The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

There were times when Callum wished he hadn’t followed Lorna. Leaving everything he knew behind had been surprisingly easy at first. It had been an adventure and Lorna was… she was amazing then and still was, even after travelling around the country for over twenty years. Everywhere they went there were people who needed help, whether that was medicines, a dose of healing energy, or both, because the Magi, who had once been a force for good, had changed under the rule of the new matriarch. No one had the same respect they’d had for the Magi when they were truly a group of healers.

Instead people respected the travelling healers, who were Magi but had left behind the new rules and were seen as an entirely different group of people. Lorna and Callum were just two of a growing number, but they were the first. It was thanks to Lorna’s collection of seeds that there were plants all over the country for the travelling healers to gather, because she’d spent their first winter turning a run-down old cottage into a place she could start off some of the more delicate herbs. For Callum it had been the hardest time and some nights he’d thought seriously about running back to his family and begging for their forgiveness.

Cold nights in winter reminded him of that period, and they were still hard for him, but the years had made him realise how important they both were. Without them, without the time Lorna had spent thinking about the future and the hard work they’d both done to create gardens everywhere they could, without those tiny little plants that had become big plants everyone could use, there wouldn’t be travelling healers all over the country, doing the work the Magi turned down, and he was always going to be proud of being a part of that. Even when Lorna had him kneeling down under a huge bush looking for a tiny little herb she needed to make a certain medicine.

Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair, trying not to think of where they were going to be travelling to. News had reached them of an illness that the Carne were facing and their own healers hadn’t been able to combat. That was followed by rumours of the disappearance of a Carne prince and the argument he’d had with his father not long before. Callum had never believed that the Magi should withhold help from anyone, but he wasn’t sure about travelling into Carne land.

Lorna didn’t have any worries at all. They needed her help, so she was going to give it, because she didn’t think that any of the new Magi, as she called them, would walk away from their matriarch in order to help a race of people who had once held their ancestors captive. She’d told him that when they’d spoken, but Callum wasn’t so sure. Once their entire race had been healers, before either of them had been born, and slowly they’d split into two different groups. The healers, like Lorna, and the Magi, and he didn’t doubt that there were still healers within the Magi who would leave to help the Carne.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Based on the prompt hydrangeas from dreamwidth user clare_dragonfly.

This is a fantasy story. Hydrangea flowers are toxic so please don’t attempt to make the cough medicine from them.

Making a simple cough medicine was something any healer could do. It was one of the first things they were taught to make, when the first hydrangea flowers were harvested in the spring after the trainee healer’s sixth birthday. When the trainees turned fifteen they would begin to learn about the other powers that a healer had but until then their time was spent memorising the recipes for hundreds of medicines. A cough medicine could include different ingredients for each type of cough that was known about.

Lorna was busy making a cough syrup for people with sore throats. She enjoyed having a chance to spend some time actually working, rather than having to learn how to be the matriarch from her mother. Every day it just got harder to believe that she really would become the leader of her people, that she would have to marry and have a daughter to follow in her footsteps. Thoughtfully she chopped up the petals, stopping to stir the mixture occasionally so it wouldn’t burn, trying to imagine what it would be like to sit in the matriarch’s chair.

It was something she could easily see her younger half sister in. She believed the same things that their mother did, especially about the Carne and how they shouldn’t be helped because of what had happened before. There were times when Lorna wondered how she was related to them. Maybe it was her father she took after but she would never know because he had died when she was six months old.

Brushing her hair off of her face she tried to focus on cutting the petals into perfect strips. It didn’t actually matter because they’d be boiled down and any remaining bits would be sieved out, but having pride in everything she did was something that her first mentor had taught her. Even a cough medicine should be made to the best of her ability. Someone would be taking it to soothe their cough and it was that person who was important. A cough medicine could be weaker or stronger depending on how well the petals boiled down.

“Lorna,” a voice said from beside her, making her jump, “I got the mint leaves.”

“Thank you, Callum,” she replied, turning to smile at him.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something more important?”

She gently took the mint out of his hands. “This is important.”

“It’s just cough medicine.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not important. Everything a healer does is important, whether it’s making a simple medicine or doing a full healing on someone close to death.”

Smiling at him she turned back to the cutting board. The mint leaves went to one side while she finished cutting the hydrangea petals. When she heard the door close she knew that Callum had left and she couldn’t help wondering what he was being taught by his mentor. She knew that none of the mentors she’d had after the first one left had put so much effort into teaching her that everything she did, everything she made, was important.

Originally posted at dreamwidth.org as kajones_writing.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.