Arthur quickly brought out an empty pouch and filled it with six copper coins in anticipation for Gaelin’s arrival. He cursed himself for not thinking of something he did practically everyday at this point in his life, but most importantly he felt terrible for just leaving Gaelin without an explanation. ‘If he decides to deliver more plants he finds today I’ll give him something as an apology.’
Arthur began rooting through his dimensional bag that was getting quite close to full with all the potions and miscellaneous weapons he kept for something that might make up for his mistake to his employee, eventually he found one of his earliest healing potions that he kept inside for safekeeping. Something like this would probably sell for around four or perhaps even five copper coins depending on who and when you sold it, Gaelin would likely appreciate it.
Arthur prepared another empty box by the door for when Gaelin arrives so he could just exchange his box quickly to avoid waiting on Arthur to sort through and organize everything before handing the box back. By the time he had everything done for Gaelin’s arrival it was only 7:40, Arthur still had another twenty minutes at the minimum before he would arrive and even then he likely wouldn’t show until around 8:20 when Arthur normally finished eating and dressing himself.
With nothing to do for the time being Arthur took a seat on one of his chairs at his table and just sat there thinking about everything going on in his life. He was happy that he had friends and a steady supply of money, but he quickly realized he was missing something in his life, something that just about everyone had just to have fun doing.
“I need a hobby or something.” Arthur muttered to himself as he realized that he didn’t have one. But that then raised the question of what to have as a hobby, it would need to be something that didn’t require a lot of preparation and could be done quickly or for long periods of time. Thinking he might find some sort of inspiration Arthur began looking through his bag for anything and everything.
The first thing that came to mind was to do something with all the weapons he was keeping in there, but he quickly gave up on that as the only thing he could reasonably do is melt down the weapons for the metal or burn the ones made from wood. To actually do something with that metal would require learning how to blacksmith, and that wasn’t a hobby so much as a job that he does not have the time for.
Next up were the few talismans that he had both bought and taken from the gang leaders around a month ago when he killed them all. He couldn’t really do anything with them aside from sell them or study them, and at the moment he did not have either the knowledge or resources to learn how to do that. Perhaps when he becomes an Evoker in the guild.
The third thing he pulled out was all the papers and books he had collected, mostly covering magic with only a few exceptions such as the herbalism book that covered most plants in the region that were usable and how to properly collect them. There were also the notes he made on the pestilence in the underground cavern and the journal of Brexius Sanguine Bane that contained all the blueprints of the golems he was interested in.
Arthur’s train of thought lingered on these books and writings eventually falling directly on his notes regarding the pestilence. It was quite easy to write everything he found on his own on that paper in a neat format, it was something that he wouldn't mind doing more often if he had the chance to.
“Wait, that's it. I could write a book in my free time.” Arthur stood up from his chair as he realized he just found a hobby, but he quickly calmed down as he thought about what he should actually write about. Something like the pestilence wasn’t something you could write a whole book on with a proper history of the disease, at best he could fill a chapter.
‘I could do something like what Brexius did with his journal and make my own journal with all of my experiments and notes along with what I did each day if it was important or unique, like going down into that cavern where the pestilence was and where we met the ant people.’ Arthur was smiling at this and was quickly refilling his bag with all the things he just removed from it, but he kept one of his ink bottles outside from it and a small bag of money for something else regarding this hobby.
Suddenly a loud series of knocks could be heard from the front door, Arthur looked up a little confused about who that might be. He wasn’t expecting Gaelin for another twenty or so minutes at a minimum and he didn’t have anyone else coming over today. He slowly walked over to the door and peeked out the window. It was a shorter humanoid shape on the other side of the door so he opened it and was even more surprised by who he saw.
Gaelin was standing on the other side with a half filled crate of various herbs off to his side. Gaelin himself looked rather worried about something as shown by him fidgeting with his hands as he stood there. “Gaelin!? I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Oh and sorry about not being here yesterday, I was busy with something that took all day to do… Please come inside, it's been getting colder out every day.”
Gaelin gave a small nod and carried the box inside and placed it on the table. “Um, I’m sorry I only got you half a crate of plants, most of the useful stuff has already been picked clean or begun to wither from the cold and become unusable.” Arthur looked over at Gaelin as he spoke, Arthur also noticed a lack of warm clothing on the young elf despite the below average temperature the city has been experiencing.
To rectify this problem Arthur quickly left for his wardrobe and pulled out a jacket he hasn’t worn for quite some time. It wasn’t the best quality but for someone who was currently dressed with lots of skin showing not unlike those who were partying in the party room of Osvald’s collection of merchants and wares. Arthur paused as he thought about the comparison, while the clothing styles didn’t entirely match up they were close enough that he probably should have noticed before. But due to trying to keep such sights out of his mind as much as possible he didn’t notice until now.
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Arthur quickly returned with the jacket and tossed it to Gaelin who looked at Arthur with quite a bit of confusion before he was then handed a pouch containing his sic copper coins. “You looked cold, and I had a spare jacket you can keep.” Arthur said in a mostly casual tone.
