Eight Intertwined

125 - Herb

H'aanit pushed open the door to Susanna's home carefully. Susanna had taken to preparing a few supplies on the table, setting out a mortar and pestle along with a few other ingredients for some unidentified blend. She looked up with a smile when she realized H'aanit had returned. "There she is. Found the herb of grace, did you, child?" Susanna asked.

"I did," H'aanit confirmed as she held up the herbs she had gathered. The collection was far from being neat, but as far as H'aanit was concerned, it didn't have to be. As long as she was able to give the herbs to Susanna, matters of organization didn't mater.

"Here, give them to me. It needs to brew for a spell before it'll work right." Susanna extended one hand toward H'aanit, and all of a sudden, the reason for the mortar and pestle became clear. It was best presented as a blend of some kind, and Susanna was more than happy to put it together.

H'aanit nodded as she handed over the herbs. "Thanke thee."

Susanna sat down behind her table and gestured for the travelers to sit on the cushions lining the floor. Primrose eased herself to the ground carefully beside Alfyn, and the apothecary took to wrapping her leg up. She was in better condition than she had been previously thanks to the power of healing magic, but Alfyn still wanted to take a look at her wound. He hummed to himself before handing Primrose a small bottle of some kind of elixir, no doubt to soothe her pain. He kept one eye on Susanna's work though, unable to hold back his curiosity about what the seer could make with the herb of grace.

Susanna sprinkled in a few other ingredients before she finally broke the silence once again. She reached for her pestle. "So... How did it feel to slay your first dragon?"

The room froze with those words. Primrose looked up at Susanna in shock, and Alfyn stopped wrapping her leg. H'aanit could do nothing but stare, and it took her a few seconds to come back down to earth from the sudden surprise. "Thou knewest it was there?" H'aanit asked in poorly masked surprise.

Susanna didn't offer a response in words, at least not at first. Instead, she just allowed herself to laugh the same way she had so many times during their earlier conversations. "Listen, dear. If you couldn't slay that dragon, you wouldn't have a cinder's hope in a blizzard of surviving an encounter with Redeye," Susanna replied in the place of an actual answer to H'aanit's question. 

H'aanit shook her head and let out a small snort. "Thou art not a woman to coateth her words in sugar, art thou?" she murmured. 

"Never seen much point in it, my dear," Susanna told her simply. She added one more ingredient to the mix before she poured the contents of the mortar into a pot that hung over the fireplace. She wiped her hands off on one another and settled back down into her seat with a playful smile on her face. "Now, why don't you tell me about that dragon while we wait for the herb to brew?"

H'aanit nodded. "As thou wishest."

And just like that, H'aanit told the story from beginning to end. She had started off sharing the story as frankly and honestly as possible, but the longer she talked, the more steam she was able to gain. Soon enough, it felt like she was telling one of Z'aanta's stories, at least to some degree. H'aanit still liked the truth a lot more than Z'aanta, but as far as she was concerned, there was no harm in using his techniques to get the story out there. 

The rest of the travelers were happy to offer their own input along the way too. Tressa complained about what it had been like to be sent flying back into the blizzard, and Primrose remarked on the pain in her leg. Alfyn had finished wrapping her wound entirely by the time the story was finished, and when Primrose tested her leg by putting some weight on it, she nodded to herself. Alfyn had done his work well, not that any of them had expected anything different.