The Magi: Lorna: The Promise of Seeds

[k_a_webb]

Written for LJ user wyld_dandelyon’s prompt: The promise of the seeds sleeping dormant in the ground.

Lorna stopped, looking back at the borders of Magi territory, and couldn’t stop the tears from trickling down her cheeks. The decision was right for her, but she hated leaving behind people she cared about, hated knowing that her half sister would become matriarch, and hated knowing that healing was no longer the most important duty of the Magi. Wiping the tears away, because crying wasn’t going to change anything, she turned her back on a people she no longer felt a part of. She was, and always had been, a healer, so she needed to follow her heart, which told her that her place was with those who needed her help.

During her journeys around the country Lorna had found a small cottage that she could use as a home base. It was far enough away from Magi territory for her to feel safe and close enough for some of the seeds that weren’t harvested to blow there with the wind. She could still remember the day she came across it, just after her fifteenth birthday, because it had been the day she realised that being a healer was more important to her than anything else. Finding the cottage had felt like fate.

The walk to the cottage took Lorna longer than she wanted it to, because she had to keep stopping to wipe the tears away. She told herself, over and over, that she had made the right choice. It was just that there were people she hadn’t wanted to leave behind, people who needed her to train them how to be a real healer, but staying in the poisonous atmosphere of the building she had once called home was draining her. With her gone the Magi would take a different path, thanks to her half sister’s beliefs, that she could have stopped if she’d been able to just stay for a few more years.

Laughing seemed strange, but Lorna couldn’t stop herself. She would never have been matriarch because her half sister wanted it more than Lorna ever had. Maybe there had been a time when all the Magi were healers, and she would have been happy to be the matriarch. It was just hard to imagine. There were healers, one of whom had been her mentor, teaching people who believed that learning to heal was the right path for them to take. Others learnt because it was their duty to.

As Lorna walked into the area surrounding the cottage she looked around herself. Plants surrounded her, most sleeping their way through winter, and she knew that there would be seeds under the ground, waiting until spring to show themselves. In her bag were a selection of seeds she would grow to supplement those that already grew, because she needed a supply of herbs that she wouldn’t be able to collect from the Magi gardens any longer. Now she would have to look after her own garden, grow the herbs she needed to make all the medicines she had been taught, and she was grateful that her mentor had taught her all about growing the herbs.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.