The Starfield Farming Sovereign (Elizabeth Schofield) novel Chapter 345

Chapter 345 Two Grapes

Pityshard

They were just about ready to give up and leave when Orla’s head snapped up, something shifting in her expression. She stopped trying to get anywhere with Desmond and reached out to catch Fiona by the arm as she passed.

“Hi, sorry, excuse me.” Her voice was unsteady. “I just have one question. The produce here, the fruit and vegetables, does it actually… does it really lower mental power damage levels? Even a little?”

It came out more desperate than she’d intended. Fiona paused, working out how to answer.

She didn’t get the chance. A handful of customers who’d been standing nearby heard the question and couldn’t help themselves.

They’d been coming to the farm almost daily since it opened, and they had opinions.

A sharp-looking woman in her 50s, the kind who ran meetings and knew her importance, spoke first. “First time here? I’ll tell you, it works. My husband had chronic headaches for years, his mental power assessments were all over the place. He ate the strawberries and cucumbers, went back for a follow-up the next day, and his damage index had dropped half a point. His doctor didn’t know what to make of it.”

An older man with white hair and bright eyes nodded along. “I’ve had residual damage from an old injury for decades. Always this low-level irritation in my mental field, never quite went away. My grandson brought me some tomatoes from here a few weeks ago and I tell you, it settled right down. I’ve been sleeping better than I have in years.”

“It’s not just the damage levels,” a heavyset woman in good jewelry added, hefting a bag of grapes she’d just bought. “I feel sharper. Like someone cleaned a lens I didn’t know was dirty.”

The sharp woman in her 50s seemed to notice the look on Orla’s face, the wanting and the not-quite- believing, and without making a big deal out of it, she carefully pulled two grapes from the small bunch she’d just purchased and held them out. “Try one. The grapes are even better than the strawberries, in my opinion. They’re limited stock, hard to get, but you should at least know what you’re dealing with.”

Orla stared at them. Two small purple grapes, almost translucent, catching the light in a way that seemed like more than just good growing conditions. Her throat felt dry.

She took them with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.

With everyone watching in that quietly encouraging way strangers sometimes manage, she put one in her mouth.

The skin gave way and the flavor hit all at once, a burst of clean, bright sweetness that flooded her mouth before she’d even finished chewing.

She’d eaten expensive fruit before, gene-optimized varieties that cost more per gram than most people’s weekly groceries, and none of it had come close to this. This was something in a completely different category.

Alive in a way she didn’t have words for, layered and fresh and almost embarrassingly good. The best grape

she’d ever eaten. The best anything she’d ever eaten.

8:52 am P p p p

Chapter 345 Two Grapes

Then the other thing happened, and that was what convinced her.

真听

Finished

It was faint, almost too faint to name. A coolness, gentle and brief, like a single breath of air through a room that had been closed too long. It moved through the part of her mind that had been quietly aching for months, the mental core that years of high-pressure work and constant transit had worn down to something raw and tight and perpetually braced.

It didn’t fix anything. It was barely even a gesture. But it was real. She felt it, and it was real.

Like parched, cracked earth receiving a single drop of water. Not enough, nowhere near enough, but the relief of that one drop, the sensation of something long-desperate finally being met, even just for a second, was intense enough to make her throat close.

It worked. It actually worked. This wasn’t wishful thinking or the power of suggestion.

The grape, or rather everything this farm grew, had a real, tangible effect on mental power. She’d felt it herself.

Her father’s face surfaced in her mind before she could stop it.

He was a veteran shipping man. Had been his whole life, until a severe accident years ago left his mental power with damage so extensive it never fully stabilized.

He’d been managing it since, or trying to. The pain came in waves, the collapses in between, and the medical options had long since plateaued at maintenance rather than improvement.

His damage index was creeping toward the critical threshold. If it hit that point without intervention, the outcome wasn’t treatment. It was exile.

And now hope was right in front of her. That brief, fleeting relief from two small grapes had done more than every expensive treatment and specialist remedy she’d chased down over the years.

The elation lasted about four seconds before the reality of her situation reassembled itself in her chest like a fist closing.

She was on the blacklist. Her father was her immediate family. Under the terms Elizabeth had stated publicly, without softening, not 20 minutes ago, neither of them would ever set foot on this property again.

“Is there really no way to appeal the blacklist?” she said, not quite to anyone. Her voice had gone flat. The second grape was still in her palm, and her hand was shaking. “No exceptions at all?”

The young man behind her, the most enthusiastic one during the sharing session, caught her expression and offered what he clearly thought was a helpful observation. “Hey, don’t stress about it. The farm blacklisted NovaSea Transport, the company. Not you personally. You quit, you’re not their employee anymore. Problem solved, right?”

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