Day 3 of Summer, 513
Nyael peered at her plants over the tops of her knees, which she was hugging tightly to her chest. She was sitting on her bed with cups of lukewarm water in front of her, each filled to the brim.
The clamor from the Riverfall denizens streaming up and down the streets obscured the calming sound of the Bluevein River's swift currents.
This was a bad idea, she thought. A terrible idea.
She had heard stories of Riverfall and the different races that inhabited the city, but nothing could prepare her for actually, physically walking through its streets. The first day she arrived, she felt like she was drowning in a sea of bodies of all shapes and colors. And the air was so dry!
Brawny purple men bustled down the streets in a rush to get to work. Shipwrights and sailors yelled obscenities at each other at the docks. Shopkeeps raucously hawked their wares, trying every trick in the book to lure in tourists and Riverfall natives alike. A dashing Akalaks tried his luck at asking her to dinner and another, more brazen one propositioned some rather salacious after-dinner activities with the promise of a warm breakfast the follow morning.
Nyael saw all sorts of races working and gossiping and laughing together. She thought she had spotted a Myrian as well and instinctively sprinted off. It was just so much for Nyael to take in. Where she had earlier been excited to move to a new city, she was no longer sure how she felt. Culture-shocked, that's what she felt now.
She passed by food stalls, breathing in the pungent spices and sweet smell of fresh baked bread. The spices and rich, buttery smells of bread were interrupted by the stale scent of dead fish and bloody meats. She nearly gagged and the sight of their gaping mouth and dead, clouded eyes made her all the more nauseated.
Stumbling past the butcher's shop, she found herself in front of an herbalist stall. Intrigued by the dried herbs hanging by the door, she entered. She had only intended to browse the shop and look at the plants, but the chatty herbalist had manage to upsell her an herbalist toolkit as well as a book, The Native Flora of Riverfall, for a hefty sum of 80 GM. The book, the herbalist had assured Nyael, would be essential in her quest to catalogue and grow plants. While Nyael didn't doubt this, she still felt rather uncertain of the purchase after noticing how light her coin purse had become.
When Nyael reached her cottage, she unpacked the toolkit first thing. In addition to the small pots of varying sizes and the set of cutting tools, the herbalist toolkit came with a sample pack of five seeds. They currently lay in a bed of soil surrounded by the protective shell of the clay pots. Each pot had a label to identify what plant it was carrying. Rosemary, Yarrow, Lavender, Sea Pink, and Daylily.
She loved her small in-door garden and took solace in the ritual of watering them. She even spoke them in Char, although her mother tongue felt and sounded strange above the water.
Nyael had another plant under her care, one that she considered her most precious. Before she left Charbosi, she took a small cutting from a starburst polyp in her aquatic garden to carry a piece of home with her. Most starburst polyps had brown or white polyps sprouting from a purple encrusted base, but hers had green polyps with a touch of white at the center of each polyp. The verdant green contrasted nicely with the rich purple encrusted base. Her patch of starburst polyps had grown robustly, almost threatening to overtake some of the more slower-growing coral in her garden. It was, she assumed, the best coral to try transplanting.
But to her horror, each day the starburst polyps' health deteriorated in the mason jar that she had filled with sand, rocks, and seawater. There were too many factors she hadn't accounted for when creating the new home for her small starburst polyp. She didn't know how to control the temperature of the water or maintain the proper levels nutrients and minerals. Nyael felt awful; she had uprooted this once healthy, happy polyp from its home just so it could rot in stagnant water.
For a while, she used her coral manipulation to coax the coral into staying healthy-looking. She even prayed to Caiyha to bless her coral and keep it alive. Less than two days after arriving in Riverfall, the polyps stopped opening all together and white patches grew on its purple base. It was an ominous sign.
Feeling a bit dry, Nyael took one of the cups and dumped the contents over her head. And, now here she sat on damp bed sheets, staring at what was more or less potted dirt.
She should go out today.
"I should go out today," she confirmed with herself aloud in Char and then again in the Common tongue. "I should go out today."
Eyeing the door, Nyael felt her heartbeat quicken. A glance to the window told her it was late afternoon. Her palms felt clammy and her breath grew shallow. "Maybe tomorrow. Yes, it'll be less sunny tomorrow."
She dumped another cup of water over her head. |
|
by Nyael Atuin on August 29th, 2013, 12:29 am 
