The Sweet Motivation of Honey
Candy fruit. Monia didn't care for them much, but they were a fruit Chester still ate as a snack whenever he spotted them while roaming the island. Currently, in a corner of the storehouse, the candy fruit Monia had preserved in salt was curing nicely.
Next, scarlet fruit. It was the fruit of a tree widely distributed across the Floating Island, and the one Chester found most frequently after candy fruit. Before ripening, they were incredibly hard and astringent, but once ripe, they became very soft with a subtle sweetness. Naturally, Monia hated them. Even so, they served as a staple food for various creatures on the Floating Island, such as rodents and birds.
Next, he pulled out blue strawberries. Though called strawberries, they were blue fruits shaped like wild raspberries. Chester had once stumbled upon a large patch of them and used them up to make strawberry dough. He had recently chanced upon them again, but unfortunately, the patch was small, so he only picked a few and left the rest to grow. Besides, it was near the territory of the Ant-wolves, making it risky to linger.
Chester gathered these three fruits—the main staples of their island diet—from the storehouse basket and placed them in a wide bowl. This bowl was something Chester had fashioned himself by baking clay. Having gone through immense trial and error to successfully fire just this one, it was a highly cherished possession.
Once the fruits were arranged, he tore in a few aromatic herbs before pulling out the final ingredient.
"Oooooh."
Having finally snapped out of her honey-induced trance, Monia clapped in admiration at the ingredient Chester produced. *Clap, clap, clap.*
Chester chuckled at her reaction and gave the ingredient a firm squeeze. Instantly, a thick, overflowing wave of golden liquid oozed from his hands, cascading into the bowl.
"Wow..."
Watching the beautiful waterfall of honey, Monia wore an ecstatic expression, looking as though she had fallen deeply in love.
Chester scraped every last drop of honey from his hands into the bowl, washed up, and returned to toss the ingredients together. As the sticky honey blended thoroughly, it coated each piece of fruit in a glossy, mouthwatering sheen.
"Alright, it's done."
Honey fruit salad. This was today's breakfast.
"Let's eat."
"Yay!"
Chester and Monia dug into the glistening, honey-drenched fruits with their bamboo spoons. Even though the bowl was packed with fruits she usually detested, Monia devoured them with absolute relish, as if she couldn't care less.
"Mmm! Oh my gosh! This is so good!!"
She was enjoying it to an almost excessive degree.
"If you lose your mind like that again, no more honey for you."
"N-No! You can't!"
Startled by Chester's threat, Monia scurried over to his side, clinging tightly to his arm as she pleaded. "I'll never do it again! Promise! Please? Please? Pretty please?"
"Alright, alright, I get it. Just eat."
Chester offered her the spoonful of fruit he had just scooped up for himself. Spotting the fruit piled on Chester's spoon, Monia eagerly snapped it up.
"Mmm! I love this so much!"
"Really? You like it that much?"
"Yes!"
Though she answered energetically, her mood suddenly plummeted the moment she swallowed the last bite. "Ah... even delicious honey like this will eventually run out if we keep eating it, right...? I must ration it."
"Good heavens."
Chester was genuinely astounded. *To think the words 'ration it' would ever come out of Monia's mouth.*
Rationing? Did the concept of conservation actually exist inside that brain of hers?
*Good grief.*
Chester felt as if his entire understanding of the universe had just crumbled. *Then why on earth didn't you try to save anything before, you brat?* What was with her previous madness, where she had devoured everything in sight without a single thought for the future?
While Chester trembled in sheer shock and awe, Monia buried her face back in the bowl and continued eating the honey fruit salad.
*...This is terrifying.*
That Monia had actually spoken of rationing. Whether she would actually follow through remained to be seen, but the mere fact that she had said it was a monumental step. Just getting Monia to contemplate the concept of conservation made retrieving the honey entirely worth the effort in Chester's eyes.
*...Could I use honey to train Monia even more effectively?* The thought crossed his mind. And he decided it was well worth considering.
* * *
"What is that?"
Monia stared at the basket of honey that was suddenly dangling high up in a tree. Having climbed the tree right after breakfast to hang the basket there, Chester replied, "If you want to eat honey today too, all you have to do is bring that basket down. Simple, right?"
"What? What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Figure it out."
