lump-nut
Lump-nuts are the seeds of a tree that grows in the forests around women's villages. Although a common and highly nutritious legume, its consumption is limited because of a combination of circumstances leading to the mistaken belief that a woman must eat lump-nuts in order to become pregnant, a condition they call full-belly:
- Men do not reside permanently in any villages, but migrate in groups between them, staying anywhere from a few days to several months. It is not uncommon for a woman to learn she is pregnant long after the man responsible has moved on.
- Lump-nuts have good health benefits for expectant mothers, and tend to be craved early in the pregnancy, just around the time the more obvious signs appear.
- Their mythology holds that at the beginning of the world the first trees were also the first people, so it is natural to accept that human babies can come from trees.
Significance
Women hold several superstitions about lump-nuts. They believe that unlike other foods, lump-nuts remain in the body, and each pregnancy converts one lump-nut into a baby (two, in the case of fraternal twins). The more lump-nuts a woman has eaten, the more likely she is to attract the full-belly condition; however, eating more than one lump-nut in a single day will cause them to stick together and result in a deformed baby.
Because only women who have given birth to girls are recognized as adults, eating a lump-nut is seen as a girl's first step toward growing up. Most stop eating them upon reaching womanhood, but those with a fondness for babies and children may continue to eat lump-nuts their entire lives.
Lump-nut pods and meat by The Big G
View from the future
Lump-nut trees were never cultivated outside of their natural habitat. For that reason, the superstition surrounding them did not survive the migration to the coast. They are unheard of in the modern Cluster Islands, and known to the coast-dwelling Valdians only through legends.Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
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