The Poisonous Tea
T@Ö#Ä3 is known for growing more toxic plants and weeds than actual nutritious crops. And as such, they are known for many strange or even toxic foods or drinks. One of these is poisonous tea, drink at the Black Sun Festival that bat people celebrate.
What is it made of?
The poisonous tea is made of primarily black flowers, with added fruity juice. The dead flowers are boiled in hot water, to make sort of a tea. This tea alone tastes terrible, which is why fruit juice is added. This is usually strawberry juice, but just about any sweet juice can be used - as long as it’s red of course. To bat people, this is of utmost importance. They have to appear as if they’re drinking blood, even if they all know it’s fake. But more on this another time. Sugar can be added to it as well to make it sweeter. People usually drink it warm, but as their celebrations go on all night, it cools off anyway, and that's fine too.
Now of course, the dead flowers are toxic, and they release their poison into the tea when boiled. Its effect on people is similar to those that alcohol you might be more familiar with in your world has on people, but things can go downhill really fast if one drinks too much of poisonous tea. People absolutely have died before because of this, since the death obsessed bats like to push their luck like this. This is fine for adults, but is absolutely not ok for teens and children - poisonous teas is strictly forbidden to them.
When can you drink it?
Young moles can only drink it when they reach the end of their first decade. And since the poisonous tea is only made and drunk for Black Sun Festival, the festival, reaching the second decade and the first time drinking of the poisonous tea are all combined into one event.
The second decade and high school graduation are both celebrated at the end of the year, same as the Black Sun Festival. And so, young bats celebrate all of these events with their families, where they have a special extra tradition - drinking of the poisonous tea. Now, they are finally old enough to drink it and this has to be remembered as a very special occasion - only when one drinks this poisonous tea they are really grown up and ready to start their next decade.
There are no special rules to this tradition though. Young moles who reach the appropriate age will have their first taste of the poisonous tea during the course of the Black Sun Festival, but everyone can choose for themselves how they will go about it. Usually, all of their close friends and family that celebrate with them will gather around and watch the young bat drink their first poisonous tea, and their first reaction is something that will likely get talked about for years. All of the older bats will also probably take this opportunity to reminisce about their first poisonous tea, until they move on to the other topics and continue the celebration. For the young first time drinker the amount of poisonous tea they can drink that night is very strictly limited - we wouldn’t want any unfortunate accidents at a festive time like this - but in years to come they will drink more and more each time until they experience their first death by poisonous tea- but more on that in another aricle.
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