Carrying Ember in my arms I took him for a tour around the cave, stopping in the main hall and sitting him on one of the stone treatment beds. I started to explain his new duties. “So Ember, your main job is going to be greeting anyone that comes in. If they are injured bring them to any empty treatment table and fetch me, otherwise your side job is to keep this area clean. I don’t really know what you can do fully yet, so we will work that out together and maybe your jobs can change to be more fun for you, but for now hopefully this is enough to keep you satisfied. Now, lunch?”
Clearly Ember understood me well as the moment I mentioned lunch he started shifting around looking for food, before jumping at me and climbing up onto my shoulder covering it like a slimy pauldron.
Heading off to grab lunch I was glad most people seem to have just accepted it made sense for the healer in the cave to have a slime attached to her shoulder, although tames aren’t so uncommon that most people aren’t somewhat used to seeing them so I shouldn’t have been surprised as the lack of interest either.
As we ate Mircha stopped by and took a seat close by to have his own lunch. “”Styx, I have sent a letter off just after our chat, but I wanted to check you had organised training with one of the guards already? I know being a combat healer does just mean pulling people out, getting them healed up, and preventing deaths but I just wanted to follow up that you were intending to train both your combat and healing skills?”
“Honestly Mircha I have no idea how to train my healing further, I am working on my skill by using it, but while I can train my combat with Sula who has agreed to help, actively improving my healing or learning new healing skills is going to depend on finding information on it or getting better related skills as I level, and I don’t want to go to the dungeon again for a bit until I am confident in my skills”
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“That makes sense, I appreciate that you are trying to find a good role for yourself and working with me on that, but that is enough heavy topics take some time to settle again while we wait to see if someone is willing to partner up with you to cover our healing. The hunters have found a few resources they want to claim but until we can risk sending you as healing backup the odds of long term injury or losing someone is just to great, so if any of them try to convince you to go claim any resources or to try to push me to approving that trip remember while risk is part of forming a settlement we should hedge our bets. Anyway, hopefully your slime settles in as well and enjoys their time with us, but I am off to do my favourite thing. Paperwork.” chuckling to himself Mircha headed back off to his home, while I finished up my fish wrap.
As I ate I tore off little bits to give to Ember, it was definitely odd just putting food against his skin and having it get pulled in, then it just slowly dissolved. From the adorable little pleased squeaks he was making though Ember was a fan of fish and bark-leaves wraps, or he just liked food, being a slime it was even odds.
After wrapping up our food I took my plate over to the wash up area, where there was a large tub for putting dirty items in, a tub full of water for wiping things off, then a tub for the cleaned items. Surely one of the cooks had a skill to make things actually sanitised, but as I wasn’t one of those working in the cooking spaces I didn’t really know for sure, but no one was getting sick from foodborne illnesses as far as I knew so it made sense.
Suddenly Ember dropped down from his perch on my shoulder and quickly oozed himself through and over all of the plates and cups inside of the tub. Realising he had decided he wanted more food, and also he didn’t look to be damaging any of the cups or plates so it seemed harmless, I let him continue for a few minutes until he came back out radiating satisfaction with himself.
Carrying my happy smile I set off to the cave, determined to make sure the place was ready for another healer to move in, and hoping that they were someone I could get along with well.