I slept with Anna again, relaxing her to sleep, and going to bed back-to-back. But the next morning I was able to get up the ladder and bring my stuff down to be in the closet-sized room beneath the ladder.

I could feel it when I woke up. That my passive skills were back, I could flex them, all be it less than I should be able to. While my active skills were just as distant as my passive skills were yesterday. I could grasp them, but they felt distant like they would just not work or would be too useless to consider using.

I made tea before breakfast, which certainly seemed to help Anna’s mood. It was nice to wake up with the tea, but in truth, it was otherwise normal. Or at least as normal as it could be to wake up next to a potential partner who is also bleeding and in pain.

I suppose for a Human, that might actually be common. Anna did tell me that it was monthly. Assuming you slept in the same bed, that was every married Human couple that had ever existed, which was somewhat crazy to imagine.

Maybe they have a way to help out somehow. I was honestly hoping they did because I was going to be looking through Anna’s books for it. I was fairly sure my mom brewed a similar brew, but I had to play it by my nose to do it.

I could remember smells, especially those from when I was younger. Generally, they also helped me remember things, sometimes, I would smell something and remember a very specific thing, and I was hoping that my memory, my nose, and Anna’s books could basically bring together something to help her.

It was… Ambitious was likely an understatement. I had not the skills for crafting, nor recipes like my mother did. I had no skills for recognizing plants and their uses or how to get the most out of them. I basically had a book, my nose and whatever the two managed to drag out of my head, and I honestly didn’t think I could manage it.

But if I were honest, I wasn’t going to let that keep me down.

I had free time; I literally didn’t have access to my skills, or at least, my most useful skills. If Anna needed someone to use a shovel, I could, but I couldn’t use [Displace Dirt] to move tons of it. I could scythe the grass, but it would take longer, and honestly, while it was long, Anna’s grove had been grassier when I got here.

I could take out the pots, help wash the sheets, and my own clothes, and fill up the keg, which I did rather quickly.

I even had Anna watch me while the fog was up to get it done.

It taunted me, trying to crawl up into my head with its incessant speech.

Anna had to stop me from walking out of the grove, not once, nor twice, but on six separate occasions.

Once she had gone in to get some more tea, which she seemed to enjoy more than I expected, and she came back and found me halfway there. I was walking in a trance.

It was the first time she had seen the fog do what it did to me, and the first time, that I knew of, that she had seen the fog take shape.

I honestly didn’t think she had believed me on the first day, when I had crawled back into her house and blabbed confusedly at her, gesturing vehemently about the scary fog.

And why would she, if the fog hadn’t been attacking other people; had resulted in no fatalities, no people being dragged off into the woods. Why would she suddenly think, ‘Yes, the fog that appears totally normal is probably related to the undead and is likely a scary fog monster that can magically drag people into it.’

I think it shook her a little, and I made sure to show my gratitude by accompanying her on her breakdown with one of my own. I left the bin outside, and we huddled by the fire, sipping tea and lost our shit for a while.

It wanted me. It wanted me Badly. And I have no idea why. It never told me, only ever whispering its enchanting words to pull me into the fog.

I needed to get down that list double time. Because I doubted, I could learn magic right without being able to understand her right, and even with my new classes and skills, I doubted I could just rock up to the fog and hit it with a shovel. I needed something that I could rock up to the fog with to send the undead straight to Death herself or destroy it entirely.

But before that, I needed to learn the language, and before that, I had to regain my strength. And while that would come tomorrow or the day after, I had stuff I could do today.

I had only a twig of ache in my body, and it was freeing. I was getting my strength back, at least in body, and it was exhilarating after the last few days. I felt, through the fading pain, more flexible, stronger. I could tell I was stronger; I could feel that I had grown.

I didn’t want to do it again, Gods know I didn’t; that, however, didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the benefit of going through it. Honestly, I was curious about the skills, I could guess what my stats were, but my [Guide] had fixed my traits.

Regardless of traits, I was going to need those stats, I could use every advantage for what I was doing.

When Anna stopped freaking out, the sun had come up, and the day was calling. She wrote a letter in her study, and I finished the laundry before hanging it off a chair for Anna to dry as she came out. Then we changed places. The letter got picked up by a bird, the sheets got dried, I brought them in, put them in their places and got into the study and read.

I looked through the whole bloody book, looking for herbs and plants that relieved pain, and muscles, and had an effect on women.

I earmarked the book and hoped taking away her pain would stay Anna’s wrath. I didn’t know if Anna cared for the books as much as Skipseo, but it might not be enough if she did.

