Dead Star Dockyards

341 Greenhouse

The greenhouse made Titanyana feel fuzzy.This should not have been surprising considering it was holding plants with an aphrodisiacal effect on the women of her people, but Titanyana had never experienced this when exposed to Littervine in the past. Granted, she had never been in the presence of this much Littervine, nor had her experiences been in such a hot and humid environment, nor in an enclosed space like this. Each of these factors alone wouldn't have made much of a difference given the immaturity of the vines in question, but the combination only served to further her budding sexual desires.

"We apologize for the mess." A woman on the older end of the spectrum greeted Titanyana with a kowtow, pressing her forehead into the dirt. "The vines have grown much faster than we are used to, and without any bees or wind to assist with the pollination we had to do it by hand."

That explained the yellow grime caking up her sweat.

"It's time for that already?" Titanyana poked her head around the corner of the entryway, stunned at the menagerie of flowers on display. Blues, purples, reds, and pinks all popped against the dark green leaves, the vibrancy and depth of both palettes far more encouraging than any seen on Nekh, but they didn't inspire beauty in the way a garden flower might. The individual flowers were tiny little clumps of petals all clustered at regular intervals along a shoot, giving a messier, fragmented appearance that made them appear to take up much more space than they really did. At harvest time that shoot would be pruned from its parent cane, berries and all. 

The berries were deemed fit for Litterwine production when a single fingertip could be used to separate them from their stem, a gentle but forceful motion intended to keep the berry and stalk whole until processing began while ensuring proper ripeness. Once a sufficient proportion of the berries in a cluster were separated it would be cut from the shoot and allowed to finish ripening off to the side so processing of the shoot could commence. Shoot, stem, and stalk alike possessed the same properties when burned, that being to arouse a female Nekh by propagating the pheromones that it absorbed when burned, however only the shoot and certain portions of the stalk were thick, long, and straight enough for this purpose. Those that satisfied the generally desired requirements would be pared down to a reasonable combination of length and thickness and left to dry, with all trimmings and the excess bits of stem and stalk being similarly dehydrated before ending up ground up for use as an incense of sorts. The erotic effect would not be nearly as potent, but the absorptive properties made it a product suited for women bonded to men who left elsewhere for extended periods of time: soldiers, merchants, sailors and such.

"How long until they begin to bear fruit?"

"I can't tell." The woman shook her head as she rose from the floor, admitting defeat in the face of a strange environment. "I'd normally say a month until they start to color, but they've already exceeded expectations of flowering. Look at these ones here."

Beckoning Titanyana towards the other end of the structure, she lifted a single cluster for inspection. The sheen of yellow dust covering the bundle was evidence of some hand pollination, but it was visually quite different from the others. For one the stamens were gone, strange considering it would usually take a week or so for them to be discarded naturally. Another oddity was the petals, which were a bit more wrinkly than others she'd seen near the entrance.

"I rubbed pollen on them this morning, perhaps only a few minutes after sunrise, and they're already showing signs of germination!" She shook the bustle of hope in frustrated elation, some petals shaking free and fluttering to the ground as if to emphasize her point.

"That's incredible!" A heightened pace of growth would necessitate more labor, hence the gardener's frustration, however labor was something they had in spades at the moment. "The sooner it grows the sooner we can make Litterwine and award it to bonded couples."

"But will we have the facilities up in time?" Petunia refrained from bending over to inspect the flowers. "We haven't found a good source of clay for the pots yet, nor have we made a kiln to fire them in."

"I'm sure Donovan will have a workaround." There was no hesitation in Titanyana's response. He had solutions to problems they were never aware they had and built structures beyond her comprehension in incredibly short periods of time. She was beginning to associate subconsciously associate the term 'science' with 'magic', gradually becoming convinced it was more like a method of producing miracles orthogonal to the wonders of sorcery - equally powerful in potential but in completely different ways. Resolving the issue of 'fermentation vat' would be child's play. "On that matter, what else would we need his help with?"

"The most concerning items would be the crushing cylinders and bottles." Evidently this issue had been on the mind of the gardener given the speed of her response. "I'm sure we could fashion a collection system from something the Holifanians brought in, or maybe ask for a larger stone to carve from the quarry, but the cylinders and bottles are essential."

"I can understand the bottles, but what are the crushing wheels?" Titanyana's visits only ever involved tours of the fields and looks at the fermentation vats, never the production process itself. The processing of Litterberries into Litterwine was considered to be unhealthy for young women, the fumes of freshly squeezed berries said to have the potential to form a bond. Should this bond be to a general scent of freshly squeezed berries then it would not have been as big a deal, perhaps they could have found someone they fancied and had a chance at children that way, but the properties of the harvest changed so much by year that it could not be guaranteed that a given harvest would evoke the same response.

The veracity of this possibility was dubious - nobody in living memory had been subjected to such a tragedy - but why should they risk ruining the prospects of a young woman over suspicion of a myth? There were plenty of older women who had already bonded to a man.

It should be noted that this same myth was the reason wood was not allowed to be used for any form of long term storage or intensive processing of the liquid. The fear of wood absorbing and subsequently secreting the concentrate was very real, so even the few wooden utensils utilized were disposed of at the end of a season.

"A series of large stone cylinders rolled back and forth over the berries to squeeze out the juice. If it's unavoidable we can perform the job with our feet but-"

"Doing so would expose the people doing it to the concentrated juices." That made sense. They were going to such lengths to avoid anything bad happening as a result of the process, why would they willingly subject themselves to the most risky part of the process?

"Um, no. The women performing the task would be bonded or beyond a child rearing age. The stones just get more out of the berries and, well, keep feet out of something so precious."

