Plated Earth Food Fables are original short historical fiction stories about produce and its ability to connect people, culture, and history. This Food Fable is a retelling of a tragic love story about two young Babylonian lovers who are forbidden to marry, so they arrange to meet below a mulberry tree, and their tale tells tells how the mulberry fruit came to be red-purple in color. The original story was related by Roman poet, Ovid, in his work, Metamorphoses, and was famously parodied in an act of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.