The Red Jasmine Revolution

10. The Last Breakfast.

Green and orange tentacles poked out from the basket Seng Nu was carrying into the kitchen station. "Lunch" she said, placing it down on the counter in front of Zaw who was still clearing away the remnants of breakfast.

Zaw turned around, his face beaming "Seng Nu! What have you got for me?" It was a genuine question, for he wasn't entirely sure if the thing in her basket was a vegetable or some kind of exotic river creature.

Seng Nu took out one of the limbs, and the dangling roots confirmed it was a plant. She spoke in the clear and slow tones of a teacher. "Last week we made sour soup with the leaf from the..."

"...Tigerbite plant!" said Zaw, finishing her sentence "We made sour soup with it, but last night I made a tigerbite and red pea curry..."

"...And how did it taste?"

"Terrible, but the elephants enjoyed it at least."

Seng Nu laughed.

Zaw was her first friend of her own age and for weeks and months she had been learning what that meant. She had approached the boundaries of friendship with caution at first, but quickly learned the give and take.

"This week we are not going to do sour, we are going to do...well go ahead have a taste" she took one of the green limb-like plants out of her basket and offered it to him.

Zaw looked at it suspiciously. "And you've eaten this before?"

Seng Nu sighed "Yes! I'm not trying to poison you, Everything I give you I have already eaten. If you find me dead in the forest then you'll know that I gave my life for your cooking art."

Zaw took a bite and almost immediately his tongue curled. "It's bitter!" he said, spitting pieces of green flesh onto the counter.

"We need to cook it first" laughed Seng Nu.

"You offered it to me!"

"Yes, to cook, not eat raw!" Seng Nu picked the tentacle up and playfully slapped him on the head. She adopted the serious tone of a parent schooling a child.

"This plant, which I call greenray, is very bitter, but if you add just a little bit of it to a soup, it will give it an extra petal of flavour."

"An extra petal of flavour? Sounds like something old man Kon would say." said Zaw, still spitting bits of the bitter fruit from his mouth. "Next time tell me how I'm supposed to eat this before I take a huge bite! Why do you call it greenray?"

"Because no one has named it yet"

"I mean why the name...it doesn't look like a ray of sunshine at all. It's all furry and twisted, it looks more like a spider's arm."

"You must have seen some giant spiders."

"I suppose you're right, no one would eat it if we called it spider arm, would they?"

Seng Nu grinned. "Sure, but you could have called your banana and spice curry rainbows and babysmiles and it wouldn't have tasted any better."

"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"I think My stomach has sympathy pains for those poor men you fed that too!"

For Zaw, tradition was like sailing down a river, or at least what he imagined sailing would be like. He was happy to let the current lead, but would stick a paddle in the water if it tried to take him somewhere he didn't want to go. Sometimes he even sought out those unwelcome currents just because he liked the feeling of rowing against them. As a teenager he had painted his nails with charcoal just to revel in his mother's horrified look. And maybe that was why he thought that something more than friendship was possible with the girl with no clan who could kick down trees and make leaves float into her hand.