The next morning, I woke up first, and like most days, I woke up early. Checking for some lights, I found that it was very early though. Pre-dawn was quiet, and while I could groom myself a little and get up, I was in a bit of an awkward position.

Anna was face down over top of me, reaching across me, belly to belly. She seemed to be comfortable, which was well and good for her, I was less comfortable with her but decided I could suck it up.

How Anna had gone from beside me and facing away to on top of me and facing toward me was beyond me.

I could see her face twinging and could smell the blood in the air along with Anna’s flowery smell.

It was uncomfortable but not incredible, so, I reached out to her and held her head, and she relaxed.

We weren’t even courting, not a single date, but here I was in her bed, trying to comfort her while she slept. It occurred to me that, if someone was here watching, it would look like I was courting Anna.

It was a bit strange, I didn’t think of myself as courting Anna, and I didn’t think she thought about me that way. But we acted like we were anyways, we had just kind of done it automatically, Anna had given me a room to stay in, and then I had ended up getting into her bed. I was working for her, kind of, and she was giving me food and a bed, but she also cooked for me like a host. I was basically being paid to do chores, nowhere as hard as I worked before, where I would run around for hours digging a ditch.

I even got time off to rest up, which was something that I hadn’t gotten back then either. It made me think of Anna as not being my boss, even though she paid me. And she wasn’t my landlord either, I didn’t pay her to live here, not really.

I didn’t know how to describe my relationship with Anna, it was just complicated. I liked her, and she had invited me to stay, then given me a bunch of stuff and a job, then had taught me. Then she had fought a bunch of people for me, which had just made it even harder to describe.

I wanted to court her, I wanted to do it with words, give her a kiss on the hand and see if she would say yes. We had just kind of… overshot that moment with our actions.

I comforted Anna until she relaxed, before I closed my eyes again and went back to bed.

***

I woke up when Anna did, or a little bit afterwards, when Anna pulled herself off of me and got dressed. I gave her some privacy, keeping my eyes closed when she changed out of her smock. I only opened them when Anna left the room and I got up and left the room to get dressed in the closet.

I had three sets of them, thanks to Anna. My old ones, which I still sometimes wore, the second green ones and the third red ones. A smock and cover for each, a tunic or a light dress.

It appeared that the humans found wearing only a smock was a bit scandalous, that or it was for the poor. I had worn a tunic over my smocks because it meant I could get away with not washing the bigger garb as much, not as some form of statement.

Anna was going into town today from the sound of it she had gotten into her dress after the fog lifted and she read a letter on the porch. I suppose the bird must have gotten a letter back to her, I hadn’t seen many birds, I hadn’t seen many animals at all if I had thought about it. The fog must have scared them off for the most part, if I was a bird I would find it hard to nest down and raise some chicks when every day a spooky fog rolled it, covering the ground. It probably scared off the little things, too, so it had also chased away the dogs and foxes that ate them.

I bet the moment it left, the birds would be back, though, all the worms and flowers and berries would get ripped to shreds by them. The birds would bounce back so long as the trees and cliffs were here.

Some [Hunter] somewhere else in this valley is having a field day catching animals. A field month? A great time.

When Anna left, I got into her study and crammed the knowledge back into my head, a reminder to make sure I was going to pick up the right stuff.

Then I gathered the stuff up, not from the garden, but from the forested land that surrounded it.

They were familiar enough, they grew wild out in the hills, just not as fast as in the grove that Anna spent her time collecting from. The grass had started to get a bit high, but I still couldn’t use my skills.

They were… soft. Weak even. I could start using them tomorrow, technically, I could use them right now, but it didn’t feel right, it felt like I might break them by accident if I used them, like my skills were made of fine porcelain and could shatter into uncountable pieces if I used them.

So I didn’t, I just left the grass and hunted down the herbs, and little flowers, I cut some canes, too, tossing it into a little bag tied with some rope to my hip.

Grasses and greenery filled the bag. One of the components was the bark of a tree, I was able to find it, but it was a bitch to get off with my nails. I had to claw at it a bit to get a good portion off and into the bag, although my stats were finally showing their growth.

In some parts, the forest became shrubbery, and the wall of green was so dense it was hard to get through, I had to cut my way through the wall of green with my bare hands.

I strode around the forest like a one-woman army, and my enemy were random plants. By midday, I had cut down enough greenery to make my fingertips green. My bag was full too bursting, and I decided to finish my homicidal plant crusade and get back to what I intended to do today.

I found my way back, southeast to Anna’s cabin. Past trees and little groves of plants that I wouldn’t step into.

I could hear sprites, and while we were related, I was not going to step onto a mushroom and accidentally get put on a Sprite vengeance list for crushing a family. I did mark it down in my mind, though to come back later and meet them.

I had zig-zagged through the forest, following my nose and eyes to find the places the plants like to grow in. but I made my way through the forest in a relatively straight line. I didn’t get jumped coming back, which was well, I had enjoyed the forest trip, and I had enjoyed the running I finally got to do after feeling like a cripple. If I had jumped, it would have ruined the whole trip.

