As morning dew covered the land and the sun rose between the mountains, the dwarfs woke up and began their duties. The only one sitting at camp was Urist; he felt a little bad for making Uria sit by the fire all day the day before.

He took fire duty so that she could explore with the medical team. He hoped that they would find edible plants using survival and foraging books. If they could find a high yield plant to eat from, it would be a great boon. He tempered his expectations when he remembered that most high yield plants took hundreds, if not thousands of years, of careful agriculture to reach modern civilization standards.

They had found those strange furry leaves to use as sleeping beds, though, so who knew what other kinds of plants were located in the forest? He just had to wait to see what they brought in. Urist threw in another log into the pyre, sitting there listlessly. He cut the bottoms off of their store of plastic bottles for later use.

Besides watching the fire, he had a lot of preparation to do this afternoon.

Plants

The trio of girls—Uroa, Uria, and Briana—marched through the forest searching for useful plants with the books in hand. Though the sky was bare with not a cloud in sight, the light breeze cooled them down. Occasionally, streams of light poured down through the canopy of leaves and blinded them.

The fallen leaves scattered on the forest floor crunched as they walked. Every plant they passed, they meticulously eyed and classified using the books they carried.

While walking through the green work, Briana started up discussion. “So I have to ask, what do you think about Boss, Uria?”

“Eh? Well, he seems pretty hard working. Why do you ask?”

A mischievous smile crept up on Briana’s lips. “He does, doesn’t he? But I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking about what you think of him as you know… a man.”

Uroa and Uria blushed under the question.

“Briana. We’ve only known each for three days.”

“That’s right. You can’t ask something so shameless.”

Seeing them get all riled up, Briana chuckled. “Oh come on, you must have noticed him giving you the eyes. I saw it the other day when he went up to the fire to talk to you. Come on spill it, what did you two talk about hmmm?”

Blushing a deeper shade of red, Uria turned away. “We weren’t talking about that sort of thing. He was just asking how I was doing.”

Briana gave her a look saying she didn’t believe her, then turned away, smiling.“Sure, that’s all it was.”

They were left with an awkward silence. Before long, Uroa couldn’t handle it anymore and attempted to change the subject. 

“If we’re talking about Urist, I wanna know why you guys follow him.”

Uria, although surprised by the question, was thankful for the diversion and jumped at the chance.

“We really haven’t talked about that, huh." She stopped and thought deeply for a moment before continuing. “I follow him because, out of all of us, he has a plan and an idea for the future. Since he’s the only one who has any memories about survival... it just seems natural.” Uria sighed, looking up at the treetops. "Him shouldering all the responsibility makes me less scared of what's to come, but I feel bad forcing him to take care of everything. I feel pretty selfish leaving him to look after the fire because of my boredom." She chuckled ruefully.

Briana put her hands behind her head. “Hmmm, I’d have to agree with Uria. I know squat about how to survive by myself. And I don’t like the idea of leading people; it seems like a chore," she whined while shaking her head and shrugging. “How about you Uroa? You got a reason to follow the boss?”

"For me," Uroa replied fidgeting with her hands in front of her, "I kind of like his eyes that shine with excitement. Seeing further than the rest of us, making sure that we keep going. But I wonder if he’s trying too hard. You get what I mean?”

Grinning, Briana put her arm around Uroa. “Oh do my eyes deceive me? Uria, it seems you have some competition.” 

Feeling Briana’s eyes on her, Uroa face blushed and fidgeted with her hands even more. “What? Eh? No! That isn’t what I meant! Uh… I meant uh… Oh, look at that!”

Looking for an escape, Uroa spotted a large plant blooming petite, white flowers. It looked almost like a white handkerchief tainted with a single drop of blood in the middle. She was so overcome with the prettiness of the flower that she crouched down and started caressing it.

Briana opened up the foraging book and searched inside. The book had pictures along with descriptions of which plants were edible. She flipped through the book until she found the illustration of this flower. According to the foraging book, this flower’s’ root was actually edible.

This plant was called Queen Anne’s Lace. It grew a root called a carrot. The root must be pulled in the first year of its growth, otherwise, it would taste bitter and be hard to eat.

Briana could easily judge the current age of the plant by comparing it to the illustrations, allowing her to tell which ones were new or old plants. With a quick look around the surroundings, she saw there were many Queen Anne’s Laces. They were standing in a field of wild carrots.

She decided to pull up the plant and look at the root to be sure her analysis was correct.

The carrot was white, long, and narrow with small roots shooting out from the main root; it was exactly what was in the picture.

With a smile, Briana pulled up some of the flowers to retrieve the carrots from them. She would take them back and show Urist to see if these were edible. She heard Uroa stuttering angrily next to her. Was the thought of Briana giving carrots to their boss that offensive?

Tilting her head in confusion, Briana looked over to Uroa.“What’s wrong?”

It was only then that Uroa turned from being horrified to indignant, pointing at the flower tops that Briana had carelessly tossed away. “Why did you treat the flowers badly?”

Briana understood her mistake and figured out a way to make Uroa happy. She picked up the flowers by their stalks and tied them together with a few stocks of long grass to a makeshift bouquet. She handed them back to Uroa with a sheepish smile.

Uroa's anger vanished, replaced by a wide smile when she took the banquet of flowers. “Thank you, big sis.” She twirled around, flowers in hand.

Briana was stunned, not only because of her quick mood change but also because of the honorific. “Why am I the big sister?”

“Because you’re taller,” Uroa said seriously, nose buried in the flowers.

“Eh? That's the reason?”

“Of course.”

“Hey guys, check out what I found.”

The two girls turned around to see Uria carrying a strange, small, brown mound that looked like dirt. They tilted their heads in confusion. Why would she bring over something like a dung ball? Seeing their befuddled looks, Uria started wiping away the dirt from the ball and handed it over to Briana. “I think this thing comes from a plant called taro. We can eat this.”

Briana held the weird plant in her hand, staring at it intently. “Can you show us where you found it? I wanna look at the plant it came from.”

Uria nodded. “Sure, just follow me and I’ll show you. I would have missed it if I didn’t study the survival book that said taro plants could be found here pretty easily.”

Taking the lead, Uria led them fifty feet away to where the taro plant was. After checking the pictures, Briana was pretty sure that she had identified the correct plant. She wanted Urist’s final say to see if it was truly taro, so they carried it along.

Besides that, they found a patch of wild blueberries, which they happily collected. When they didn’t identify anything else in their range that stood out to them being a food source, they decided to head back and show their findings.

As they started heading back, Uria held out her arms and stopped the other girls when she noticed a strange creature nibbling on a wild carrot. he three girls stared intently, not making a single noise as they watched the frightful, monster-like creature they had never seen before. Its body was small, walking on four legs. It had two large ears and its body was brown, black, and amber. Its black beady eyes stared absentmindedly at the dwarfs while it nibbled the carrot.

The girls ran away from the unknown animal in fear. But if Urist was here, he would instantly know that this monster-- no, this animal-- was called a hare!