Rewards to Reap

A frown was etched on Primrose’s face, as was often the case; this frown was not one of displeasure, however, but of deep, intense concentration. His hands moved with the utmost precision and care as he separated a single ambrosia flower into all of its different parts. Petals were delicately plucked so as not to bruise or tear and set in a pile; leaves were likewise laid aside, later to be hung up to dry. The stems were cut so that sap could be squeezed out and gathered.

Harvesting the nectar was of course the most involved part of the process. Morgaine watched with a concentration to match Primrose’s as Primrose carefully poured out small droplets of gathered nectar, or drew them from the flower’s center with a pipette if not enough was condensed to pour. These precious droplets were then deposited in a vial to await their turn at preparation.

Once he had demonstrated the harvesting techniques on all the different parts of a few flowers, Primrose turned to Morgaine. “Do you think that you’re ready to try one yourself?” His expression as he studied Morgaine’s face was searching, but not forbidding.

Morgaine smiled at him. “I think I am, hoss. I’ll keep following your lead for the first few.”

Primrose nodded approvingly (yay, approval!) and allowed Morgaine to take a couple of the flowers from his pile and set them at his own prepared work station on the counter. He got to work on the first one, moving slowly as he watched Primrose process another flower and following along as he’d promised. Now and again, Primrose would pause in his own work to offer a correction - or, more rarely, encouragement. Several minutes later, Morgaine had his own piles of disassembled flower parts.

“Good,” Primrose said, expression neutral but the sheer fact of his praise carrying weight enough.

“Good enough to keep going?” Morgaine asked, lightly teasing.

“Of course,” Primrose sniffed. “If it wasn’t good enough, I’d have said so.”

“I know, I know.” Morgaine chuckled and moved the separated parts of the flower to the side so that he could start on the next one.

The almost dizzyingly sweet aroma of the ambrosia flowers filled the little kitchen in which they worked before long, and Primrose moved away to crack the windows open to allow a fresh breeze from outside. The new airflow rustled the leaves and petals on the countertop, and Morgaine quickly moved to cover them so that they wouldn’t get blown away. With those secured, they resumed working at all of the flowers.

“These need to be hung up to dry now, and the loose leaves will go in the dehydrator,” Primrose instructed once they had worked through most of the supply. A few full flowers had been set aside to be dried in full once the nectar and sap had been gathered from them; those would be used for various medicinal concoctions and salves later.

“A dehydrator?” Morgaine asked, raising his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have expected you to have one of those in here. Doing everything by hand builds character, you know.” He was still teasing a little bit, admittedly.

Primrose sniffed again. Morgaine was pretty sure he could have written out a time table for Primrose’s proud huffs and puffs by now, given the regularity with which they occurred. (He still had yet to achieve his dream of getting Primrose and Dan in a room together just for the sake of observing what happened, but he hadn’t forgotten it. Unstoppable force versus immovable object. Even he craved a little chaos now and then.)

“The dehydrator was Beanny’s idea,” he explained. “She thought that it would make the ambrosia process more efficient, and she was right.” And yet, Primrose still managed to sound put-upon by said efficiency. “It’s better than an oven, anyway, because there’s much less risk of any of the leaves burning. Arrange them on the tray here - yes, like that - and I’ll put them in.”

Morgaine placed each of the separated leaves flat on the wire tray that Primrose brought over, taking care to space them evenly. He enjoyed cooking but rarely baked anything; the idea of essentially baking leaves by themselves was a little funny. Once the tray had been filled, Primrose took it over to the squat appliance in the corner that resembled a more complicated toaster oven, to Morgaine’s eye. He slotted the tray into place and withdrew another from the rack beneath it, returning to Morgaine’s side to gather the rest of the leaves. 

Soon enough, a second helping filled that tray, and it joined its partner in the dehydrator. Primrose closed the door on the device and fiddled with a temperature knob before turning it on and setting a timer. He dusted his hands off, nonverbally declaring that task taken care of; Morgaine golf clapped for him and received an unimpressed look for his troubles.