When I got back to the cabin, I had worked up a bit of a sweat, but it was a good sweat.

I was finally getting the upside of getting that many levels. I felt like I could fight the world. Like I could fight those [Hunters]. I had gotten a significant boost to my Body and Durability, which let me cover a lot of ground, I felt like I could run forever. It was great, and all the activity had put me in a good mood.

I got inside and got to separating the greens out into their piles. I decided to do it in the front room, where I opened up the shutters to let light in and sorted them. Broad leaves and skinny leaves, flowers and canes and bark and a singular gourd.

It was a big bag, I could stick my top half into it, and it was a LOT of random bits.

I separated them out, different plants in different piles, then I got the books and the slate and brought them over and got to brewing. I went through the recipes and tried each out, and while I brewed, I checked the smells.

The medicinal smells took me back as I sat in the kitchen brewing. I could remember being around my mother while she mixed up funny-smelling tea’s for others. One of them reminded me of when I scraped my knee, and my mom made some tea to make it better. It was one of the pain tea’s so that checked out. The other pain ones were similar, but only to the first tea, not reminding me of my mother or her medicine.

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If I remembered right, it could be turned into a balm if I used oil instead of water, which was how my mom generally made it. I just didn’t know how to make it a balm. The oil wouldn’t just spontaneously turn into ointment if I let it cool, but I wasn’t looking to make a balm, I was checking for if my mother had made it.

The first check for the ones that helped the pain. And it checked out. I kept the page and released the others from their folded edges. Six pain recipes down to one.

Now onto the others, there are three, but I only have the stuff for two of them. Let’s see if they work.

I added leaves to the pot. I had picked a smaller one I could fit into the fire and added the herbs in one at a time. A bit of gourd turned to a paste. The flesh from the inside of the cane. Leaves I rolled up and crushed lightly to get a good extraction. I couldn’t give a measure, I didn’t have a scale, so I had to guess based on how much It weighed in my hand and by the ratio of ingredients, and account for how dense the things were. Leaves were light, the paste was thick, and the flesh of the cane was fibrous and in between. The bark, or more specifically, the inner flesh of the bark, was solid and came off in curls.

The first tea was mostly earthy in scent. The leaves and flowers are not particularly smelly, and the gourd and its weirdly spicey smell not coming through. It was all winsome bark all the time with this tea.

I boiled it down to the final amount of liquid the tea called for, but it just got more bark scent, while a little more of the spicy smell came through.

Bark did remind me of stuff, but it was mostly wood stuff. It was of lumberyards and carpenters, not medicines.

I checked the recipe and found it had a substitute for a different flower. So, I poured it out, and tried that one to see if it was closer.

The overpowering bark smell was gone, and bits of floral and herbaceous notes peaked through. Plants coming out of the soil. The spice was more prevalent too. When the flower went into the pot, it gained a bizarre scent; it punched me in the nose. The hit went from my nose straight to my brain, jiggling a memory out of the corner of my mind, where my mom was making an incredibly smelly tea.

I remembered asking my mom what it was for, and while I didn’t quite remember my mother’s voice, I did remember her mentioning a Human woman.

It was different, thicker, and stronger, but closer to the flower that smelled like the colour purple.

I don’t understand how it could smell like a colour; things didn’t smell like a colour, they looked like a colour. An orange didn’t taste orange, it was an orange fruit, it tasted like an orange, not the colour orange.

Grapes didn’t taste purple-red or yellow-green.

But the second I smelled it, and it changed the colour in the pot, I smelled it and I remembered.

Closer… What else did that tea smell like… Spicy, very spicy… A bit of wood… Leaves… But no floral scent…

Does the other recipe have that stuff…

I checked; it didn’t, it had more flowers than leaves, but checking the other book, the one with the herbs and names and drawings, I found that some of the flowers could be swapped. I changed out the flowers on the board, but there was no conversion, I had to guess, replace them one to one, and play it by nose.

I mixed up the strange tea, and it was even closer. Not spicy enough, with no wood, and too little leafy smell, but the flowers didn’t give a flower scent, just purple.

I mixed it again, a tiny sliver of wood, and twice the number of leaves. Barely any wood, too much leaf.

I balanced it, then again, then a third time before I found the right amount. Then added more of the spicy gourd. After two tries, I got it right, but the wood was too present, so I made a slight change.

Again and again, little changes here or there, less of the minty-smelling leaves, more of the funky leaves that smelled like yeast. Changes upon changes to the recipe. A tinker here and there, until, finally, I got it dead on.

I boiled it down like my mother had, a smaller measure, the smell was just as pungent.

Is this it? It's the same colour, purple-orange, and the right smell too. I never tasted it, so I can't check that way...

My mother had served it from the back of the apothecary she was working for, I wasn’t allowed in the front, but she had poured it into a cup and taken it out, and I had watched from the back as a human woman drank it, peering out from behind a curtain.

