Chapter Seven: Mushroom Epiphany

Ashilis lingered in the dark room, just beside the door into the Orators' slice of the Scarum. He had learned a few things over the last couple flood cycles by doing as Bellavie suggested. People in the Scarum were often desperate to find any hint of familiarity, even if it wasn't theirs. When Ashilis pretended to know someone, they often seemed relieved. Sometimes they admitted to not remembering him, sometimes they would feign familiarity. Either way, he would supply one of the simple lies that he and Bellavie had prepared. Little things, like having met them at the cooking plates, or undoing their bonds after they got dropped off. It was practically impossible for them to prove that what he was saying was false, so most people assumed that it was true, especially if Ashilis could manage to overhear their name or some other little detail about them.

Then they got talking. People were often eager to do that once they thought they were talking to a friend, even one that they had no memory of. All Ashilis had to do was look friendly and ask a few questions about how they've been, what they're doing, or if they have any plans, and the information would flow like water. He'd learned dozens of useful snippets that way. The Orators' territory was called The Auditorium, their leaders were called The Voices, and recitations happened at irregular intervals.

The Voices' performances were unpredictable, but histories were spoken each time an Orator had their memories drained. The victim would be released and brought back, then they would recite everything that they could remember of their memorized portion of the histories. Once they were finished, other Orators would fill in the gaps in their memory. Unfortunately, that meant that the histories were never recited in their entirety, but rather in disjointed chunks. Still, it was a definite way to learn, and for that Ashilis was grateful.

He had seen Milo—an Orator that he recognized—be dragged off just after the last flood. If other instances were any measure, Milo would be returned before the waters fully drained. So, Ashilis had harvested a few morogrib from the dark room, then picked a spot near the door to hover. He would scurry into the Auditorium as soon as they called for the recitation to begin, blending in among the Orators who had been assigned to farming work.

Ashilis couldn't stand to just sit and wait, though, so he started looking for something to do. He could hear a few people practicing their recitations in muttered voices, just in case Milo shared their segment of the histories. There was one relatively near to him, so Ashilis shuffled a bit closer, pretending to harvest one of the mushrooms.

"'Innovations in the field of morogrib grilling were headed by...' Oh, rot. Was it Gillian? Aliam? Nalion? Something like Ian..." One of the farmers muttered to himself as he prepared to harvest one of the morogrib. Barely visible in the dim light near the entrance to the auditorium, he gripped the mushroom cap and leaned backwards, trying to bend the stem with the weight of his body. The morogrib resisted, leaning in the direction opposite of the farmer's pull strongly enough that it dragged him along with it. He, in turn, dug his heels in and strained against the mushroom. Then, with a crunching sound, the stem ripped in a jagged line.

The farmer stumbled backwards, mushroom held in a two-handed grip. He flipped it over in his hands, then yanked the remaining stem off of the cap. It popped off easily now that the mushroom had been removed from the ground, and he tossed it aside. The stems were too tough and chewy to be worth eating when there was such an abundance of the more palatable caps to be harvested, but Ashilis still found it wasteful to just throw them aside like that.

He tossed the mushroom cap into a small pile. The morogrib this close to the light of one of the slices grew slowly and in smaller patches, so only a few were ready to be harvested. Despite that, Ashilis spotted at least two other Orators farming in the area. Normally they would venture out a little further, just in case one of the higher ranking Orators came by and noticed them slacking, but even the group's organizers and directors were preoccupied right now. In fact, they were probably busier than most Orators at the moment.

The farmer switched to a different mushroom and sat down on its cap, looking out towards the ight of the Auditorium. The little bits of silvery metal set into his face along his cheekbones gleamed as she tilted his head, whispering names to himself. Ashilis thought that he recognized him as one of the people he had talked to—a man named Pell.

A few seconds after Ashilis made that connection, Pell noticed him as well. "Ash!" He called, using the nickname that Ashilis had said that Pell always used for him. "Do you happen to remember who the first one to work on grilling techniques was? I swear their name ended in something like ian or iom, but I can't recall for the life of me."

Ashilis adopted a familiar smile, despite the spike of panic that he felt. This was the kind of situation that Bellavie had warned him to avoid. He couldn't play the part of someone who both remembered more and also knew less than the people he was talking to. Maybe he could claim that he was assigned to memorize a different segment, but he didn't know any of them by name, and he certainly couldn't recite anything if pressed.

"Grilling techniques," Ashilis said, drawing out his words in a way that he hoped made him sound thoughtful rather than confused. He had heard a name quoted almost axiomatically among the Orator cooks he talked to. That would have to do. "Was it Diviam?"

"Yes!" Pell said, and Ashilis felt an immediate wave of relief. "Innovations in the field of morogrib grilling were headed by Diviam, with his development of the parting method,'" Pell recited. Thank you, Ash. I was all ready to embarrass myself by calling him Quillion or some other nonsense."

"Hey, what are friends for?" Ashilis said, patting Pell on the shoulder. He adopted a more somber expression. "Do you know the guy who was taken?"

