannot be instantly consumed; so to is it with knowledge, which needs its time and encouragements to become digestible. 

Beyond the forest on Oe Lira Lira, these fruits grow only on comparatively-nearby Umaean Island and its own smaller island neighbors of Yenmaeh and Gyanwyr. Umaean’s northwestern port market of Noq la Far is a particular wonderland for the artistries of bookfruit’s many uses, while wilder versions grow on the neighbors. Both of these forms are another matter of preparation entirely: Yenmaeh’s boast a rind which must be dissolved before the pages can be accessed (without dissolving the pages in the process), while the craggy bookfruit orchards of Gyanwyr offer fruits where the pages have become gnarled in on themselves by the constant trinity of wind, brine, and being watered with bookfruit wine. The seeds, when thoroughly milled, produce a very fine and sweet flour which is often used to make a wonderful tea cake. 

Reports of the fruit’s tasting notes range from an orchard at the height of bloom to ginger, honeysuckle, vanilla bean, and even milky caramel.


When foraging on Earth, substitute yellow or gold apples.