A few days after crashing, Dr Meredith had finished clearing the medical bay of everything that would spoil or cause problems if left unchecked. Much of the medicine was left and all the bandages, but all her bacteria samples were lost, which meant a few months of work lost, but she still had her notes. She walked along the beach, taking in the air, which didn't have the salt quality she had come to expect from beaches. She had noted that the crew seemed in good spirits despite having the highly ration the available food. She had taken to carrying her notebooks with her, just in case.
"Well, it looks kinda similar," she ran her fingers along some tall grass, it was green but had a sort of chameleon effect on the edges, which pulsed ever so slightly if you took the tie to stop and watch it. "I wonder if anyone else has taken the time to notice this. I doubt it." she mumbled to herself as she sketched some plants, then a small bird she saw pecking the beach sand. It had a long beak, using it for pulling small shellfish from the sand and broke them open with it's claws. A yellow crest adorned it head, red and blue feathers patterned it's wings and torso. "Such beauty." Meredith had always loved nature.
The bird suddenly shot into the air and started flying inland, Meredith in her state of wonder eagerly followed it, the temperate and tropical trees quickly overtook her view of the sky, but the bird was staying low to the ground, a grassy trail leading them deeper into the woods. Multi colored flowers and the chameleon grass framed her path as she followed the bird, which came to perch on a branch, it rested a moment as Meredith caught up, notebook still in hand. "Why you fly so far inland?" she pondered to herself as the bird pruned itself a bit, then hopped over to a hole in the tree, where three smaller versions of the bird stuck their heads out. "Ah! Getting food for your little babies." Meredith chuckled to herself as she quickly sketched the smaller birds, their feathers were a distinct moss green, the same color as the leaves and bark of their home tree. It had been a long time since she had seen real birds, even longer since seeing them in their natural habitat. She finished her sketch as mama bird darted straight into the sky to fly off. "Such strange flight patterns" she thought aloud as she started walking back, taking in the flora much more this time.
"So much ... fruit?" Meredith thought as she picked something that looked like an orange. The branches of the tree were bending under the weight of all the fruit on it. She brought it up to her nose to smell, but stopped herself short. "What am I doing? I need to scan it first." she procured a sampling device from her bag, a gift from when she got her PhD, this would be her first time using it. Using on of the tools on it she took a sample of the fruit and after a few moment of scanning, the result came back that it was safe for human consumption. Meredith smiled as she brought it up to her nose to smell, which caught her off guard because it smelt like an apple. "Alright, looks like an orange, smells like an apple, taste like a..." she took a bite and savored it's strong sweet taste, " ... banana? Well then." she snacked on the fruit, finishing it before taking sketches of the tree. "I've had this sketch book ten years and this is the second time I've used it. So glad I kept it." she thought, picking some more fruit to eat, she found them to not be very filling. If she had looked further at the scan, she would've seen that it contained 100 calories in the 1 gram sample. Meredith grabbed another and started eating her third fist sized fruit.
As she kept walking she also found several types of what we would call peppers, melons, gourds, squash,and a menagerie of other plants, all safe for human consumption. Meredith found all of these to be extremely tasty, and not filling, it took her whole day of exploring and cataloging, filling several pages of her sketchbook with detailed drawings of the plants. Again and again throughout the day, the samples kept coming with very high calorie to weight ratio, most of them containing at least 2000 calories per fruit/vegetable. When Meredith gets back to the ship, she:
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