Fandom High School

Class was in the Danger Shop again today and the class walked into a waterscape. No, actually, several waterscapes. To one side was a winding river, broad and lazy. To another was a marsh, the water dark with moss and mud. A brackish stretch of beach ran along the far wall, and in the center was a clear pool, where brightly colored fish swam and smooth pebbled looked deceptively close to the surface. The one thing that all of these waterscapes had in common?

"Cattails!" Karla announced when everyone had arrived. "Cattails may be one of the single most useful plants on this earth. They grow near pretty much any body of water and can be harvested in all four seasons to provide food and other potentially life-saving items. Someone skilled in foraging can use cattails for at least eight food products, three medicinals, and twelve other helpful functions."

In fact, there were too many useful functions to explain in the time they had, so Karla was giving Lucille handouts to pass around so the students could still learn about them in their own time. Because cattails were incredibly cool and she'd fight you.

"So, we've got all four seasons represented here," she said, gesturing to the four different waterscapes. "We've got the river in winter, the beach in spring, the pond in summer, and the marsh in autumn." When the cattails were the tallest and, therefore, didn't require digging around in murky water, you were all welcome. "Do a circuit of the room and learn about the cattails in each season and what you can do with them!"

Karla might live in Glacia, but she still kept tabs on Earth. So she was more than a little aggravated with politics when she arrived in Fandom for class today. They were playing dangerous games and they weren't even playing them well and that just offended Karla right down to her bones. She was half-tempted to March to DC after class was over and show them what a real ruler looked like.

"So, everything is kind of terrible today," Karla declared. "And while it was tempting to show you all how to make alcohol out of plants, I'm supposed to be some kind of role model or something. So instead, we're going to watch a very serious movie about how useful plants can be and why you should take care of them."

While snacking on roasted piñas, or agave hearts, that just happened to come with an explanation of how to make mezcal, on the off-chance that was helpful to anybody.

"Time to get messy!" Karla crowed when it was time for class to start. "Well, Danger Shop messy, so you'll be fine after class, but until then, I hope you're prepared to spend the hour turning interesting colors. Today, we'll be learning how to make inks from plants, but since different types of plants are in season at different times of the year, we have to rely on a little bit of technological help."

The Danger Shop opened up to a field that couldn't exist in nature. Oak trees were putting forward new leaves next to elderberry trees with branches heavy with fruits and walnut trees, their roots all but covered by fallen nuts. Flowers were in full bloom and so were many kinds of different berries. Patches of beets and carrots and ripe tomatoes could be found just by looking. Most incongruous were the workstations littered about; counters and stovetops with bowls, mesh strainers, mortars and pestles, empty glass bottles and more.

"At its base, ink is just watery pigment and you can get pigment from damn near anything," Karla explained. "People have been making ink from ground up beetles, gemstones, and yes, plants, for millennia." She frowned. "I think millennia for most of you? I don't know when your ancient civilizations invented ink. No matter. Making ink is incredibly easy, though it can be time-consuming. We'll be cheating a bit today so you can have the full experience, but most flowers and berries can produce a simple ink in about a half an hour."

She headed over to the trees, stopping between an oak and a walnut tree. "Black ink can come from three pretty simple sources. Oak galls, black walnuts, and acorns." She turned over a leaf and showed the class the big green lump on the other side. "Oak galls come from wasps laying eggs on the underside of the leaves. As the larvae develop, the tree secretes tannic and gallic acids, which result in this--an oak gall or an oak apple. These can be harvested and dried and used to make gallic ink." Karla plucked the gall from a leaf and it immediately turned dry and brittle in her hands. "We're skipping the drying process for now. Walnuts are another way to get a good, solid ink. Using boiled walnuts, you can end up with a deep, rich ink that lasts for a long time."

She snagged several of the walnuts from the ground, calling in a nutcracker to open one up and eat the meat inside. "You've got about twenty minutes to gather as many different sources of pigment as you can," she said, nodding to the baskets that were stacked by the individual stations. "Collect as many as you'd like and then head back to your stovetops. There are a variety of instructions there to explain your next steps. Be aware, though..." She held up her hand, fingertips already stained darker by the tannins in the walnut shells, "...this is not a neat process. Go!"