PM to join [Guest ST][Leila] The Leaves Conferred

[Philomena]

Summer 14, 513 AV
Leila's Shop, Zeltiva
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Maggie Killory loved her work, unquestionably. It was valuable, fascinating, and she learned a great deal from her patients. When this was combined with her personal attachment to the issues she dealt with, her daily oblations to Rak'keli were overwhelmingly sincere: as hopeless as most of her cases in the asylum were, the doctor was truly grateful that they were, after all, hers to comfort and relieve.

And yet…

She was getting past the age for this. In a simple medical practice, perhaps, she mused, she would not feel like this, perhaps she could go on until the day she finally faded away. Work with the mad was different beast. It drained one. As much a pariah as her predilections made her, she did have her few friends in the general medical community. When Mistress Clara, after an evening of music, quietly asked Maggie's commiseration over a difficult case she had not been able to save, Maggie understood. She knew that feeling of hopelessness. But with Clara, there was someone to struggle with, and some close to her work - for if a patentors treatment failed, they went to Dira, and every healer knew that this was saed, but natural, that Dira was not cruel, simply working on a different logic. There was a closure there.

With a madman, it was different. If one's treatment was not working, the madmen seldom died - perhaps on the street, where they could not be kept from harming themselves, they would. But not here, not where the staff could care so meticulously care for each part of them - except the mind, where the sickness lie. And then, even if the flesh-sick of the mind was cured - rare enough - she was convinced, it was the heart sick that gave them true suffering. And hearts were cured by time, and hope, and love. She was a doctor with far too many patients. She had little enough of any of the three. So, when the treatment failed, the doctor mourned, came back the next day, failed again as painfully as the first time, over and over, for in madness, there was nog God to resolve the sickness. Madness had no resolution, just a point in which the raw materials to tell the story disappear.

So, despite the coming heat of summer - and she did, truly, hate the heat - the chance of a day out was an unimaginable blessing. This day was an unexpected one. The summer had brought a new herbalist to the city, one who sold materials as well as services. The trustees of the asylum had agreed, with the exceptional constraints of the asylum's budget, that it was best that they see if there was an opportunity to save any money working with the new woman. Aside from this, quietly and to herself, Maggie hoped that perhaps this new herbalist might be more interested in the well-being of the patients of the asylum - the madmen were widely viewed as worse than criminals - criminals, after all, at least usually had some reasonable justification for their crimes, as faulty as it might be. Madmen were 'monsters.' By and large, she'd given up fighting that battle, but she continued to hope she could find colleagues to work with who might be able to offer a more compassionate copractice to her patients.

"Leila's Soothing Salves." She couldn't say much for the name. IT sounded a bit like a snake oil salesman, but if it were, she felt sure the woman would have been mentioned as such to her by someone, by this point. And as little as she knew the herbalist's work, she felt fairly sure she could spot a charlatan, if that's what this woman turned out to be. The shop was pretty enough. She wished she'd been free to come to the potluck she'd heard so much about - she hadn't felt fully fed since… probably Kenabelle Wright Day. Maybe her husband would split a Flower-fish this year on Tribute Day. He had grown more distant these last few years - her own fault, she knew, for she was so tired these days when she arrived home.

She opened the door, then, and stopped inside, with the mild discomfort of one entering on a new place.

[Leila]

Leila had a potted bilberry plant sitting on her counter, with her journal open to a blank page. Her plant was short, maybe only a foot and a half tall, and only had a few small, blue fruits on it. It had a small cluster of woody stems jutting out of the soil, maintaining their close proximity upwards, adorned with few small green leaves. Leila had her charcoal out, trying to come up with a good way to start her sketch. She placed her charcoal low on the page, holding it at an angle, with a sharper point downward, just like Nost taught her. She started with a simple upward line, curving to the left slightly. Her hand wavered as she drew the line, then made one parallel to it. She did this process several times until she had all of the woody stems roughly drawn. She then started on the offshooting branches. Smaller lines, bending up and away from the main branches. She was drawing these lines when her door opened up, and a customer stepped inside. Leila looked up and smiled, setting down her charcoal, "Hello there! Welcome to my store, I'm Leila, how may I help you today?"

[Philomena]

Maggie realized she probably looked strange. This was a common occurence for her. One spent so long in an environs where everything looked strange, one forgot, almost, the social niceties. When she went, on rare occaisions, to social functions at the Hill, as a representative for the foundation, she would spend a few days with her sister, simply to remember how to be normal. So, now, entering, she realized how peculiar it was to go marketing in the summer, with her severe white linens, cut close and unflattering, because spare fabric was a danger with a madman, and with, now she thought of it, no basket on her arm. She hadn't thought to bring one, being as she just planned to discuss business, but now realized it would lubricate the situation considerably.

She cleared her throat, and smiled, a bit ruefully, speaking in a clear, crisp accent of the upperclass.

"Ms... Hughes, I believe? Or one of her assistants? I'm Madame Killory, I work ..." she hesitated a moment. Petch it. Best get it out of the way, "I work, I am the healer at the Asylum. I came to see how the shop is faring, see if perhaps there was any mutual benefir to be gained by an interrelationship of our interests, you know. Have you worked with the ... with non physical ailments, before?"

[Leila]

Leila smiled broadened at the woman, curious as to how she wasn't sweltering in her odd choice of attire. But not her place to judge, especially for a potential customer. "I am Miss Hughes, and I've only worked with extremely mild cases of non-physical ailments, mild cases of depression and sleep disorders mostly, though nothing near the magnitude of what you must work with." This woman was from the Asylum? Leila wondered if they had a supplier for their medicines. This could be a huge business opportunity! "Well we've only just opened, but business has been steady, and increasing. Word traveled fast, especially after Ms. Satterthwite showed up. I like to think I'm good at what I do, and the customers seem to be happy. Would you like anything to drink? An herbal tea perhaps, while we discuss exactly what it is you had in mind for our business relationship?" Leila had a pot in her hearth in her cottage that she made a bit earlier. She'd made it earlier, a blend made from local tea leaves from the nearby mountains, a bit of wild rose petal, with rose hips, and just a hint of mint.