"Oh." In spite of her disappointment, Titanyana reckoned this was a justifiable reason. Yield was always something they were concerned about, willing to go to great lengths if only for a few extra drops, and Litterwine was an incredibly important ceremonial good. Would she think so highly of it if she learned others feet were part of the process? "I'll talk to him about it."

- - - - -

"You're looking a bit . . . yellow?" While there was a bathroom in their 'home', the facilities aboard the Pegasus were far more amenable to female sensibilities than the carpentry constructs landside. Pressurized hot water and plumbed sewerage were preferable to lukewarm rainwater dribbling from the ceiling and a hole in the ground. It went without saying that Titanyana had fallen to their charms quite convincingly, Petunia even more so.

"We helped pollinate the - the Littervine." The lower quality amenities were useful in a pinch, they weren't living on the Pegasus after all, but they made a point of stopping by once per day to shower.

"By hand?"

"Yes. It was in the greenhouse, and we still haven't figured out how to bring over any bees." This was a pain point that frequently cropped up when gauging the desires of the Nekh. They were extremely attached to them, far more than any other people if the Holifanians were to be believed, and not without reason.

Honey was one of the few sweet commodities that could be secured with any degree of reliability, being a viable product in a large variety of environments and amenable to long term storage. Even if production had been gradually decreasing over the years, the stores of the stuff from decades prior had been enough to maintain use in some celebrations and ceremonial purposes for a time. In recent years only a spoonful could be spared for each individual's personal use on an annual basis, most electing to consume it all at once to savor the prosperity of times long since past. The only instances it found use outside of these distributions was as an additive to Litterwine, but even that had been seeing a decline.

The bees were beloved for more than just their honey, though. As the primary pollinators in many places they were seen as symbols of fertility and abundance - two things the Nekh desperately sought - and were guarded against the elements at great expense. Apiaries were often placed in city squares and surrounded with various flowers and bushes the bees seemed to prefer, decreasing the amount of energy they expended in their search for pollen if only so people could see them without traveling beyond the walls. Botany was practiced by women regardless of clan, flowers placed in boxes near windowsills to invite bees near their houses and share their blessings in hopes of having a child.

Even beyond that they were seen as compatriots by many Nekh, seeing their strict discipline and collective efforts towards the survival of the hive as synonymous with their own struggles, the Queen being analogous to the Strapper line. Both would sacrifice themselves by the dozens if it meant protecting their Queen and kin, trading their own insignificant lives to fend off foes far more powerful than them.

"I think Donovan has a plan, it's just not his top priority at the moment." Diana had grown quite familiar with the Nekh's love of their bees in the time she'd interacted with them, learning that their bees were quite different than Terran specimens. A few sketches in the dirt by the more artistically minded portrayed them somewhat cuter than they probably were in reality, condensing what were most likely compound eyes into something more mammalistic and revealing they had four somewhat thicker legs instead of six thinner ones. Aside from that they seemed to maintain the triple segment body and double paired wings, though all of their depictions seemed to lack stingers.

Diana wasn't certain if this meant they didn't have stingers or simply retracted them into their bodies, however the insistence that a sufficiently pissed off hive could kill a fully grown man with 'burning venom' suggested the latter. Whether or not this resulted in death as it did with many species of Terran bee was an open question though, nobody she spoke with had ever been or seen another stung. 

"Any chance he'll get that done soon? The farmers are starting to get a bit worried about the longevity of the crops." 

"We can talk to him later." Diana accompanied Titanyana back into the bathroom. As much as two showers appealed to her, the real motivation was to assist in the de-yellowing of Titanyana and the exhausted Petunia walking beside her. "For now, the showers!"

- - - - -

"Does it have to be clay?" Donovan tapped a few things into his tablet. "Can it be metal? Maybe glass?"

"I think it should be kept as close to the original recipe as possible. I don't want to gamble at this point."

"Alright. I'll see what I can do about . . . finding clay and making a kiln for large pots. What about the stones? Is it alright if I try to mechanize the process?"

"Mechanize?"

"Machine optimize it. Basically make a set of tools purpose built for the task." Seeing the light reflected in his eyes switch from blue to white, Titanyana assumed he was already reading up on the subject matter of winemaking. "In this case it looks like a press and screen will do most of the work. Is the rolling action important? And if it is do you need a specific stone or can I make it out of stainless steel?"

". . . I don't know." Titanyana was still in the learning phase of anything approaching design, so despite asking Donovan to do these things for her she hadn't imagined what specific questions she should be asking the experts.

"That's fine, just get me the details as soon as possible. The quicker I know the design conditions, the sooner I can solve the issue at hand." Titanyana shuffled her way around the table seeing the intrigue in Donovan's face. She couldn't make heads or tail of the words on the page, gathering only snippets of the basic vocabulary she'd committed to memory, but the graphics were simple enough. It was a diagram of the winemaking process, though not with the tools she recognized. "This might be a good project for you to handle, actually. It's pretty simple, but should serve as a good example for you of Arc's capacities in the realm of research and administration. Think you're up to it?"

"Would I be able to ask you questions?" She was a little worried about it, but given Donovan's relative nonchalance in the face of all the other issues he needed to handle she felt confident. Responsibility was in her future regardless, may as well start with something small. Failure here would hurt, but it wouldn't be unrecoverable.

"Of course. Obviously I don't want to be doing all the work, but if there's something you aren't sure about I've no issue with helping you out. Don't forget Diana can help you with interpretation as well."

"O-of course!" Diana would be receiving no calls for help from Titanyana on this matter. This was a chance to get closer with him. "You'll handle the planning of structure placement though, right?"

"I'll handle the logistics and layout, yes. Just get as far as you can with Arc and come back with a general plan of action. Seppard or I should be able to handle it from there."