With that, Chester headed off to the farm. He had recently discovered a massive boulder embedded right in the middle of the plot he intended to turn into a farm, and he had been spending the last few days struggling to pry it out.
Left entirely to her own devices after Chester vanished, Monia stood alone, staring up at the honey basket swaying in the breeze.
"Ugh..."
*Should I make a stick and knock it down?* That was her very first thought. *But if I do that and the honeycomb falls to the dirt and gets filthy?! I won't be able to eat it!*
Monia instantly dismissed the idea. Chester wouldn't care in the slightest about a little dirt, and while Monia's stomach had grown significantly stronger than before, she wasn't quite at that level yet. At present, her tolerance had only evolved to the point of being able to eat snake meat and wild fruits she once wouldn't have touched. In fact, Chester would probably ask her why on earth she couldn't just eat it with a bit of dirt on it.
That was precisely why he had hung the honeycomb in the tree. If she knocked it down with a stick, she would end up eating the dirty honeycomb out of sheer desperation. If not, she would try her absolute best to climb the tree to get it. Or, she might find a way to bring it down safely that even Chester hadn't anticipated. Any of those outcomes was fine. Monia would grow.
As Chester pondered how to yank out this incredibly annoying boulder, he kept stealing glances at Monia's antics.
"Oh, she's clinging to the tree."
Monia had latched herself onto the trunk. After digging away some of the dirt around the boulder, Chester looked back, only to find Monia still trembling in the exact same spot.
*Is she... trying to summon the strength to climb? Is that what she's doing?* It certainly seemed so. Straining his ears toward her, he caught her voice.
"Just a little more...! Just a little further...!!"
For the record, Monia was still shaking violently while clinging to the tree a mere ten centimeters off the ground.
*A little more, my foot.*
After trembling like a leaf, Monia finally lost her grip and tumbled to the ground.
"Ah."
Perhaps exhausted from the sheer exertion of hanging onto the tree, Monia didn't even try to get up. She just lay there, panting heavily as she rested. After catching her breath, Monia, seemingly furious at her failure to climb the tree, began to hurl insults at it.
"How dare you! A mere tree! To me! Do you have any idea who I am?!"
After huffing and puffing at the tree, she picked up a stone and began chucking it at the basket. Of course, with Monia's pathetic strength and accuracy, no matter how many rocks she threw, she couldn't hit a basket hanging near the very top of the tree. Stamping her feet in frustration, she paused. A moment later, Monia simply stood beneath the tree, staring blankly upward with her mouth wide open.
"...What is she doing now?"
After watching her stand like that for a good while, Chester gave a final, mighty heave to dislodge the boulder he had spent all morning digging out, then walked over to her.
"What are you doing?"
"Ah, Chester." Monia, who had been gaping at the sky, pointed up at the honey basket. "I'm waiting for the honey to fall!"
So, she was literally waiting for the honey to drip down on its own and land right into her mouth?
"...That honey is incredibly thick. You can wait all day, but it's never going to drip."
"Huh?"
At Chester's words, Monia stared up at the honey basket with a look of utter shock and betrayal. *You're just like Jordy!*
Where on earth was the betrayal in this? And why did she look so deeply offended? *Just how much did she expect the honey to feed itself to her?*
"You can't expect to get anything without working for it."
"But I stood out here in the heat waiting!"
Chester poured a splash of water over Monia's head. Perhaps her head had overheated from her tree-climbing attempts, because she meekly let the water cool her down.
"Get a grip."
"Fine... Teach me how to climb trees."
"Sure."
"Huh?"
Chester had never said she had to do it entirely on her own. Asking for help or seeking to learn was also an excellent approach.
"...!!"
Yet, whatever misunderstanding she had been harboring, Monia looked utterly shell-shocked when Chester agreed to help so readily. Once again, her face contorted with a sense of betrayal. "Do you have any idea how hard I struggled all by myself?!"
"Who told you to do it alone?"
"You told me to figure it out!"
Chester corrected her. "I said 'figure it out.'"
"Grrr...!!"
The honey was merely a tool to spark Monia's desire to learn. He intended to use it to motivate her to acquire a wider variety of skills and master them quickly.
"Alright, tree climbing, was it? I'll demonstrate first, so watch closely."
"Hmph! Fine, let's see you try!"
Huffing, Monia crossed her arms, her face still twisted in a pout.