The next morning I got up, washed my face and had breakfast before leaving the dungeon to walk around the town. Being focused on creating the seventh floor for eight full days with only one day for rest had left me feeling depleted, getting some fresh air would be perfect for re energising myself. As I walked around town I noticed people were putting up decorations that looked like different sorts of produce.

There wasn’t much variety in what people were putting up and I guessed that was because the village was settled near the end of spring so they could only grow things that had a short growing period. The most common decorations were laurels made out of something quite similar to wheat except it was purple instead of brown. The next most common decorations were white eggs that were slightly bigger than a chicken’s egg and had patterns painted onto them.

The patterns didn’t share any characteristics and were most likely just meant to look pretty, which they were. These weren’t the only decorations being put up though, in fact most buildings had three or four different sorts of decorations placed around them. The rarest decoration, that I saw in only one house, was some stuff made out of beeswax. This was mostly candles but there were also a few different ornaments placed around the house.

That must be where the beekeeper that I got the honey from lived, considering how much stuff they had around the house they must have a lot of bees. Although they might have kept the stuff they had made for previous festivals since wax lasts so long. I was having fun just walking around looking at the nice decorations but I was curious about why they were putting them up.

Eventually I came across an elderly woman who didn’t seem to be busy so I asked her what everyone was doing. She chuckled to herself about young’uns not knowing their history before explaining that the autumn festival, Lughnasadh, was the day after tomorrow and everyone was preparing for it. This was done by taking a small portion of whatever they produced about a week before the festival and turning it into decorations in hopes of their upcoming harvest getting blessed.  

The more unique and pretty the decoration was the more likely it would catch a god’s eye so it has always been a time where friendly rivalries flared. Not everyone were farmers but practically everyone still took part, just in different ways. Artisans like blacksmiths and carpenters would make something related to their job while people who didn’t produce anything physical would buy ingredients to turn into some kind of decoration.

When the old lady mentioned this she didn’t seem upset or angry at all so I imagined it was a common enough practice to be normalised. This made me happy as I didn’t technically make anything that could be turned into an offering but I still wanted to take part in the festival. I still didn’t know what I wanted to make however but atleast I now knew it could be anything I wanted.

She continued to explain the festival, mentioning that everything before the festival was pretty similar all over the continent but each region would have different traditions during the actual festival, as is the case with all of the main four. She had heard of some places taking all the offerings and placing them in a pyre before burning them and dancing around the fire until it burnt out.

Other places would hold a huge feast that fed the whole village. Around here the festival was a mix of a familial and community thing. Some people would set up booths in the centre of the village while family and friends would walk around playing games or talking about what was going on with their lives at the moment. They would end the day eating their fill using all of the mini harvest that hadn't been turned into decorations yet.

Any of the food that was leftover would be placed in the fireplace and burnt as an offering to passed family members. That finished the lady’s explanation so I thanked her for her time and clarified that I was from a land far away from here which is why I didn’t know about the autumn festival before starting to walk back to the dungeon, taking my time to look at all the decorations.

The main thought going through my mind as I made my way back home was that festivals like this must make Val miss what she left behind when she ran away from her home. I wanted to do something for her that would cheer her up but I wasn’t sure what would be a good idea. Unfortunately even when I got back to the dungeon I still had no clue what I could do for her so I decided to just ask her.

I easily found her in our garden practising her control over magic. I waited a few minutes until she was finished with her current exercise before making myself known by clearing my throat. ‘Hey Val. I was just out for a walk around the village.’ I said while sitting down next to her, trying to be as gentle about the topic as I could,

‘They were setting up decorations for the autumn festival that’ll be in a few days. I just found out about it so I still don’t know much but I wondered if you would want to make something with me and celebrate it together.’

‘Oh is it that time of year again? It gets hard to tell what day it is when you are on the run for so long.’ Val laughed a little, trying to make light of the situation but I could tell that she had been trying to not think about it while pretending that everything was ok. ‘I am not really fussed about the whole thing so we don’t really have to do anything.’

I hummed a little, not really believing her, ‘If you are sure then I won’t push it any further but I thought it would give us something nice to do while we hang out together. It might also take your mind off of what you did when you still lived with your parents.’

Val looked at me a little surprised I had seen through her before giving up the façade and actually thinking it over, ‘If you are sure about it then suppose it would be nice. My parents didn’t work a job that produced anything so we would usually just carve something out of wood but I hated it. I always would slip and cut my finger on accident and nothing I made looked good. I wanted to cook something but I was scared to ask since they thought cooking was a woman’s job.’

Hearing that made me roll my eyes as I knew the type and always thought they were stupid. What did they expect men to do if they ever got a place of their own without marrying a woman to cook for them, starve? Parents are supposed to teach their children how to survive in the world without them and a crucial part of that is being able to feed yourself.

