Streaming

The next day was super busy. Planting resumed at full force, and when Vera saw how many pre-orders had already been placed, she sent the team straight to work. She decided to make more baked potatoes and pumpkins because everything would sell, and if she had extra, it would only bring in new clients. Everyone had a task now. Some villagers harvested, some washed vegetables, some sorted the best pieces for fresh sales, and others helped prepare the ones that would be cooked. The whole place moved like a proper settlement instead of a forgotten exile zone, and Vera liked seeing it. A few days ago, most of these people had been thirsty, hungry, scared, or half-lost in madness. Now they were working, arguing over baskets, laughing at the kids running between rows, and looking healthier every day.

The grain was dry by midmorning, and Vera decided it was time to actually figure out rice before she embarrassed herself in front of anyone. She had eaten rice before the apocalypse, plenty of times, but cooking it herself was a different thing entirely. She grabbed a handful, rubbed it between her fingers, and dropped it into a pot of water to wash. The water went cloudy white immediately. She dumped it, added more, swirled it around, dumped that too, and kept going until the water came out mostly clear. Three rounds. Maybe four. She lost count because the babies kept asking questions.

"Mommy, why is the water dirty," her daughter asked.

"It is starch, not dirt," Vera said, though she was also not entirely sure.

"What is starch," her first son asked.

"Something that washes off," Vera said, which was close enough.

She added double the water to the grain, covered the pot, set it over low heat from her son's fire, and left it alone. That part she remembered clearly. Rice needed to be ignored. The first time she lifted the lid too early out of habit and the steam rushed out and she had to resist the urge to stir it like porridge. She put the lid back and stepped away from the pot entirely so she would stop checking it.

The porridge was easier. More water, lower heat, longer time, and she stirred that one slowly while chunks of sweet pumpkin went soft and broke apart into the grain. The color turned gold. The smell was warm and thick and simple, the kind of smell that did something embarrassing to people who had been eating liquid food for too long. One of the villagers walked past, stopped completely, and just stood there with her eyes closed breathing it in until Vera told her to keep moving.

When the rice finally finished and Vera lifted the lid, it had puffed up clean and white, each grain separate, steam rising from the top in a slow curl. She scooped some into a bowl with a spoonful of the pumpkin porridge over it and ate standing up by the fire because she could not wait to sit down. The babies went quiet inside her for a few seconds, which only happened when something was genuinely good.

"Mommy," her second son said softly.

"I know," Vera said.

She ate two more bites, then made herself stop because she had a stream to do and she needed to save some for the camera. She set up the hologram outside, propped it at eye level, and went live with a pot still warm beside her and the porridge still on the fire.

"Hello everyone," she said, pushing a loose curl out of her face. "I am Vera. Some of you bought potatoes last week. Some of you know me from the trial. Today I am showing you rice."

The viewer count climbed before she finished the sentence.

[Is this the garbage sector woman] 

[She is doing a cooking stream??] 

[I still think about those potatoes every single day] 

[What is rice]

"It is a grain," Vera said, already ladling porridge into the bowl so the steam would be visible on camera. "You wash it first until the water runs clear, then cook it with double the water on low heat and you leave it alone. Do not lift the lid every five seconds. It is not going anywhere." She paused. "The porridge is the same grain with more water and longer heat. I put pumpkin in mine. You can put whatever you want. Salt helps."

She tilted the bowl toward the hologram. The porridge was thick and golden, soft pumpkin visible through the top, steam still rising.

[I can practically smell that through the screen] 

[This is making me emotional and I cannot explain why] 

[My grandmother described something like this. I thought she made it up] 

[Lady Vera the price. Please. Right now.]

"Prices," Vera said, because there was no point pretending that was not the real reason half of them were watching. "Potatoes stay at one thousand per bag. Pumpkins stay at fifteen hundred. Those two I am not touching." She held up the ladle. "Everything else works differently. The more you buy, the more you pay."

The comments stopped for two full seconds.

[Sorry] 

[She said MORE you buy MORE you pay] 

[That is the wrong direction] 

[I am so confused]

"One bag of rice, twenty thousand, base price," Vera continued, unbothered. "Two bags, add thirty percent. Three bags, fifty percent. Each one after that doubles. I know how resellers work. You will not clean out my stock and sell it back to people at ten times the price. Buy what your family needs. Leave the rest for someone else. This is not a warehouse and I am one pregnant woman, so do not push it."

She ate a spoonful of porridge directly on camera. Her eyes closed without permission because it was that good, warm and filling and sweet from the pumpkin, and the land's strange energy moved through it the way it moved through everything grown here.

The comments went completely unhinged.

[THE EYES] 

[She closed her eyes I cannot handle this] 

[I am going to cry over rice porridge] 

[Ma'am you are doing this on purpose]

"It is good," Vera said simply, setting the bowl down. "Real food is good. If your mental levels have been rough or someone in your house is struggling, try eating this for two weeks before you spend money on anything else. I am not a doctor. I am just someone who knows what happens to a body that has been living on liquid packs too long."

She looked straight into the hologram.

"Pre-orders through the shop link above. One bag per household on rice until I know how much stock we actually have. Caleb and Dan carry supply in Sector Three if you cannot wait. And if you are planning to buy twenty bags to resell, my pricing will eat your budget before you make a single coin back. Save yourself the trouble."

She ended the stream.

The shop account crashed in under four minutes. Anna shut it down, fixed the household limit, and reopened it. The queue kept climbing anyway. Kate read the numbers out loud and her voice kept going slightly too high every time she hit a new total. Vera sat outside finishing the porridge she had saved, listening to the numbers roll in, and felt something settle comfortably in her chest.

"We might not have enough stock," Anna said carefully.

Vera scraped the last bit from the bowl. "Then we plant more tomorrow."