70 pages.

I got the second book and skimmed through possible recipes, descriptions of smells, and things that can be made without special equipment. Speed skimming through the book, earmarking whenever I found the things that met my criteria.

30 pages.

I thought about it for a few minutes, thinking about how to narrow down my search.

Small things first, I suppose.

I got the book on herbs back out and started properly re-reading it. I could understand quite a few words, but not all of them, so I used the words I did know, and the pictures I could see to help narrow it down.

Spine fruit from the southern desert? Not from here, out.

Salt Lotus? A magical herb that grows on the shore of the eastern sea? Not in Anna’s backyard.

Bone Cane… Oh, we did have that, different name, but I think I had seen some yesterday.

Some of the herbs were in Anna’s yard, mostly minor stuff, but I kept them. Everything that had no chance of being here, somewhere in the valley, out. It was a book with a much wider scope than just Moarn, that or it was a book for a very well-connected person in the valley, able to afford to purchase things from the Northern Waste.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Some of the things were obvious, some of the things could grow here, a few of them came from here and I was able to drop 27 flats out that I had no chance of getting my paws on.

43 pages.

I brought out the second book, resting both out on my lap to cross-reference between the two.

The recipes with the removed ingredients, at least those without a substitution. I also caught a few with a mystery ingredient, and I tossed those out because mystery ingredients were something I could work with.

Maybe if I had a recipe skill or a crafting skill I could have puzzled out what it was. Or if I had more experience, but I was trained less in the field of healing than I was in theology, and all I had there was a lot of time spent near priests and a rather short stint as a [Saint] to a goddess that didn’t even tell me what I was supposed to do.

I brought the board out. It was a bit heavy for my new arms, but I was able to get it over before I got another cup of tea.

I needed to reheat the pot, which meant I heated the pot, in a pot. And brought it back out when it was good. And Kindly’s tea was good, it was one hell of a cup of tea. I could see it becoming a problem.

I checked, but Anna was fine, still doing her thing outside, tending to plants, and clipping, she would bring some things in or dry them on the spot. She was a one-woman herb-gathering machine, it was probably because she had [Herbalist], with how she did her work I doubted she had something else.

I had to wonder if the books had a recipe for what I was looking for, if Anna was more capable at this than I was, which she probably was then why had she not made one?

She must have thought about it, there’s no way she hadn’t.

But despite the possible futility, I had time to kill and some memory of a medicine that might help her, so, I got back to it.

I had narrowed it down a bit, but now I had to go further.

43 herbs, and 17 recipes.

I checked the recipes for scents, but they were not described that way; it was all about this plant and that herb, and measurements, and the way you put the stuff together, prep work.

So, instead, I broke them down based on if they would alleviate pain, or possibly help with Anna’s wild ride.

14 to 3, pain to period. One of them had to be better than the others, but I had no idea which one that would be.

I checked them out, carefully reading each page, checking that I had read them right if I could, going back and forth, looking for the word in my book of scripture and checking my memory for the word. I was able to narrow out one of them, it was meant for light pain, by the sound of it. Another claimed it only helped the pain of the mind, another a headache and only a headache.

Thirteen to eleven, just like that. One was for muscle pain and another for spasms. Another for bleeding and clotting.

I thought about that one for a bit. Was clotting something like that even possible? And if so, was bleeding the source or a symptom, and would you want to cause a blood clot inside?

I decided to leave those three for later, in case everything was just garbage.

A few more free garbage ones, bone pain and the arthritis of the elderly were not at fault here, unless Anna had bones where they didn’t belong and was under an illusion that made her look young which I doubted.

A few that were general, which I kept to pass by her later, but separated out for now.

6.

Now that number was workable.

Before checking the herbs book, I checked the recipes and listed them down on the board, along with what they did as a heading. I read each passage thoroughly, much like the recipes and separated them based on how close to Moarn the ingredients came from.

Two of the recipes were made entirely from plants that were found in Moarn back during my time, 3 with mixed ingredients with some from the valley, and others that were from nearby but had since grown into the valley.

One of them was made from ingredients a month’s ride from the passes west and could, in theory, be purchased with some ease.

Twenty-three herbs in total for the six different recipes, with a few substitutions.

Whoo boy, that’s a lot of testing… Maybe that’s why Anna didn’t do it, too much repetitive work, maybe without a skill to help narrow anything down she decided it was just easier to deal with it.

Maybe the books were whack, or off intentionally, or even only possible with a certain skill to make sure it was exactly right. But I’m going to use my time off today and tomorrow to try and figure out which of those might be the right one.

