Mini Mission: Fruit Picker

"I'm not sure I like all this," Matsuda grumbled as he wiped away a sticky strand. It was blisteringly hot. The air stood and shimmered in the sun. Even the smallest shade seemed to boil, yet it was so desirable: small insects and mammals frolicked in it, trying to escape the merciless sun and its hot and burning rays.

The kamishibas were not as lucky as the other animals, they stood in the blazing sun and had to slave away. Because, once again, they couldn't say no. Dune puffed, but said nothing. He was far too busy stowing the square fruit in the baskets. It sounded easier than it was, because their edges meant that they were not easy to stack next to and on top of each other in the basket if you didn't want to give away unnecessary space. And so he had to keep moving the basket in and out to get the perfect positioning of the purple fruits. It was like Tetris, except that Tetris was not known in Aurora. And so Dune just cursed the work instead of being able to compare it to a fun game.

Somewhere in the distance, her daughter was humming. She didn't seem to mind the heat. She trudged across the field, tapping here and there on the purple-and-blue-striped hulls of the fruit to check its ripeness. When it sounded hollow, she nodded with satisfaction and set to work with a small pair of pruning shears: the strand connecting the fruit to the plant had to be clipped. Then it was the turn of the transport to the parents. Since the fruit was angular, she had to work with sweat, because rolling didn't work. So she mostly hoisted the fruit onto her arms and tried to walk on two legs. That worked quite well. The first attempts had not been so successful and so a sweetish smell of the broken fruits hung in the air. It attracted the flies, but that didn't seem to bother the child. She walked cheerfully toward them with a large fruit and slowly lowered it to the ground in front of them. She eyed Dune's work somewhat critically.

"You haven't done much there," she criticized, wiping the sweat from her brow. Dune snorted. "If you're only ever going to grow the big fruit, I can't get much further either."

He pointed to the baskets. "I have cavities that are so much too big. There could be pressure points if I don't fill them with smaller fruit."

Pan nodded. That sounded logical. "But the small ones aren't usually ripe yet, it seems," she pointed out, and Dune shrugged. "Then we won't be able to harvest as many as you'd like today. We only got these few baskets from the farmer. When they're full, and they are very quickly because of the large fruit, we'll be done here."

Pan sighed, because harvesting was fun for her. Matsuda looked briefly at Dune, knowing he would get in trouble for what he was about to suggest. But that was probably better than a pouting child. "We can come back, after all." He felt his partner's probing gaze, but he forced himself not to look at him. "It's not like we have to harvest them all today."

This seemed to make Pan happy, for she nodded in delight, letting her eyes wander over the fruit, deciding for herself that there still weren't enough sunnybi harvested. And so she turned back around and trudged back to work.