"No," Pell said solemnly. "Or at least I don't think I do. Maybe he remembered me like you do, but there's no way to know anymore. Kind of sad to think of it that way." He looked off into the darkness in the direction of Ashilis' slice. "How about you, Ash? You seem to know everyone."

"We've spoken a few times," Ashilis said carefully. "His name is Milo—and I do not know everyone. I just like talking to people, and some like talking to me too." Was he talking to too many people? If he got a reputation for knowing everyone, but no one actually remembered him, then things could quickly get out of hand.

"Yeah, sure," Pell said, then shook his head. "I dread the day that you get taken. I feel like our little social web will collapse the moment you forget us all. Then it'll be back to the drudgery."

Ashilis felt a stab of guilt, though he knew Pell was being dramatic. Although he hadn't really been these people's friend, he had come to care about them over the course of his time spent pretending. The idea that they were coming to really trust him, or worse, rely on him, was daunting.

Even still, he put on a bold smile. "Let them come! If I forget you all, then it'll just be your turn to remind me," Ashilis said, slapping Pell on the back. "Just be sure to make a good first impression again."

Pell laughed. Ashilis almost jumped in shock. He hadn't realized how rare that sound was. "Yeah, I guess you're right," Pell said. "Makes me wonder how many friends I've lost just because we think that forgetting one another means that's the end. In some ways, we act like you die each time you go back there, but you don't. Your relationships don't just die like that either, do they?"

Ashilis smiled. The Orators had a tendency to get a little philosophical—something that Bellavie noted with obvious distaste, but Ashilis liked it about them.

Pell lapsed into thoughtful silence, so Ashilis allowed himself to consider what Pell had recited. Innovations in morogrib grilling didn't seem like the most illuminating topic in regards to the situation at large, but Ashilis wasn't in a position to discard any information offhandedly. He had seem some Orators pulling apart their mushrooms before cooking them. That had seemed silly to him at the time—why make them harder to carry and incapable of holding water? Now, he looked at it from a different angle.

Each morogrib cap was vaguely circular and took up a lot of space on the plates, especially when squashed flat so the underside could be grilled. They took a while to cook all the way through, so oftentimes the outside would have a thin layer of char on it by the time the insides were safe to eat. In Ashilis' opinion, that actually enhanced the flavor, but it was inconvenient how flaky the mushroom could become. Regardless, if you didn't want to drink dirty floodwater, then you had to fight for access to one of the basins. Lingering too long at a basin left you vulnerable, so you needed to be able to quickly scoop out a bit of water and move along before someone took offense with you, and the bowl-shaped morogrib caps were the best way to do that—though openly carrying food came with its own risks.

But that was in Ashilis' slice. The Auditorium was a much safer and more organized segment of the Scarum. Ashilis had seen a few scuffles over food or basin access, but not nearly as many as in his own slice, and they almost always ended without any major injuries. You didn't have to worry about someone threatening to choke you out because you were taking too long to wash your rags, because everyone was accounted for and everyone got a turn. Bellavie had warned him to avoid the Orators whose job it was to keep track of the order in which people were scheduled to use the basins specifically for that reason.

If you didn't need to worry about access to water, then you didn't need the cap to maintain its bowl shape. So, you could pull them apart and cook smaller chunks individually. It would be more work to flip each individual piece and ensure they were all cooked through, but it would also be faster. With a group of people whose job it was to grill all day, people who could become very good at keeping track of it all, then you would be able to use more of the plate's surface area and cook a greater quantity of mushrooms each day.

It was clever. More than that, it was inspiring. Diviam had been dropped into an awful world where most were only trying to survive day-to-day, but he had managed to find a way to improve his situation via means of a mushroom epiphany, of all things. Ashilis doubted that his grilling method was significantly faster, and it likely more than doubled the workload involved, but it was better. It made cooking into a skill that some Orators could hone and become proud of, and once they did, it meant that the other Orators could focus on other tasks, building up skills in those areas in turn. 

No one person had to be capable of doing everything by themselves. It wasn't like that in Ashilis' slice. If you couldn't farm your mushrooms, grill them, fight to protect them, wash your own clothes, keep yourself hidden when the Vicarts came in, and a dozen other things, then you were behind, and that meant suffering in one way or another. It was exhausting. Ashilis felt that he could only keep up because he had Drym's help, but most didn't have the benefit of camaraderie. He hadn't seen any other friend groups in his slice—only the young girl who had stolen from him on his first day and her two goons game to mind.

Was there something that he could do about that? Drym wasn't the most trusting sort, but he had acquiesced to Ashilis when it came to Bellavie. Perhaps Ashilis could convince him that others would be useful additions to their team. Then, once he had a solid group, he might just be able to organize his slice like the Orators had, with cooks and farmers and people who kept track of important information in case he had it drained away.

He could make things better. He would make things better. That conviction followed a well-trodden path in his mind, and it all began to fall into place. Ashilis knew without having to check with Drym that this was what "The Plan" was all about.