“The nectar has sat for long enough now to settle, so we’ll strain it to remove pollen and any other impurities, then begin the dilution process,” Primrose declared, apparently choosing not to further acknowledge Morgaine’s antics. Fair enough.

Recovering from his small bout of silliness, Morgaine moved to observe once more as Primrose selected a fine mesh strainer and set it over a shallow bowl before retrieving the vials of ambrosia nectar. Picking up the first of the vials, he slowly tilted it to drizzle the nectar through the strainer, bobbing it to make sure that every last bit of the viscous liquid made it through. Small clumps of pollen and dust that had settled at the bottom of each vial clung to the wire mesh of the strainer, letting the rest of the nectar seep down into the bowl without it.

“This is arguably the most important part of the process,” Primrose murmured, keeping his eyes fixed on what he was doing rather than looking at Morgaine. “The ambrosia drinks won’t retain their special properties unless the nectar used in making them is absolutely as pure as possible before dilution.”

“I see,” Morgaine said, aiming for a tone that hopefully conveyed the appropriate amount of gravity. Primrose obviously took this dead seriously. They both watched in silence as Primrose tapped one finger against the glass vial to shake out the last few drops of nectar, and then he set it aside.

“You try it now,” he said, almost ordering rather than offering.

Nonetheless, Morgaine did move to take his place in front of the strainer and picked up the next vial. Holding it between his thumb and first two fingers just as Primrose had, he gently tilted it to begin pouring. He could feel Primrose’s gaze practically burning a hole in him as he worked, so he kept his own gaze firmly on the nectar dripping into the strainer.

“You’re making me a little nervous now, hoss,” he said, one side of his mouth turning up in a half-smile when the silence became a touch too intense. He still didn’t look up from the strainer, afraid his hand would slip, or who knew what else might happen if he took his attention away from it for even a moment.

A trademark haughty Primrose sniff sounded from somewhere behind him. There we go, back to business as usual.

“This process will be respected and done properly,” Primrose declared quietly. “It is the most important thing that we brought with us from the Heavenly Meadow.”

“I am respecting it,” Morgaine replied, tone light but not mocking. “That’s why I’m here doing this with you, you know.”

There was another tense pause, and then Primrose exhaled gustily. “I know,” he said, sounding faintly irritated, and the strangely heavy atmosphere in the room eased all at once. “Give the vial a good tap now, but don’t shake it,” he continued, stepping back into the role of instructor as though that little hiccup hadn’t happened.

Morgaine hummed to himself and did as he was told. Once the vial was fully emptied and ready to be set aside, he did finally look up at Primrose again.

“You don’t need to worry so much, you know,” he said. “You’re giving yourself frown lines.”

“I- what?” Primrose blinked at him and then touched his own forehead as though checking the veracity of Morgaine’s words.

Morgaine laughed brightly, and then laughed even harder when Primrose turned red and whipped his hand back with a huff.

“You- ridiculous,” Primrose muttered. “Stop fooling around and strain the rest of the nectar, we’re wasting time.”

“Time spent with friends is never wasted,” Morgaine retorted, still slightly out of breath from his laughing fit. It felt good to be the one who had somebody else on the back foot for once.

Primrose huffed some more as Morgaine turned back to the strainer and grabbed the last vial of nectar. After a few moments of quiet pouring, he spoke again.

“Are we- friends?”

Morgaine glanced up at him in surprise only to have his attention quickly shooed back to the task at hand. “Well, I like to think we are,” he said after a moment. “I’ve enjoyed my time in your company, and I’d like to keep coming back.”

“Ah,” Primrose said. That was all for another couple of minutes. Then, “I haven’t had many friends.”

That… was not unduly surprising, Morgaine supposed. It was probably a good thing he had his back to Primrose so that he had a moment to compose his expression out of its reflexive grimace.

It would be nice to say something along the lines of Primrose just not realizing how many people truly considered him a friend, and maybe that was even true. It wasn’t a truth that Morgaine knew for sure, though, and one thing he could say for Primrose was that he very much wasn’t the sort of bun who bought into comfortable fibs to flatter himself.