I stopped being angry at ‘tradition’ long enough to give Val an answer ‘That sounds like a great idea, is there anything in particular you wanted to cook?’

‘Uhh, I had never really thought that far ahead,’ Val said uncertainly ‘Is there anything you want to make? Or know how to make.’

I thought for a little while about what I used to cook in my old life until I remembered the perfect thing to make around this time of year. ‘We could make some jam if you wanted,’ I finally said, ‘from what I remember it is a pretty simple recipe, just time consuming.’

‘That sounds like a good idea’ Val said, cheering up a little ‘what sort of fruit do you want to use’

‘My favourite jam from my last life was made out of a fruit called strawberry so I would like to make that’ I said, reminiscing about the past ‘If you already had a type of jam already in mind then we can also make that, we have more than enough time to make two batches.’

‘I have never heard of those; I am excited to taste them.’ Val said ‘I used to walk by some fruit bushes when I went to visit my friends that I loved the taste of. They are a medium sized and sour fruit called Emiquat.’

‘That sounds good, let's get started then.’ I said, immediately growing a bunch of strawberry plants from memory and quickly moving on to the Emiquat fruit that Val wanted before I realised I had no idea how to actually make them as I had never seen one before. ‘Um, could you help me? I have never seen an Emiquat before so I don’t know what I should be doing.’

‘I can try but I have never really done this before either’ Val said, a little uncertainly. We started by having Val draw what the plant looked like as best as she could but when I tried to grow it the flavour was off so we had to modify it slightly.

Over the next hour we went through at least ten different variations before it looked right and Val took a bite of it. I nervously looked at her as she gave it a proper taste, after a minute of thinking about it she said it was perfect, exactly as she remembered it. The bush was about two metres tall and the branches stretched about one metre out from the centre.

The bark was the typical dark black of this region, it had lots of small, dark blue leaves with intricate patterns on it that reminded me of a nettle except it was longer and thinner. Each branch contained a few fruits that were the size of a crab apple but shaped like a star, had blue skin and peach coloured flesh. I was curious about how it tasted so I picked one before taking a bite.

It was so juicy that some of its juice almost fell out of my mouth. The flavour was indeed incredibly sour but not too bad, it was more sour than an orange but less than lemons. Once I was done I used the bush as a blueprint to grow four more around the garden. Seeing them grow from a sapling to a fully grown bush in five minutes was slightly weird but I quickly got over it before starting to pick them with Val joining soon after.

About three hours later we had two baskets full of fruit, one of the Emiquats and the other of strawberries, and were ready to start making some jam. I materialised an equal amount of sugar to fruit, using a crude scale to make sure that I got the right amount of sugar, while Val turned on the stovetop. As the pot reached the right temperature we sliced the strawberries into halves while getting rid of the stem.

By the time we had finished the pot was hot enough so we added two thirds of the strawberries and an equal amount of sugar while stirring it. Once it was all in we slowly increased the heat over twenty minutes until it was boiling. I knew it would be almost done by this point but I didn’t know exactly when it would be finished so I took out a teaspoonful of the jam and placed it on a cooled plate to test it.

It didn’t set properly so we left it to cook a bit longer, testing it every five minutes. On the third test it finally set properly so we poured it into jars that I had materialised while we waited for it to boil, filling four and a half jars. With the first batch finished we were going to start the next one but we had been working so long now that it was getting late so instead we decided to go to bed, doing the second batch the next day.

The next day Val was up before me and even knocked on my door to find out when I was going to get up, she must have been very excited to hang out with me. Realising this I was delighted to see her let down some more of her walls so I quickly got dressed and went downstairs. We went through the same process as last night except the emiquats were bigger than strawberries so we had to cut them into eighths instead of halves.

I also added more sugar as it was such a sour fruit. About an hour later we had another four jars of jam with just a little bit left over. We still had some strawberries and emiquats left so we decided to make another batch of jam using the leftovers. We finished with the third batch around noon so we tried some of it with some bread for lunch.

The strawberry jam was almost exactly how I remembered except it wasn’t quite as good since I couldn’t control the temperature perfectly without using a proper thermostat. The emiquat jam was similar to gooseberry jam in that it was quite sour but had a sweet aftertaste that kept me going back for more. It is hard to explain how the experimental jam tasted, it was similar to the strawberry jam except it had a sour background taste that actually worked really well.

I then took the spare jam that couldn’t fill up a whole jar and made a few tarts for tomorrow before resting for the rest of the day. Neither of us felt like training since it was so late and we would only be able to get a few hours in so we spent the rest of the day talking about what we did during holidays before we met each other.

Val focused on how she would spend time with her friends when she wanted to get away from her overbearing parents. I talked about what sort of decorations we would put up and my family’s traditions. Reminiscing about the past was difficult as I had a bunch of memories I would rather forget but I was growing closer with Val so I didn’t mind it too much. Eventually day turned to night and we went to bed excited to experience the autumn festival together.