Thread of Awesome: THIS! IS!! QUOTEFILE!!!

[Shepherd]

“How do you keep them from exploding?” Karzarul thought to ask as Dee passed through the room.

“What?” Leonas asked, looking up from the shelf of books he’d been examining.

“The lanternmelons,” Karzarul said. “If they get too much sun they explode. Not enough and they don’t glow. It’s what makes them rare.”

Leonas narrowed his eyes. “Have I been drinking exploding wine?” he asked.

“The juice is processed to make it inert,” Dee said. “We have a system.”

The sun was setting when she showed it to them, taking them out onto a third-floor balcony on the side of the house facing the fields. From above, it looked like a vast field of green. The fading light made it easier to see the glow of the melons through the leaves of their vines, and only close examination revealed the trick. What looked like an ordinary field was a vast latticework of wooden frames, melons beneath sheltered by their own leaves.

“What happens if one of them explodes?” Leonas asked.

“They all explode,” Dee said. “The trick is not to let any of them explode.”

“Hm,” Leonas said. “Having all your fields of explosives in one place feels ill-advised.

“This isn’t all of them,” Dee said.

Leonas looked out at the sea of green. “Ah,” he said.

“They hardly ever explode since I gave up smoking,” she added.

“Great,” Leonas said. “What would happen to the house?”

“We’ve reinforced the walls since last time,” Dee said.

“Good to know,” Leonas said.

“Is this what adventuring is?” he asked. “You pick an arbitrary goal, use huge amounts of time and energy accomplishing it, and if you’re lucky you only regret it half the time?”

Karzarul considered it. “In my experience,” he said, “you’ve described life in general.”

Leonas tipped forward, resting his head on crossed arms on the table. “Great,” he sighed.

Astielle (warning: some chapters are very NSFW) - https://kittyunpretty.com/astielle-chapter-thirty-one/