Gaelin quickly pocketed the money and looked over the jacket while holding it out with both his hands. There were a few small tears here and there that were hastily sewn up by the previous owner, but it still looked warm enough for the current weather. Hesitantly Gaelin slipped the jacket on as if it was going to turn into a monster and eat his arms off at any second, when he finally had the thing on he slowly managed to button it up and smile at the warmth it held.
“Is there something else you want to talk about or did you just really miss me?” Gaelin flinched at the sound of Arthur's voice forcing him out of his trance, upon seeing Arthur looking confused he quickly began fidgeting with his hands once again. “Um… I don’t think I will be able to collect more plants for you for a while since most of what hasn’t already been picked is starting to wither.” Arthur nodded and motioned for him to continue.
“And I also wanted t- to ask if you would teach me alchemy?” Arthur paused at that question and looked at Gaelin like he sprouted two extra heads. It was certainly not what he was expecting from the young elf anyways.
Gaelin immediately noticed Arthur’s expression and immediately tried to walk back his request. “Um… It's alright if you don’t want to, I can look for another job and come back once the plants start growing again.”
“Wait wait wait, I'm not against teaching you alchemy. but I need to ask why you want to learn it and if you even know what is involved?”
“Well, Um, it's like making spells in bottles right? You add up the ingredients after preparing them and then you get the potion with the effects you want, right?” Gaelin looked up at Arthur as he gave this very simple understanding of alchemy, but Arthur prevented himself from sighing or making any other reaction that might insult the young elf.
“Well, not really. To keep things simple there are two types of alchemy that you will encounter, you have the non magical alchemy which involves just mixing plants and other ingredients together in certain ways to create mixtures both liquid and otherwise for mostly common everyday uses, glue for example being one of those. Magical alchemy on the other hand is mostly what I do now, and it involves a lot of the same processes as the non magical alchemy but with magical ingredients and the casting of spells to create a potent effect when the product is used, healing potions are a good example of this.”
As he was explaining this Arthur took two potions out from his bag and handed them to Gaelin, one which was a non magical nutrient potion and the other the basic healing potion he intended to give him beforehand. Gaelin looked at the two bottles with fascination, he took notice of the healing potions' dim glow of light indicating its magic properties, the nutrient potion on the other hand was just a brownish mixture that looked quite unappetizing even for an elf. “You can keep those by the way.” Arthur said as he began to sort and organize his plants into his alchemy room.
Gaelin looked at the potions with bewilderment as he heard Arthur say that to him, having a basic understanding of what the nutrient potion would do he quickly drank it along with its terrible after taste. By the time Arthur came back Gaelin was also drinking the healing potion as well to try and digest the actual nutrients within said potion faster.
Arthur waited for him to finish before he continued with the ‘interview’ he was giving the young elf. “Before you begin learning alchemy I do need to warn you it is a very difficult thing to do, to perform any of the magical variety you will need to actually know some magic to do so and specific types to get the effects you want depending upon the potion of other product you want to make, and I haven't even gotten into just how expensive certain ingredients can get especially when they are not native to the region and need to be imported. Are you still certain that you want to learn?”
Gaelin did not wait more than a moment before he answered. “Yes, absolutely. I am more than willing to learn what you have to teach me.” He couldn’t help but smile a little as he said this, finally something was going well for him.
“Very well, I do need to ask you about your reading abilities though. How is it coming along?”
“Quite well sir, I can read most common words and names. I can also understand most recipes that I was given to read as homework.” Gaelin said as he thought back to the simple recipes he was given and told to read several days ago.
“Good, and do you have any magic training?” Gaelin shook his head, anyone who was able to cast magic back home had to be chosen specifically by the elder druid when they turned eighteen years old, and even then it wasn’t arcane magic they would learn, instead it was more like the divine magic the early human empires and such used to propel their ascension some several thousand years ago.
“Well that is a little unfortunate, but I don’t see why I can't teach you some of the basics once every week or so. But that will be something you will likely need to seek more teachers for, the mages guild would be a good place for that once you build up some savings and can afford some more advanced teachers. But we should probably start sometime tomorrow with the basics of non magical alchemy. I will buy some ingredients for you to use and I will find a basic alchemy set for you to use.”
Arthur quickly listed off and copied down some recipes that he wanted Gaelin to become familiar with before he returns tomorrow at eight o’clock tomorrow. The recipes in question were quite simple and could probably be done by a young teen if they really wanted to, but it was a very good place to start off for someone with no experience in the subject.
There were three recipes in total all on one piece of paper which Gaelin happily took and carefully folded into his pocket. After that he left to go home and study said recipes for the remainder of the day which Arthur was a little surprised by and also quickly advised against as it would be a very boring day for him if that was all he did.
Once Gaelin was gone Arthur entered back into his alchemy room and quickly began brewing up some potions from what he was given by Gaelin, thankfully he still had some of the ingredients he bought from some stores he occasionally passed by so he was still able to brew the amount that he wanted to. It took around an hour for all the potions to finish brewing and left him with thirty basic healing potions that were considerably better than what he gave to Gaelin, that was mostly due to his understanding of alchemy increasing since then.