Sorceress of the Second Sphere

7. Pomegranates - Chrys

It was succulent, bitter, and yet so refreshing that the taste of the blood-red pomegranate left Chrys desiring more after every crunch. Placing another seed in her fingertips, her hand dripping in the crimson ooze, she took a careful nibble, savouring every moment as she crunched into it.

It was her first ever pomegranate, and now she realised why they were so expensive and deemed only suitable for nobility.

Taking another seed and biting into it, she failed to notice the man that took steps into the cellar of the Wild Oak tavern where she and several crates of the stolen fruit had been hidden.

"I do believe they are for the less fortunate than you?" the man said, his voice echoing off the mishappen stone walls of the cold dark room.

Chrys jumped from her stool, realising that her hands were sticky from pomegranate juice. As the leader of the only resistance in Lionmane, she felt a tinge of regret at how easy it had been to sneak up on her.

Perhaps stealing pomegranates was not such a good idea.

"Hanekin, I did not hear you," Chrys commented shyly, wiping the juice on her plain brown dress.

Hanekin smiled, "I did call three times."

Embarrassment embraced Chrys as she turned her eyes away from the man standing on the steps towards the bustling tavern above them.

The greeting from his crow's feet and rounded face quickly dispelled any embarrassment that had embraced Chrys. His whitened smile and bald gleaming forehead eased Chrys back to the task that she had set herself to do, to hide the crates of pomegranates that had been stolen from the Emperor's concubine.

"I apologise," Chrys replied, her voice sounding like she sang when she spoke, "but have you ever tasted something so divine? I have had strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, apples, and oranges and even managed to get a hold of an apricot one time, yet nothing compares to how sumptuous this fruit is. No wonder they are so expensive. Da' had explained to me about them before, along with Mangoes and Kiwi, said they were almost impossible to get into Isovine, yet here I am, neglecting my duty as I eat this succulent Pomegranate. He would be ashamed of me right now."

Hanekin continued to walk into the cellar of the tavern, grabbing a hold of a crate of pomegranates in the process. As he moved it into a storage room, designed to be concealed from the outside world, he allowed Chrys to continue her rant about how she ignored her duty and the various tastes she was experiencing when devouring the pomegranate seed.

"How did the other drop-off points fare?" Chrys eventually asked.

"The contraband has been successfully hidden, we just need to finish up here," Hanekin explained.

With only the last few crates to hide, Chrys had taken a little breather to enjoy the luxuries she had confiscated for the people of Lionmane. Today's plan had gone as expected, liberating the food had been challenging, but the hardest task was what was to come. Taking a little time out to savour the taste of the fruit also gave her a few minutes to contemplate answering her most burning questions.

How do they distribute the food to the people without anyone noticing, in a timeframe that allows the fruit to remain edible?

She had hoped that they would be stealing dates, they were a lot easier to conceal than a large red fruit the size of a hand that required to be torn into to eat it. If one person was found eating one, they would be captured, interrogated, and eventually used as a tool to dismantle her distribution network.

Who was she kidding, she had instantly forgotten about all her worries as soon as she took the first scoop out of the pomegranate.

"Have you received word from outside of Lionmane?" Hanekin asked as Chrys took another crate to hide away.