Food or trouble

Artifact Intent

• Story role: Objective Shift. Food becomes the next directive, but the MC has to weigh tradeoffs because some of what is available is not safe to eat.
• Playable-lore position: clue -> investigation step. The second anomaly observation joins the first and starts forming a pattern in the MC's head, without the MC naming a cause.
• What this artifact must not claim: any cause for the wrongness; any named hostile entity; any divine framing; any narrator voice that explains what the wrong plants are.

Narrative Surface Notes

• Artifact shape: tense, practical entry; sentences are clipped and full of "if". The MC writes like a person who has gone out alone and is keeping count.
• Player-facing uncertainty: the MC does not know which plants are safe in this country. The MC reasons from analogue to Earth foraging and admits the analogy may not hold.
• Journal or objective linkage: resolves act0.survive.search-for-food on the linear path; flags the Lost Hours fork as available on the foreshadowing route.

Body Draft

Food or trouble.

I went up the slope because the slope had trees and the trees had things under them. The sun was past the worst of its height. I told myself I had until the light went sideways. After that I was going back to the shelter whether I had food or not.

What I know about plants I learned at home, in another country, on another continent that does not exist here. Some of what I know carries. Some does not. I tested everything with the back of the hand first, the inside of the wrist second, the lip third. I never put anything in my mouth on a guess.

The good things I think I found: a kind of low berry, small and tart, growing in a clump on the south side of a rock. Maybe four handfuls. Some mushrooms, ringed in a way I have seen at home, on the underside of a log — I took two and left the rest because I am not certain enough. Nettle. Lots of nettle. The kind I could boil if I had the pot and the water and the time, which I do not, but I cut some anyway because tomorrow is a thing.

The bad things were worse than I expected.

There is a patch of bramble on the east side of the slope where the leaves are the wrong colour. Not the wrong colour I saw by the stream. A different wrong colour. The fruit on those brambles was glossy in a way fruit is not glossy. I did not touch them. I did not get close. I do not have the words for what was wrong with them yet. I am writing it down anyway. Glossy. Slick. Like something had wiped them.

There is a tree I will not describe yet. The shape of the bark was wrong. I went around. Wide.

Two wrong things in one day in two different places is not a coincidence. I do not know what it is. I am keeping count.

I have enough to make tonight. Maybe enough for the morning. I am going back to the shelter while the light still holds. The pot is going to do work tonight if the fire takes.

Playable Consequences

• Immediate consequence: act0.survive.search-for-food resolves on the linear path with the foraged food in hand; on the foreshadowing route this entry also flags the Lost Hours fork.
• Follow-up clue, mission, site, or world-state change: 'forage area' registers as a passive entity; the wrongness-pattern observation count goes from one to two and seeds the MC's later language for it.
• Related branch or linear continuation: linear by default; this is the fork point to the Lost Hours arc; the foreshadowing-route branch is recorded against the next entry, act0-day1-condition-pre-blackout.

Review Notes

• Open questions: the second wrong-tree shape is deliberately undescribed; later entries may revisit it once the MC has language for it.
• Canon-delta follow-up: none.
• Audit carry-forward: the "two wrongnesses, no cause named" pattern should stay consistent across act0-day1-condition-pre-blackout and act0-day1-the-missing-hours.

Voice Readback

Food or trouble.

I went up the slope because the slope had trees and the trees had things under them. The sun was past the worst of its height. I told myself I had until the light went sideways. After that I was going back to the shelter whether I had food or not.

What I knew about plants I had learned at home, in another country, on another continent that does not exist here. Some of what I knew carried. Some did not. I tested everything with the back of the hand first, the inside of the wrist second, the lip third. I never put anything in my mouth on a guess.

The good things I thought I found were a kind of low berry, small and tart, growing in a clump on the south side of a rock. Maybe four handfuls. Some mushrooms, ringed in a way I had seen at home, on the underside of a log. I took two and left the rest because I was not certain enough. Nettle. Lots of nettle. The kind I could boil if I had the pot and the water and the time, which I did not, but I cut some anyway because tomorrow was a thing.

The bad things were worse than I had expected.

There was a patch of bramble on the east side of the slope where the leaves were the wrong colour. Not the wrong colour I had seen by the stream. A different wrong colour. The fruit on those brambles was glossy in a way fruit is not glossy. I did not touch them. I did not get close. I did not have the words for what was wrong with them yet. I was writing it down anyway. Glossy. Slick. Like something had wiped them.

There was a tree I would not describe yet. The shape of the bark was wrong. I went around. Wide.

Two wrong things in one day in two different places was not a coincidence. I did not know what it was. I was keeping count.

I had enough to make tonight. Maybe enough for the morning. I was going back to the shelter while the light still held. The pot was going to do work tonight if the fire took.