With her mother's skills, the tri-horn deer was skinned, the leather dehaired, and stretched, ready to be worked with some custom brewed Tanner's Aide by the end of the first break. Mykhal and Cerise had confirmed that the Honorables only cared to claim the leather. Cerise's father was busy with some carving project by the time she returned her scribe box and the borrowed book to their cart, and her mother had started the Tanner's Aide brewing.
Cerise knew that the basic ingredients for any Tanner's Aide brew started with ammonia, and that was easiest taken from filtered stale wine. Then added to the brew came salts and fats, usually rendered from the creature's brain. [Tanners] liked to joke about how each creature was born with enough brains to preserve its skin. The stench of the Tanner's Aide brew was why no one wanted to be down wind of even a village's [Tanners] Row.
Her mother had learned a lot from her Cooking experiments over the years that she was able to apply to her new Alchemy skill. That synergy of understanding, along with her daughter's trick of directly addressing her skill contemplations to the Voice of the World, had taken her to the end of the Practiced rank, and then actual experience had drawn her into the Intermediate rank.
It also synergized with her Herbalism skill in the higher divisions of the Intermediate rank, which allowed her to create new Formulas, such as whatever her mother had done to neutralize the biting scent of ammonia and boiled brains.
The leather would be ready to use for making a harness within a few days, thanks to her mother's skills, which seemed fast to Cerise. She would need to soak the hide in the ammonia and salts for two to five days to loosen up the fats and hairs, then spend a full day scraping to pull the fur and flesh from the leather, then another day working the rendered fats in solution into the skin. The final step was to smoke the leather over good, dry, rotted wood to saturate it with the smoke and thereby set the oils. That would let the leather remain supple even after being wetted again.
Her mother's General Craft was to a level that she could saturate and "season" most anything she crafted. It wasn't as effective as Cerise's father's Carpentry skills that let him speedily season wood, but her mother's skill had a broader application.
Cerise caught her mother adding some bugs to her Tanner's Aide. That was unusual. "What were those? And why are they going in?"
Her mother put a finger to her lips and winked. Then she leaned in and showed Cerise a strip of tacky, woven grasses. "The bugs with the yellow shell here? They increase the potency of the ammonia for bleaching the skin when they're crunched up and rendered together. And the ones with a blue shell will dye my oils and set well in the smoke, leaving the skin a green color. It's supposed to be a major color of House Affel and House Treborant. I'm hoping I've baited enough of them to make the colors vibrant, but it should still make a nice surprise. If the Honorables are fine with using cloth for their straps, there should be enough leather from this hide to make carry rigs for both of the Misses, and sized for their horned rabbits to grow into."
"Overlocking stitches?" Cerise asked, referring to a technique where two pieces of a material meant to be joined were overlapped for a distance and the edges wrapped with the thread used to join them.
Cerise's mother nodded. "The reinforcement will be good that way, even if it'll make for some waste come time to fix the harnesses."
"Have you shown them a pattern for what you're thinking of?" Cerise asked.
"Child, I'm still putting the design together!" her mother rebuked her in good humor.
Cerise ducked her head and held up her hands, smiling. She turned the subject. "Where's Mykhal?"
Her mother rolled her eyes. "That boy is hunt happy. He said he's off to forage for Daisy, but he had his bow with him. Like as not, he'll be back with more rabbits for the pot."
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Mykhal did not bring a rabbit, but rather a choober, a fuzzy-feathered fat ground bird, along with a clutch of thumb-length sized eggs and a full gather basket. He returned near the end of the second break and dropped his basket off with Cerise and Brower.
After reluctantly tearing her focus from the loaned book, Cerise noted Mykhal's stiff smile. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"The deer were gone, and I found larger wolf tracks than most dire beasts leave. I already warned Miss Sorkha. You told me what your skill told you about the Sleeping Sickness, how it can rarely cause warping, and I'm worried about these tracks belonging to a warped wolf."
"Have you warned the Honorables?" Cerise asked.
Mykhal tipped his head to the side. "Why?"
Brower clicked his tongue in disappointment.
"[Mage]?" Cerise reminded Mykhal. "We were just warned about how their mana attracts monsters a few days ago."
"Oh!" Mykhal said. He handed the fowl and eggs to Cerise and started off toward the front of the caravan.
Cerise looked at the eggs and groaned, reminded of another egg she was supposed to be watching out for.
Brower laughed and helped her carry everything back to her family's cart. With everything set down, Cerise turned to her mother. "Mama, I'm sorry. I should have taken back the egg sling when we ...." She trailed off as she caught the guilty look her parents exchanged.
Clearing her throat, her mother said, "Yes, well, about that." A tiny black rabbit head topped with an itty-bitty ivory horn poked out of the egg sling. "His name is Tomas. And he likes mushrooms."
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Cerise started laughing. She was still chuckling every time she glimpsed the egg sling with the baby almiraj nestled in it when Mykhal got back, shortly after the roll out order.
"What?" he asked.
Cerised gestured to her mother. "We don't have any eggs to turn in."
Mykhal's face fell. "Why are you laughing if it broke?"
"It didn't break! It hatched! For Mama!" Cerise said.
Mykhal turned sad puppy eyes to her mother. "You aren't going to cook it, are you?"
Cerise's mother protectively wrapped her arms around the baby almiraj in the sling. "Not my Tomas!" she declared, looking horrified.
"Good!" Mykhal declared, straightening and taking on an authoritative air. He waggled his finger as he said, "Because tamed monsters are not the same as wild."
