18 – Level 2

Standing outside the house, Alexandra watched the sun rise with Lara and Therion, ready to finally put her workforce to the service of the ones who’d helped her so much. As it turned out, unprocessed Aetherveil was terribly harmful for the liver, which was why Therion and Lara took time to separate and store all its components separately..

Who could have known?

In any case, having a priest of Fanon in the village was handy. After chastising her, and warning her that there were ailments even he could do nothing against, Bamir cast a skill washing her damaged organ.

“Let’s go,” Lara said, nudging Alexandra along.

Therion waved them goodbye and went to take care of his work. Today, he would be planting new Aetherveil seeds in the now empty field.

Lara and Alexandra had another goal in mind.

Gather flowers of ten different species (0/10)

Alexandra smiled and shook her head. Here, in the flower plains of Baleria, she just had to bend down and her hand would stumble upon a new species. That was, if Lara accepted to let her leave Lanterne again.

“I’m going with you,” she’d insisted, upon hearing her quest.

Alexandra shrugged. They wouldn’t have to wander far to complete the quest, anyway.

Lara set a brisk pace through the village. A few early risers were out. Most looked at Alexandra, then looked away.

She kept up the hood that Lara had gifted her to hide her hair, while her hands were gloved.

At the edge of Lanterne, the plains opened up ahead of them, the morning light sitting low and pastel across the flowers. Alexandra stepped off the path and reached for the nearest bloom, a small red one growing in a cluster at her feet.

Lara caught her wrist. “Wait.”

Alexandra threw her a questioning glance.

“Do you know what flower this is?”

“Does it matter?”

“Since I’m with you, it does,” Lara answered. She crouched beside the cluster. “Look at it. What do you see?”

Alexandra crouched beside her. The flowers were small, five petals each, a red so dark it was almost brown at the center, lightening toward the edges. The stems were thin, slightly fuzzy. The leaves grew in pairs, one on each side, each one shaped like a shallow spoon.

“Red flowers,” Alexandra said.

“More specific.”

“Small red flowers. Dark in the middle, lighter at the edges. Fuzzy stems.”

“Good.” Lara reached out and pinched a leaf between her fingers, then held them under Alexandra’s nose.

She pulled back. “Bitter.”

“Very.” Lara rubbed her fingers together, the leaf staining them faintly yellow. “The smell gets stronger when you crush it. Now look at where it’s growing.”

Alexandra looked. The cluster sat in a shallow dip in the ground, sheltered on three sides by taller grass. “Low ground. Shade.”

“It avoids direct sun. You’ll almost never find it on an open slope.” Lara stood. “What do you think it does?”

Alexandra considered the smell, the coloring, the yellow stain. “Something medicinal? I don’t know.”

“A good guess for most plants. It’s called Numbcrown. The petals, dried and ground, can be mixed into a poultice for joint pain. Muscle pain too, though less effective.” Lara brushed her fingers on her trousers. “Farmers use it a lot. Especially older ones. Though with Bamir, we don’t need it as much as other villages in the plains.”

“Why doesn’t Bamir use it?”

“He has skills that work better and cost him nothing.” Lara glanced at her. “But if you’re ever somewhere without a healer, and someone is hurting, you harvest the petals only. Not the stem, not the leaves. Dry them before you grind them, or the poultice won’t bind properly.”

Alexandra looked back at the cluster. The same flower she’d been about to pull up by the roots without a second thought.

“How do you harvest it without damaging it?”

Lara crouched again. She pinched a stem just below the flower head between her thumb and forefinger, and twisted once, clean, leaving the stem intact. The flower came away without resistance. “Always leave the stem. It’ll grow back. Pull the whole thing and it won’t.”

She handed the flower to Alexandra.

Alexandra turned it over. Up close the petals were slightly waxy, the dark center dense with tiny stamens. It smelled like nothing from this angle. Only the crushed leaf had given it away.

“Why are you teaching me?”

Lara stared. “You’ll poison yourself to death if I don’t.” She smiled. “Furthermore, I have always wanted a student, but those things are common knowledge here.” She leaned and whispered to her ear. “I have a skill quest.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Then,” Alexandra said, smiling. “Let’s continue.”

Lara moved deeper into the field, eyes low, scanning the ground. She stopped beside a cluster of pale yellow blooms growing in a tight spiral around a single thick stem.

“This one.”

Alexandra crouched. The petals were almost translucent, tissue thin, the center a deep orange that bled outward. No smell. The leaves were long and narrow, serrated at the edges.

“Serrated leaves,” she said. “Translucent petals. No smell.”

“Good. It’s called Sunthread. The stem, boiled, produces a dye. Orange, if you add an acidic base. Yellow otherwise.” Lara moved on before Alexandra had fully stood. “Don’t eat any part of it.”

Twenty meters further, half hidden beneath a sprawl of bell flowers, a low mat of tiny white blooms, each one barely the size of a thumbnail, clustered so densely they looked like foam.

“Foamwort,” Lara said, not stopping. “Completely harmless. Bees love it. Farmers plant it at field edges to encourage pollination.”

Alexandra looked at it as she passed. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She picked one and caught up to Lara, who had already found the next one. A single tall stalk, knee high, topped with a drooping purple bloom, its petals curling inward.

“Don’t touch this one.”

Alexandra stopped. “Why?”

“It’s called Shepherd’s Hook. The pollen causes skin irritation, and if you get it in your eyes you’ll be blind for two days.” Lara crouched and studied it without touching it. “The root, however, processed correctly, is worth more than everything Therion and I made last season.”

“Have you processed it?”

“No. Neither of us has the skill for it yet.” She smiled. “Maybe sometime in the next few years.”

Alexandra filed that away and kept walking.