Spring 54: what matters

Dearest Zann,

Wande and I did up the last two snobals last night. We didn’t get the same effect as the first time, but it was nice. The more I think about it, they don’t really taste like bananas at all. Wande browbeat Jhus into helping with the cutting, and she did it perfectly. While Jhus was cutting the fruit, I liked her better than I usually did. I even felt a little protective of her. But I don’t think it was reciprocated.

You’ve never seen a snobal. They’re fruits, big round ones, that grow underground in the fall, and ripen over the winter and early spring. They have a thick, tough brown rind that protects them through all this time. In late spring, once the ground has thawed and the plants have shed their taproots, they can be pulled out of the mud by their stalks. The rinds are red inside, and the flesh is pale, in irregular segments. They stay fresh enough to eat for a few swings; by summer, nobody’s eating them, and you can’t preserve them in any useful way.

It’s easy to make a big mess trying to cut these things up. You learn, when you’re a girl, how to find the lines to cut a snobal properly, so it comes apart into neat segments. If you don’t do it right you end up with a platter of wet pulp that’s very unappetizing.

I talked about the ritual before. Partly it’s to get the boys and men in the right frame of mind for eating the snobals. I’ve heard that if you just try to eat it without the ritual you end up spitting it out. You need the songs and all to get ready for it. But it’s not just about the fruit. It’s about what it means to be a man or a woman in the Crideon lands: women use knives with precision while men withstand burdens with strength. And if it’s done right, well… I guess it doesn’t really matter if it’s done right. Not with the laurans here.

At least I don’t think it matters.

Love,

Ybel