Meat herts

Give your heart to your lover, that they may feast and be merry with your company. Give your hert to your lover, and let them taste your love.

The meat hert is a construction of a isosoles triangle pyramid, with several jutting cords, carved from the meat of the Eldritch melon, dunked in honey, and then held over a fire bloom, until the honey has slightly crystalised and the melon beneath barely cooked. Overcooking will cause the melon to loose structure and the water content inside to evaporate as structure is lost and only a brittle candy hard is left. Undercooking will leave a lovely leaky melon, but will also cause the honey to just drip off in a honey-sticky mess (a perfect metaphor for early love). While other melons can be used, the purple melon is not just prized for the colour of hert it can produce but also the fact that it grows more fibrous the older it gets, the perfect metaphor for how maturity in love produces a hardier love.

The average melon can take three herts and the remainder is crushed into a gourd and spiced for a juice. Herts are generally given as gifts for promise ceremonies - most often in the summer days and often when a solo or couple turns into a triad.

The sticky gift of the hert is older than even the ties to the old ways, reminding folk of giving themselves completely, body and soul.

Although a year wide thing, in the reclusive and hidden ceremonies and festivals to Aranthme (goddess of lust and poetry) they also use meat herts, although for Aranthme worship they generally dust the hearts in a black sweet flavoring, with tart edges and a more decadent mouthfeel. The spider wraps her showings of devotion as an open and loud public thing, displays of public devotion and commitment between individuals in the here and now. That these things are transient to the spider are immaterial, it is the giving of oneself to the desires within that make the spider proud. If this can be joined with an act of creativity, much the better.
Melon traders regularly pop up to take advantage on the spontaneousness of true displays of love, and the community while finding this exploitative and underhanded, cannot deny how convenient such things are.

Significance

A sign of love and commitment in the summer months.

Eldritch Melon

The Eldritch melon is a red skinned, purple fleshed melon with a yellow rind found in many regions of western Solaris, north of Brambleberry, and over the forests of the Forbidden Forest leading to the mangroves. They are long and oblong shaped and they grow on very aggressively propagating vines.

Said melon vines enjoy any kinds of soils, although they drink deep and require heavy water, mostly growing around rivers and waterfalls.

Item type

Consumable, Food / Drink

Weight

3kg

Base Price

40 minutes of gardening.

Tools

Can also be covered in crystalised toffee, or layered in frosted sakura petals. Several alternative folk from around Levis also use Acretia petals to cover the hert.