Title: Taste of Makna
Fandom: Xenoblade Chronicles
Characters: Melia, Riki
Rating: G
Length: ~200 words
Content notes: N/A
Summary: Pre-game, so no spoilers. Melia remembers the ceremony in Makna Forest when High Entia and Nopon began to trade.

The Nopon city, woven within and around a tree that seemed large enough to house a small nation, was strewn with lights and filled with new, delicious smells.

"This way, Princess Melia. Trade make Nopon Merchants happy! Heropon Riki show you to festival after the ceremony!" Her guide was a Nopon, a diminutive fluffball with prehensile wings that waved this way and that as he pointed out one sight after another - festival pollen-lamps glowing from a far branch, a gaggle of Nopon children (littlepon, he called them) staring from a high balcony in a pile of multicolored fuzz, the sweet smell of a fermenting drink as a seller handed out cupfuls, and finally the central dais, incongruously huge against the bright detail of the rest of the city. Walking a correct and dignified distance behind her excitable escort, Melia gazed about in wonder. The High Entia had little enough reason to visit their forest-dwelling neighbors, but that would obviously have to change.

Melia would remember the moment for ages, the distinctive tang of Nopon plantain barbeque on the air, the dancing fey lights, and the richly sweet bite of fruit she shared with the Seer, stickier than the humid air of the forest.

-

Plantain barbeque is a real thing! I decided the Nopon would likely have something similar.