Closed [Job thread] One For the Heart

[Haena]

9th Fall, 516
Morning
The River Flower

"-I can help you with?"
"Pass that..-"
"..-alright, my darling?"
"..-she needs help right now!"
"..-can't believe..-"

The River Flower was often a busy environment. The Opal Clan were a group of Drykas who had the powers of healing running through their veins. Haena was one of them, standing awkwardly still in the hustle and bustle of the tent, in a place where activity was the norm. She had a heavy yvas bag held close in her hand, and she was searching around the tent for a place to set herself down. Today she was doing work for the River Flower, and practising her medicine in a place where she wished she weren't.

You might ask why she was there then, if she didn't like it so much. It was a question she had already asked herself, as she had woken that morning. Why go into an activity that I know I won't enjoy? The answer, as always, had come when her two children had come asking her if they had anything to eat for breakfast. When she had gone to bring them something to eat, she had returned with meagre scratchings, leftovers and a waterskin of water each. Children being children, there were mumblings, but they both knew the reason. Not enough money.

It was because of this that Haena now gathered up all her own equipment, her alembic and her mortar and pestle, and was instating herself in the River Flower. She had approached a senior doctor at the tent hospital, offered her skills, and had been given a space to work and soon enough a request had come her way. The healer, a willowy woman with long black hair, had approached Haena rushed off her feet. She remembered her request, the specifics she had wanted. Medicine for a faltering heart, but in liquid form. For a weak child whose mother wished to give the medicine more easily. The doctor was less confident with making tinctures, and instead preferred to make tablets. So, Haena had obliged, nodded, and agreed to see what she could come up with.

The trouble was, she only had today to get everything prepared. Haena grimaced as she packed her equipment up loosely and stretched the spine of Harriet's notebook to let the leaves of the pages open and show Haena what was written inside. She knew, roughly, what she needed to get. There was a hardy shrub called the hawthorn that her mother had used in the past. Her scribbled notes on it, that it was a vibrant red berry 'particularly efficient for the heart' were all the woman needed to see. She packed her equipment up safely, and walked out into the sunshine to prepare Alta' for a ride.

Her strider whinnied softly as Haena prepared the yvas bag, painstakingly securing it to the yvas as she limbered up to mount her horse. She still hadn't gotten used to mounting and dismounting, and she jumped up awkwardly to place her arms over the top of her horse, before pulling herself up until she managed to get one leg over. "Sorry Alta're." She gently stroked the mare's ears, and they set off at a steady trot until they reached the edge of Endrykas.

Word Count :

Post count:	540
Total:	540

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[Haena]

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With her knees gently pressing against Alta' to encourage her to go a little faster, the clear open space of the wild grasslands folded out in front of her. Brisk wind rushed past her face as Haena urged Alta' to go as fast as they were both comfortable with- not very fast, as it turned out, but the pleasant beat of her strider's hooves on the earth and the gentle stroke of the wind through her hair made the herbalist smile. Truthfully, they didn't need to venture far from Endrykas either, which was good, as going any further would mean danger.

A few days ago the city had drifted onwards, as was it's custom, but they had been nearby to a noted hawthorn bush that lay stunted and flattened on the element-scoured surface of Semele's body. Haena had no need to visit it previously, but Harriet's notes had been clear. Besides, hawthorn was well-known to be stimulating to the heart and invigorating. She thought it was something to do with their vibrant, crimson colouring, but whatever the reason, she needed to collect a decent amount of it's fruit.

The ride lasted approximately ten chimes, and already Haena could feel a stirring of anxiety to be out by herself in the haunting wilderness. Yet, even with the ever-present worry of predators and glassbeaks, she couldn't help but feel a strange sense of belonging, too. Her hand traced up and down her windmarks and her goddess-given mark, emblazoned proudly on her golden skin. Caiyha trusted her, and she trusted Caiyha in return, more than her life. So she breathed in a deep sighing breath, and gently leaned back to signal to Alta' that they were reaching their destination.

She slid off her mare's back and landed with a heavy thud and an oof, before unlacing her yvas bag to retrieve the dagger that lay there. Then she turned around to gaze at the tree. It was majestic, really. It's branches were low and stunted, but even so their fluttering leaves gently caressed the horizon. Deep in it's thorny heart lay the berries that nature's foragers had been unable to retrieve so far. Haena wasn't quite pleased to have to dive into the tree's thorny grasp, but the outer branches were picked clean. The bright lure of the berries lay within, and so she pulled up her courage and pushed aside the branches at the front, taking care not to break anything.

When she re-emerged, her arms were covered with light scratches, and her face had even managed to pick up a few scuffs. But she had been successful- her cloak had collected quite a large amount of berries that she had ended up pulling off with her fingers. With a whispered prayer of thanks to the goddess, Haena left a small handful on the ground beside the tree for the hungry birds, and tipped the rest into a small bundle inside her cloak, which she clumsily tied at the top to create a kind of container to protect the berries.

Word Count :

Post Count:	508
Total:	1048

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[Haena]

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Others

Haena acknowledged a patch of scuffed earth that she had passed on the way, marked by the droppings of some animal, and knew that Endrykas would be somewhere over the slight rise in the steppe. It wasn't long at all until, after a gentle run down the sloping hill, a much-contented Haena arrived back at the River Flower. If there was one thing she really appreciated about her craft of herbalism and philtering it was that she often had to source the raw materials herself, which meant frequent trips into the wilds surrounding Endrykas. Although she had lived here all her life, she would never tire of the beauty of the wide open spaces that she called home. Memories of visiting Riverfall on trade with her father in her youth always made her feel slightly uncomfortable. Cities were unnatural places, where she felt ill at ease.

She unfastened the yvas bag and carefully lifted out the bundle of hawthorn berries as she began the mental work of preparation. Her honeyed hair flashed gold in the sunlight as she flipped her braid over her shoulder and entered the gleaming, cloud-white tent of healers and doctors. Inside, the atmosphere was once again that of busyness, but Haena was focussed now and so didn't pay it much attention. She walked over to where she had left her equipment, and began preparing what she would need.

The first and most obvious was that she needed to get a fire going. So she gravitated towards the centre of the room, so that the smoke of the fire could escape easily. Hauling her alembic into her yvas bag, because it wasn't exactly light, as well as all the other bits and pieces she needed, the woman wandered into the heart of the tent and headed for the currently empty firepit in the middle. Once she arrived, the heavy yvas bag was placed on the ground as the woman sat beside it and began unpacking, laying everything she needed in a fan pattern around her.

With a sprightly jump up, Haena grabbed her waterskin and began washing the berries before leaving the cleaned ones on top of her cloak to dry and so she could access them easily for the next part. She had washed almost all of them once she'd run out of water, so she gathered a small handful of berries and tipped them into the small clay mortar.

The process of grinding and crushing was easy but not exactly quick. The herbalist spent what felt like a long while crushing the red berries into mush and transferring them to the alembic, skins and all. The alembic lay off from the fire for the moment, as she was still preparing the berries, but once she'd finished she would transfer the whole lot to the fire.

Throughout, Haena tended to the fire to make sure it didn't go out. Gentle additions of fuel as the flames flickered lower kept the fire going, and although time to time her attention got pulled away so that the fire was almost out, she just about managed to save it each time. Once she had finished crushing the berries, she stood with creaking bones to fetch some more water in the waterskin. Haena flipped open her mother's notebook before though, and reminded herself how much she'd need.

Word Count :

Post Count:	557
Total:	1605

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