Eight Intertwined

62 - Savior

"Well? How are you feeling now?"

It hadn't taken long after turning in Vanessa for Alfyn to settle down in the home shared by Marlene and her two daughters, and as soon as he was there, he got to work. It only took a few minutes for him to whip up a remedy for the cough that was plaguing Flynn so, and her coughs echoed in his mind as he finished off the concoction. Alfyn had held it up to eye level with a smile once he was done, knowing that this was the way things should have been done in the first place. Vanessa had made a mistake by lying about everything, but he was going to make it right. Her supposedly expensive foreign tincture was simple enough that Alfyn could have made it in his sleep. It showed just how much she was worth when it came to her lie of a creed as an apothecary.

After Alfyn dripped the concoction down Flynn's throat, the girl's coughs immediately started to slow, becoming much more spaced out as her body got used to the foreign ingredients. Flynn waited for a few breathless seconds after the concoction was gone, almost like she expected herself to start coughing again. When she realized that she was in the clear, she nodded up at Alfyn gently. "Better," Flynn murmured simply. 

"Her cough... It's gone!" Marlene exclaimed in shock. Her hands were pressed over her mouth as she tried to hide her surprise, though she was admittedly doing a poor job of it.

Flynn let her fingers come up to rub at her neck, and she looked up at her mother with more energy than Alfyn had seen her with all day. "And my throat... It doesn't hurt anymore," Flynn told her mother softly. 

Alfyn laughed from pure relief at those words as he rose to his feet. He had known that it was going to work, but it was still nice to know that Flynn truly was feeling better given the absolute wreck that the earlier stages of the day had been. The other travelers in the group were standing near the far wall, and Alfyn saw the way all of their shoulders went slack from gratitude that Alfyn had managed to cure Flynn despite everything they had been through.

Alfyn didn't let himself say anything about how concerned he had been for a while though, instead simply putting the empty phial of the tincture back in his bag. "Good to hear it!" he announced, beaming all the way. 

"You saved my daughter's life... How can I even begin to repay you?" Marlene asked, tears starting to well up in her eyes as she looked up to Alfyn. She didn't seem to want to let herself cry as long as her daughters were watching her so intently, but she was on the verge of completely falling apart. Alfyn could see it clear as could be in her eyes. 

"It's on the house. The moss didn't cost me anything, after all," Alfyn told her with a loose shrug. Even if it had taken a bit of gold to get his hands on the ingredients, he knew that he wouldn't have had the heart to charge them either. Alfyn had been saved at one point long ago by an apothecary who didn't ask for payment for all that he had done. Even if Vanessa didn't mean it when she said that she wanted to ease the suffering of others, Alfyn most certainly did, and he wasn't going to let anybody forget it. 

Marlene didn't seem to know what to say, and Alfyn figured that she was looking for a bit of alone time with her daughters. He picked up the last of his ingredients from off the counter where he had been working before starting to clean everything off with a rag from his satchel. Marlene came up behind him and placed her fingers on his shoulder. The action was light as a feather, but Alfyn still felt all of the weight of relief that had found itself a home inside of her body over the last few moments. "How could I have been so wrong?" Marlene whispered, her voice barely audible despite the silence. "You were the true apothecary... Pray forgive my rudeness earlier, good sir."

Alfyn paused for a long moment before shaking his head and dropping the rest of his things away into his bag. He turned to face Marlene with a small smile on his face. "No skin off my nose. Your girl's healthy again--that's all that matters to me," he assured her.