Welcome to Gaia! ::

River stopped one of the men who was walking past. "Excuse me, is it all right if we look around in here?" she asked him.

The man smiled at her. "Of course. But please stay away from the press. If any dust or dirt gets in there, we'll have to throw out the batch. That's close to three hundred golds' worth."

River blinked. "Wow. That's quite a bit."

The man chuckled at her. "It's our signature vintage. Our most sought-after, and thus the most valuable."

The man nodded at the large vat that the women were walking around in. "That's got to be kept especially clean," he warned them. "Aside from that, feel free to explore."

And then he was off again, back to work.

River followed after Miyuki, though she was curious to know just what those women were doing.

"I'm curious to know how this whole system works," she commented as they headed over to where people were sorting things into different baskets. "I hope the people over there can answer some questions while they work. Otherwise, we might have to ask someone to give us a tour."

They were going to be there for a while, after all, so why not?

"Sounds good," River grinned. "There's probably too much for us to understand now, anyways."

As they approached the area where the men were sorting things, River noticed that they had buckets of green and red grapes, separated. Three men were working with the green grapes, and three with the red; and all six men were so focused on their work that none of them paid any attention to the girls' presence.

"What are you doing?" River asked finally, after watching them for a moment without figuring out what they were doing exactly.

Several of the men glanced up at the girls, and one of them answered, "Sorting the good from the bad. Getting rid of the stems, seeds ... everything that we don't want in the wine. It'll all go through filters eventually, but the less junk that goes in there, the longer the filters can go without getting clogged up."

The man held up two red grapes. "Look closely," he instructed the girls. "See how this one is nice and round, smooth, evenly coloured? If you squeeze it ever so gently, you could feel that it's quite firm. That's going to be a good grape. Good size, too. But this other one ..."

He held up the other one for them to look at. "It's got a few spots on it. Dark spots are bruises, where they've been crushed or are overripe; light spots are rot. Sometimes they look fine, but they're soft. Those ones can't be used. You have to be very careful, even just a very few of them can spoil an entire lot."

There were other indications that a grape might not be good to use, but those were the most obvious. He tossed the bad one into one bucket, and pulled the stem and seed out of the good one before putting it gently into another bucket.

There were ten barns in total, all in a row, and in each barn there were dozens of people working hard on a different type of wine. As Miyuki had guessed, there were not only grape wines: there were also strawberry, blackberry, gooseberry, and raspberry wine. Another five large storage barns were filled with barrels and barrels of wine. In addition to that, there were barns for tools, workshops for building things, storage for food ...

All in all, by the time they even made it to the vineyard itself, River was convinced that the place was indeed a city of its own.

"At least we finally found the river," she laughed as they crossed a small bridge that spanned the river. The river divided the plantation in half: one half, the half they'd explored, was where most of the work was done; the other half seemed to be nothing but rows and rows of vines.

"I'd love a swim about now," she sighed, looking down at the clear water. "But the river's not big enough. It's more like a stream."

River put one hand on her friend's shoulder comfortingly. "There's not enough water here anyways," she smiled. "Perhaps when we get back to the Borderlands, I can teach you, if you'd like."

She herself swam as well as Leyenda - though without the benefit of being able to breathe underwater.

River looked around. "I hadn't even thought of that," she laughed. "Maybe if we listen we can hear them. Ivy seems to be like Amalirahc, loud and energetic."

She tilted her head one way and then the other, listening carefully. But she couldn't hear anything.

"Maybe they're back at the house," she suggested finally. "It's been several hours. It's probably supper time."

She was feeling hungry, and the sun was beginning to get lower in the sky.