Instead, he settled for this: “Well, hoss, you’ve got at least one.”

All Primrose said for a while was a quiet, “Thank you.”

Morgaine finished straining the nectar, tapping gently on the vial to fully empty it, and then removed the strainer from the bowl. “Shall we move on to the dilution now?” He asked, prodding Primrose when there was no immediate instruction given.

Primrose shook himself out of his thoughts and became businesslike once more. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll start by boiling a small pot of water, and then you add the nectar a few drops at a time…”

And so on and so forth. Primrose guided Morgaine through the dilution, then lowered the temperature of the stovetop to let the diluted ambrosia simmer at low heat, stirring it every so often as it slowly thickened. He handed the wooden spoon over to Morgaine, who kept stirring at his behest while Primrose added this and that, narrating as he did so.

“For the seasonal variants, it’s important to use only freshly-gathered ingredients as additives. It has a long enough shelf life, but the taste is stronger and more complex when it’s fresh. For the salty ambrosia, you can crush up a pearl or two, and that will slightly carbonate the mixture-” He demonstrated, and Morgaine let out a low whistle as the concoction fizzed.

“And we’ll keep simmering it, stirring occasionally, until it’s completely smooth. Then it should be immediately bottled and left to cool,” Primrose finished, adding just a dash of sea salt to the simmering nectar and then stepping back to allow Morgaine to tend to it for the rest of the process.

Honestly, the hardest part was when his arm got tired; Primrose was absolutely insistent that you could only stir the pot clockwise, and he refused to elaborate on why.

Finally, finally, Primrose leaned over the pot to inhale the sweet, salty scent rising from it, nodded with satisfaction, and turned off the burner. He grabbed a funnel and positioned it over one of the round glass bottles that the ambrosia was customarily kept in. “Now, pour very carefully.”

He hardly needed to say so, but Morgaine obeyed of course.

The ambrosia looked almost like a glaze to him as it poured into the funnel, golden and shimmering in the afternoon light. It was honestly a little bit agonizing to watch and know that he wasn’t going to have a chance to taste it.

As soon as the bottle was filled, Primrose put a stopper in it. He held it up to the light, turning it this way and that and looking at the contents through the colored glass, until he finally seemed satisfied.

“You may hold it, if you want,” he said to Morgaine, like a king deigning to allow a lowly peasant to touch one of his treasures.

Morgaine did want, though, so he accepted the bottle. It was warm and surprisingly heavy in his palm.

“All that for just one bottle,” he remarked. “No wonder you’re always running yourself ragged.”

“A job well done is its own reward,” Primrose replied loftily.

Morgaine snorted. “Well that’s not true at all. This is the reward, isn’t it?” He gave the bottle a shake, only for Primrose to quickly snatch it back. Whether because he was afraid Morgaine would forget himself and try to drink it, or simply drop it, who could say.

Whatever Primrose would have retorted with was interrupted by a tiny, tinkling chime like that of a bell. They both looked at each other, then around the kitchen in confusion. The noise sounded again, and a look of understanding crossed Primrose’s face. He set the bottle down on the counter and went to investigate the windows, opening each one a little wider, until he found what he was looking for.

“I suppose that someone else has seen fit to reward you,” he said, returning to Morgaine with his hands cupped around something small and glowing. The little virtue in his hands looked up at Morgaine and waved one of its arms, making the bell chime sound again.

Morgaine looked from the virtue back up to Primrose in surprise, but offered his hand to accept it. It happily hopped onto his palm, waving its bell arms about.

“I think,” Primrose said, “that we can call this, ah, ‘culinary experiment’ of yours a success.”

Morgaine grinned at him. “I’m glad that you think so, hoss.”

“Haven't I told you before to stop calling me that? And don’t think that you’re going to get to leave before cleaning the kitchen up, either.”

“Of course not, Prim.”

It wasn’t like he was unused to cleaning kitchens, anyway. It was hard to complain when he’d already been rewarded for his work.