Cerise and her father snuck to the other side of the cart to chortle and try to hold in the noise of their laughter. Mykhal had launched into a beautiful imitation of her mother's lecturing style while he lectured her mother on the responsibilities of becoming a [Tamer]. And her mother, probably out of guilt for accidentally hatching the egg, was meekly accepting it!
When Cerise glanced up and saw the Quartermaster biting his knuckles as he, too, watched on, she lost it, barely tumbling safely to the side of the road while she cackled in glee. Her father stumbled after her, sitting heavily beside her and giving voice to his own howls of laughter.
They waved off four passing [Wagoneers] asking if they were alright and what was so funny before they calmed enough to speak. They couldn't look at each other without cackling again, though, and waved off Casper and another of the Steady Hammers, along with four more [Wagoneers] as they rolled by.
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There were days he remembered he had a name. There were days he almost remembered his name.
Names were important. He always remembered that. His name was very important. It would let him ... do something! Something important. What that something was, he could not recall, but maybe if he remembered his name he would remember the very important something it would let him do.
Today had not started out as a good day. He only woke from the fog of his thoughts after catching a deer, a tri-horn that bounded into him as he lay drowsing in the shade of his favorite tree. The fresh blood more than the meat woke him, and he decided to see what had set the deer to running at this time of day. They usually bedded down for the day.
He followed the trail the deer left back to a thicket near one of the nascent spawn points. Those pesky pokes of itchy mana sprouted and died around his woods all the time. This one was still too new to be settled, so he huffed up the mana pooling around, breaking the point before it could infest his woods with yet more mana-hungry pests.
That seen to, he sniffed around. A different scent of mana lingered. Oh, it wasn't the blood seeping into the loamy forest floor. That was commonplace. No, this had a purity that reminded him of his name. He drew in the smell and savored it. There was another, no, two other mana scents. One was a bit rank, carrying a challenge, and the other belonged to something, someone that was both of the woods and not. To be clear, that someone belonged not to his woods, but to all forests.
Those were interesting, but not as interesting as the crisper, cleaner scent they accompanied.
He was casting around for the trail of that scent when his woods warned him of an approaching ... someone. Not of his woods, but still of the forest. His belly full and his mind waking to a hunger that killing could not satisfy, he hid himself away. A man came to the thicket, looking at first as if he intended to hunt a deer. Again.
This man was the source of the All Forests scent. Perhaps he would find the source of the crisp, wakening scent if he trailed the man.
But then the man found one of his footprints. He stilled with the respect a lesser hunter should show his superiors. Then the man cast around, assuring himself of what he had seen, and returned the way he had come.
The little All Forests hunter carried a pouch made of grasses at his side, and he gathered the mana-wakened grasses and fungi, and sometimes leaves or fallen branches, too. At one point, he flushed one of the fat little birds that lived in the younger parts of his woods, and the little hunter threw a stick at it and killed it. He gathered the eggs the bird had been sitting on, along with the corpse of the bird.
The scent of the little hunter's mana, that familiar All Forests scent, trickled from him from time to time. It made trailing the little hunter enjoyable, and he nearly forgot why he began in the first place.
Then the little hunter stepped out of his woods, into a wide point of the breech of his woods, where more men were gathered with their contortions of dead wood and bound lesser beasts.
And he could smell that crisp, wakening mana here.
He had a name. That mana could help him find his name.
He abandoned trailing the little hunter, searching out this wakening scent. He was still casting about from the cover of his woods when he saw the little hunter moving with purpose toward two other men, who sat with their heads bent over two bound stacks of broad leaves. The little hunter's scent brightened, more crisp and clear, as he reached pouncing distance of the pair.
They made noises at each other, and the little hunter presented his hunt to them, then left. The pair gathered up their bound leaves and the little hunter's gifts, and joined the larger herd? pack? of people putting all in one of the contortions of dead wood.
The larger of the two walked away, and he was not the source of the scent. That meant it had to be the smaller.
He wasn't close enough to see or hear all that transpired with the source of the Wakening Scent. There were too many more dangerous men about than the All Forests little hunter. Even if he slew them all, he would be hurt in the doing, and luck had a habit of favoring men over beasts. So, he was not close, but he heard the laughter.
That sounded good. It sounded right. It sounded like ... something important.
He could not laugh. He tried, but only made odd, chuffing noises.
The bound beasts began to pull the contraptions of dead wood, and he knew he needed to make the source of the crisp wakening mana help him remember soon, or the man would be gone and he would forget again. So he stalked the herd of men and bound beasts and contorted dead wood, waiting for an opportunity.
And soon he had it.
The man he hunted to fill his mind fell, laughing, to the side of the moving herd. Another fell with him, and they waved away help while he maneuvered into position for his charge.
His target rose, the other still on the ground, both looking away from each other. There was a small time the two were somewhat distant from the dangerous men, and that was when he pounced.
He caught his prey by the chest, seizing him and lifting him up so he could run. The woods were his and parted for his passage. They closed against the men who tried to pursue, all except the All Forests little hunter.
That was a clever hunter, for he followed as if he knew exactly where to go, running until he collapsed. So not a wise hunter, for all his cleverness.
That was of no concern to him, though. When he reached his tree, the grove around his tree closed up. None could enter here without his permission.
He set the man with the wakening mana down. The man scrambled away, pressing his back to the grove and watching him with wide-eyed fear. He did not like the fear. The fear would not restore his name to him.
Now, he did not have to worry about the wakening mana leaving. But, how was the wakening mana going to return his memories to him?
He lay back down in the shade of his favorite tree and whined for the hunger in his mind.