Regardless of my work today, when Anna came in for dinner, I had finished it already. And after dinner, she and I ran through some of the words I had picked out and spent time going over words I had not known.

I spent time repeating them to her to make sure I got them right, and I ended up asking her about the books.

“Mmm, never thought about it.” She told me.

I sat there after she told me that, in pure incomprehension.

What? There’s no way that Anna, who has a private collection, just forgot it, right? It has to have crossed her mind at some point and time.

I wobbled my mouth to ask her why in all the hells and their terrible bells, she would just ‘forget’ to read a book and possibly take away her pain, but it just wiggled worthlessly below my head.

“Anna,” I told her, thinking through each word as I slowly and painstakingly asked her my question. “You hurt every month, and you did not think to make? Not once?”

Anna looked a bit sheepish at that, rubbing the back of her head, “I… No?” she shrugged.

I gave her a light chop on the head, not hard enough to even make it register as a solid tap. She was in range for it while we sat next to one another. The more I learned about Anna, the more I was terribly intrigued by her. She was cute, and kind as a guardian angel. A [Druid] and mage. A girl who made an amount of coin that I had never even considered possibly attainable, one of my week’s wages was more than I could probably make in a year.

And yet, she was the most hollow-headed woman I had ever met. I looked at her. The most brilliant, magnificent, thoughtful person I had ever met. The woman I would jump into the morning fog for. The woman I wanted to learn a language and better myself to impress and hopefully court.

The woman Kindly gave me that god's awful pickup line I would never use for.

And I prayed to the whole pantheon to please heal whatever wound had caused Anna to not think for a second to read the books she owned to come up with a solution.

“Oh, merciful gods, please fix whatever part of Annas's mind causes her to forget about herself, please, help this poor woman.” I prayed.

I wasn’t expecting to go out at all, it was mostly just something I felt like doing to tease her. I wasn’t at a temple, not at an altar, and not with a priest. But it worked, because I was a saint. I did have a one-way connection to a god, and apparently, when I thought about god’s plural, it included her because I could feel it echo out to her before rebounding. The feeling of a shut door still separates she and me. Apparently, she was still not answering even thousands of years after my last prayer to her.

I blinked at that.

Anna looked at me, blinking off into space while I had my hands lightly tented, fingertips pressed together.

“Huh, can pray to goddess.” I said.

I had spoken in my tongue, in Kirish, but I didn’t doubt that she got the gist.

She looked at me and asked, “What did she say?” expectantly hanging on my words.

“She is not going to help. Never talks. You have to fix your own head, think about yourself.” I told her and gave a pat on her head.

“She never talks? You’re a [Saint of Death], yes? And what do you mean fix my head?”

I nodded to her question.

“Never talked, never seen. Not even when became Saint.” I told her with a shrug, following it with, “And prayed for gods to fix your head. You never think about yourself.”

Now she looked at me like I had a second head.

“What?” I asked, “I try, but she not listening. She is goddess.” I told her, hands raised in a ‘whoa there’ kind of gesture, like she was about to tap my head.

This did not give me any kind of relief; it did the exact opposite as she leaned in towards me like I had done with Kindly.

I had nothing to tell her, I had no secret, nothing to whisper to her. I decided to lean in anyways until my mouth was right beside her ear.

I didn’t know what to tell her, I could try and ask her now, but I wanted to tell her in a non-intrusive way. Not just whisper, ‘Anna I want to court you and do things together, possibly more than that,’ because honestly that felt like it would be almost rude, and also not particularly well worded.

Instead, I whispered, “Silly, I hold no secret about Death.”

She shivered a little, though I didn’t know if it was because of my silent patron goddess, or if it was because I was whispering so close to her ear.

Anna did seem to be curious, but honestly, I didn’t have anything to tell her. No secrets about the goddess, nothing.

We eventually got back on track. And when we finished, I gave Anna another head massage on her bed.

She fell asleep on top of me, which was certainly a little awkward, but I managed to go flat, roll her off without waking her up, and curl up next to her, and not back-to-back. Her whole body was on top of my left arm, and I didn’t think I could pull it out without waking her up.

Despite how I had been holding back from curling up around her, I just didn’t have the heart to wake her up, not when the second she had relaxed she had gone out like a light. Still stiff in the neck.

She was awake one moment, dead weight the next. It was the kind of sudden sleep that hit you when you were exhausted… or when you levelled up, I suppose. I guess I could ask tomorrow.

But until then, I curled up back to front behind Anna. Tomorrow I would get on with brewing.