~ Based on the prompt 'Strawberries' sent by DaynaGriffin on Tumblr ~
It was a sweltering summer day in Nice, the most recent city the caravan had decided to visit. While the booths and stages of the carnival were being prepared, Erika sought relief from the beating sunlight beneath a tree on the edge of the clearing. Breathing beneath the heavy gauze around her head was always difficult, but even more so on days like this – when the air was thick with humidity.
In the underbrush just beyond the tree line, she spied the most peculiar little plants. Tiny bushes with bright red fruits that vibrantly contrasted with the green of the forest. Curious, she crawled closer and brushed aside the foliage for a better look. The little fruits were like nothing she'd ever seen before. They were shaped like plump hearts with tiny white specks covering them…making them look almost distorted and lumpy. Despite their odd appearance, they were strangely pleasant to look at.
The faintest scent of something sweet tickled Erika's senses. Were these little fruits edible? Surely something that smelled so wonderful couldn't be poisonous? Right?
Plucking the plumpest fruit she could see, Erika glanced behind her to check for any prying eyes. With no one looking, she unwrapped the gauze from her face and bit into the succulent fruit.
As the afternoon began to cool into a blue twilight, Erika found she hadn't been poisoned and that she truly enjoyed the taste of these little fruits. They had a very potent flavor, and that's mostly why she enjoyed them. With her sense of taste and smell weaker than most, she particularly enjoyed potent flavors.
She had gathered a great many of these fruits and had been carrying them back to the caravan in the skirt of her dress. It wouldn't be long until her curfew arrived, and the Carnival Master was adamant about her getting enough rest the night before a show. She was hurrying back across the clearing, when she stumbled and rolled her ankle in a divot. She folded in on herself, thrown forward from her momentum, splattering the bright red fruits all over the front of her dress.
She received quite a scolding when she returned to the caravan. She had completely ruined the dress, which was one-third of the outfits she owned. She wasn't permitted to wander very far from the caravan after that.