It was spot on in the smell department, I had the materials, or at least ones that do something analogous.

Would it work? How would I check it? I could drink it, I guess… Maybe a prayer?

I checked the time, not just by checking the light, but by going outside, and checking the shadows. Pointing at the northern peak and checking the shadow on the ground so I wouldn't need to stare into the sky I found it was closer to nightfall.

No time to check with an apothecary, there probably closed, I could check with a priest of some kind, Knowledge or Medicine… I could also make a tiny shrine, I guess… No, wait, there’s no way every shrine is closed. Even if the clergy is asleep by the time I get there, a shrine would surely be open...

I puzzled it over in my head and decided to just pray over it, giving it a long, long prayer, before I drank it and sat down, started dinner and waited.

If I was going to give it to Anna, I was going to drink it too. If it poisoned me, and I died, I would wake up again. If it just caused me serious problems and hurt me a whole lot, I wouldn’t give it to her. If it did nothing, then there was no reason to give it to her, and I could make up some of the pain medication instead.

That was from a book, and it was a medication that worked well enough to get written down. My mother had made a version of it, and it was almost the exact same thousands of years after, with only a small change for an ingredient that could be replaced with the original.

That was nuts and a sign it was good. Even my copy was likely fine to use without the precise weight of its ingredients.

I waited and cooked. Anna would be home soon, and I would be able to tell her.

I passed the time by talking, just saying words out loud, trying to get myself to say them properly. Training myself.

I could feel the tea acting; it wasn’t painful, but it did cause a tingle and made me feel weird. A bit strange, my movements were lightly slow and I was a bit numb. But that was it. I could walk around, cook, sit and stand. It didn’t make my legs go soft, or give me a blinding headache.

It was probably safe.

I finished cooking while I waited for Anna to come home.

And I waited.

It was when it was rather late in the evening when I was closing the shutters on the front of the building, that I started to get a bit worried.

I got progressively more worried about it.

The fire got low, and I cleared the firepit and put the stone in.

She wasn’t back.

After getting the stone in, I picked up the bag and found the chips.

Oh, I forgot I put these in the bag… Maybe I could sell them? Probably a bad idea. There are necromantic runes on them to hold a soul…

I felt the soul. I felt the one chip that I forgot to break. One chip with one soul still trapped inside the invisible cage of necromantic soul magic.

Oh boy.

“Umm, hello there,” I spoke to the little soul. I quickly picked up the chip and let the soul rest on my hand.

I took the chip out of the bag and brought the bag in one hand and the soul in the other to the table. The chip warbled slightly, it sounded like words, although they were warped and warbled.

I dropped the bag on the table and stood there standing with the warbling chip in my hand.

Can it even hear me? Is it, not a person? No, it can speak, it has to be a person, even if I can’t understand it.

“Sorry I forgot you, little one, let me fix it,” I told the little soul.

I reached in and broke the jade slip.

The warbling changed to a clear voice. It was young, and it was crying as it rested in my hand.

Oh wow, I’m a moron, oh gods, I’ve never been good with kids.

I cradled the soul bringing it up to myself, shushing it like a baby. It, for I couldn’t tell if it was a girl or boy, kept crying as I tried to help the poor thing. I could hear the door open and turned to see Anna.

I must have seemed a crazy person to her. I stood there next to the table, cupping a hand with a little crying flame in it to my chest. Shushing the fire like a baby.

I looked at Anna.

“Anna can explain,” I told her.

She stood there looking confused at me as I returned to shushing the child cupped in my hand.

The kid didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want to force them to go either; that seemed like a faux pass, sending them to the beyond or whatever I did while they were crying.

The others had come of their own volition, and they wanted to go. I felt warm, and they walked on in.

The child was not up to speed on passing gracefully. They didn’t get it, they were also not as relaxed as the others, some of them had been confused, and tired, but they felt me and realized their time was over. Not so much with the crying child.

Meanwhile, Anna looked on at the scene before her in utter confusion.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

“What does it look like?” I asked her in return, “Quieting child.”

The child kept crying. It wasn’t like a living kid crying; there was a limit to the crying. You could only cry so much. The child had no lungs and without them, no limit on how much they could cry.

“Saphine, what child? What are you talking about,” she questioned me.

“Crying child ghost. In my hand. Anna, the thing in hands.” I told her, confused, my tone rising in panic.

All that did was cause her to panic a bit.

“Ghost? Undead? Where? There’s nothing in your hands. I can’t see ghosts.” She told me.

I hushed the child, as it called out for its parents.

“Shhh, it's ok, your parents aren’t here. But I can send you to them!” I told it.

The fire solidified a little, the feeling felt cold, a yawning horrible cold.

The scream turned into a cry of defiance, “NOO!”

I felt the ghost pinch at me, tearing away a tiny piece of me like it had taken a bit. I lost a little of my warmth, a feeling of cold blooming within my chest.

The child swelled in my hands, and it started to nibble on me.