---

"Welcome back. Everything go okay out there?" Loz asked as Myen began crossing the stream again.

"Yeah, no problem." He said as he reached the shore and stepped on a dirt imp, scraping his foot over it, creating a brown smear across a flat rock on the shore.

"Sounded like you're not used to dumping behind a tree to me." Donnelson said. Everyone chuckled except Loz and Valk, who was still trying to give Loz a mean look even though his back was turned.

"Hey, I have to finish talking to Topaz real quick, then ill join you guys in your poker game there." Myen said.

"You're going to have to go find some acorns. We use them to gamble, and these are ours." Loz replied. He threw a few acorns into the pile between his friends before glancing at Harmon, who threw more acorns in.

Myen entered the hut Topaz was borrowing, but quickly exited again, kicking a dirt imp in to position before booting it into the stream. He re-entered the hut and leaned down next to Topaz. "Hey, remember when Taint was eating that one plant he found and he started talking gibberish for three hours and pissed off some Arms guys?" He asked.

"Scornio leaf. Those Arms guys that almost locked all of us up because Taint threw up on one of them?" She said.

"I don't remember that part."

"He threw up on them and they were going to arrest us if I didn't convince them not to. And then they tore up the plane looking for more scornio so Taint wouldn't eat it again."

"I don't remember that either."

"I think Taint slipped some of that stuff in your burgers. I know he tried doing it to me, but I caught him."

"Oh, well. Check this out." Myen said as he unloaded the contents of all six of his coat pockets onto a shoddily constructed table. What was spread out before them was about fifteen times as much of that plant as Taint had eaten.

"I'm not eating any." Topaz said.

"You don't have to, but our friends might." Myen followed.

"You found this outside, right? They probably know this stuff makes you throw up like crazy."

"Thats why im giving this to you."

Topaz's face lit up as she rolled out of the hammock, grabbed her footlocker and popped the latches. From it she pulled out a bottle of acetic acid from her photography kit , a bowl, and a fairly large bag of Taint's jerky. She threw the leaves into the bowl and began mashing them up and adding the acetic acid. She went back to her footlocker and pulled out a thick candle, and lit it to give heat to her little drug lab. Myen left Topaz to her work and scraped a few acorns off the ground, and joined Loz and friends in their poker game.

Twenty minutes later, Topaz had produced to the best of her abilities, a thick scornio extract from the plant bits and her photo developing chemicals. She dipped her pinky in the concoction and tasted it, almost immediately feeling a numbness flow through her mouth and towards her brainstem, but it stopped before reaching it. Taint woldn't shut up about what happens when it reaches your brainstem for a week after the arms party incident, so she was certain that she did something right. She was also surprised that just a tiny taste did that much, because Taint had been eating the leaves like potato chips before he started talking nonsense. After applying some of to the mix to the jerky and throwing it back in the bag, Topaz left the cabin and joined Myen, Loz, and the others at the campfire.

"Anyone want some jerky?" she asked as she sat down next to myen, opening the bag and setting it on the dirt next to the pot of acorns.

"Oh yes! JERKY!"

"Toss some of that here."

"allRIGHT!"

Everything was going smoothly until Valk spoke up. "Hand me some." he said. Loz leaned back, and threw him what was probably the largest peice in the bag. A gesture of friendship. Valk took the jerky and began to chew as Topaz and Myen gave each other a worried glance.

"You want any, Myen?" Horman asked, offering him a peice.

"Nah, I had a bunch of it in the hut earlier." He said, and tossed his last three acorns in the pot. He had started the night with about 40.

"Kind of spicy, what's in this?" Loz asked.

"Taint's got a recipie. He doesn't tell anyone what it is." Topaz answered.

"I'll have to declare the secret ours later." he said.

A few rounds of poker passed without mishap, and Myen had managed to return from 3 acorns to about 15 when it happend. Valk tried standing up, but just barely managed a hands-free squat before projectile vomiting about three feet. This was the first in a long series of chain reaction pukes, starting with the man with leaves in his hair, passing on to Donnelson, to Horman, to the man with a giant scraggly goatee and a bald head at the same time as the guy whose beard curled up to almost touch his nose, and then everyone but Loz who had eaten the jerky threw up at once. Myen grimaced. Valk threw up a second time. Topaz threw up. Finally, the moment Myen had been waiting for. Loz tipped backwards, rolled over on his side, and began to claw his way towards the stream. Before he could make it more than a foot and a half, he cut loose with a wide-spray stream of jerky chunks and other things that he had eaten that day, taking out a dirt imp in the tide of hurl.

"AHMEEMA MAURRR!" Valk yelled as he began to tip over, flailing his arms not in an attempt to keep his balance, but to keep from landing in his puke. He managed to fall back the opposite direction.

"BauuuuUUUUm! HAHHHEEEEEHHGH!" Donnelson yelled, before throwing up a little in his mouth and letting it roll down his beard. "Baaaaaaahhhh..." he said as puke and spit poured out of his mouth.

"FOOOH! YOYOYOMAAAAA!" Loz yelled, rolling over on his back and waving his arms infront of his face.

Myen got up and helped Topaz to her feet, who was still trying to regain her senses after taking place of the most screwed up vomit party in recorded kingdom history.

"Good job! I was just thinking you'd roll it up in sticks of gum."

"It's... uu-k-k-k!" Topaz said. She decided not to try opening her mouth again until they were long gone. Holding her stomach, Topaz waddled her way over to the hut, wrapped her curtain around herself and grabbed her footlocker by one handle and dragged it as she left. Myen hoisted Valk's jabbering, drug addled lump of temporary madness onto his shoulder and vacated the camp through the same small path that they had used to arrive, as Loz and his friends shireked completely made up languages into the night sky, with the occasional chunky gurgle.

---