44th of Winter, 517 AV
The kettle on the hearth bubbled and boiled, giving off the strong smell of ginger. The steam from the boiling water made the interior of the lab unseasonably hot, and Satevis was sweating beneath his shirt. He barely seemed to notice, though, tapping at the corner of one of his journal pages with his quill as he tried to put together a timeline of events. Lights and sounds in the sky, footprints in the jungle. Scorch marks on the trees. Dead animals. A body. And today, a red tide.
It was the body that interested him the most. Kalum had mentioned it in passing this morning, looking through some of his own notes while instructing Satevis to prepare gingerroot tea, but Satevis couldn't get it out of his mind. He had written it down in his journal along with the other odd events of Syka, the words flowing from his quill in his native tongue.
A dead body. Humanoid but not human. Oddly colored and wearing strange clothes.
That was the most telling part. If Satevis had to make a theory...and he wasn't sure he had enough to be making a theory at this point...he would have said that the man being here was a sign that there was something waiting for them out in the jungle. Perhaps an entire civilization, or a group of people yet uncontacted. Perhaps they truly weren't alone in Syka. He started scribbling his thoughts down in quick Shiber, but was interrupted by the screech of the kettle, the high-pitched sound drawing him back into reality.
Ah, right. The tea. His apprenticeship. Stomach problems. Red tide.
Satevis quickly shut the journal, getting to his feet. He had a pot already prepared for the tea, with a piece of cloth fixed over the top to act as a strainer. Slowly, careful not to spill anything, Satevis poured the yellowish liquid into the pot. The cloth caught the pieces of gingerroot that he had grated into the pot in the first place. One teaspoon of grated ginger to each cup of water. A simple recipe, to settle stomachs. It was the first actual medicinal concoction that Satevis had had to make. He drained the kettle, setting it aside, and decided to stir in some sugar to make it palatable. Just because it was medicine, it didn't have to burn. Satisfied with his handiwork, he set the lid on the pot and tucked his journal away, promising to go back to his theories later.
For now, there was work to do.
He poured some of the tea into a cup, leaving the pot where it was and stepping out into the Syka sunshine. Kalum Alavarth was outside, in the main, open-air portion of the Panacea, sitting with an older man that Satevis had been introduced to as Tony Swiftwater, Syka's head gardener. The man was pale and had his head down, a bucket close at hand just in case.
"Tell me about these tingles," Satevis heard Kalum say as he approached with the tea. The Akalak's other personality was more clipped than Jansen, more straight to the point, but Satevis had quickly learned that both were extremely capable healers. "Where do you feel them?"
"My fingers mostly," Tony said. "My toes, a little. Sometimes it feels like my lips are numb. They're not too bad."
Kalum frowned, thinking, as Satevis handed Tony the tea. The Drykas man held it in unsteady hands, sipping at it slowly.
Near the entrance to Panacea, pinned up to one of its posts, was a notice, written in Common in large, imposing letters. It read:
The kettle on the hearth bubbled and boiled, giving off the strong smell of ginger. The steam from the boiling water made the interior of the lab unseasonably hot, and Satevis was sweating beneath his shirt. He barely seemed to notice, though, tapping at the corner of one of his journal pages with his quill as he tried to put together a timeline of events. Lights and sounds in the sky, footprints in the jungle. Scorch marks on the trees. Dead animals. A body. And today, a red tide.
It was the body that interested him the most. Kalum had mentioned it in passing this morning, looking through some of his own notes while instructing Satevis to prepare gingerroot tea, but Satevis couldn't get it out of his mind. He had written it down in his journal along with the other odd events of Syka, the words flowing from his quill in his native tongue.
A dead body. Humanoid but not human. Oddly colored and wearing strange clothes.
That was the most telling part. If Satevis had to make a theory...and he wasn't sure he had enough to be making a theory at this point...he would have said that the man being here was a sign that there was something waiting for them out in the jungle. Perhaps an entire civilization, or a group of people yet uncontacted. Perhaps they truly weren't alone in Syka. He started scribbling his thoughts down in quick Shiber, but was interrupted by the screech of the kettle, the high-pitched sound drawing him back into reality.
Ah, right. The tea. His apprenticeship. Stomach problems. Red tide.
Satevis quickly shut the journal, getting to his feet. He had a pot already prepared for the tea, with a piece of cloth fixed over the top to act as a strainer. Slowly, careful not to spill anything, Satevis poured the yellowish liquid into the pot. The cloth caught the pieces of gingerroot that he had grated into the pot in the first place. One teaspoon of grated ginger to each cup of water. A simple recipe, to settle stomachs. It was the first actual medicinal concoction that Satevis had had to make. He drained the kettle, setting it aside, and decided to stir in some sugar to make it palatable. Just because it was medicine, it didn't have to burn. Satisfied with his handiwork, he set the lid on the pot and tucked his journal away, promising to go back to his theories later.
For now, there was work to do.
He poured some of the tea into a cup, leaving the pot where it was and stepping out into the Syka sunshine. Kalum Alavarth was outside, in the main, open-air portion of the Panacea, sitting with an older man that Satevis had been introduced to as Tony Swiftwater, Syka's head gardener. The man was pale and had his head down, a bucket close at hand just in case.
"Tell me about these tingles," Satevis heard Kalum say as he approached with the tea. The Akalak's other personality was more clipped than Jansen, more straight to the point, but Satevis had quickly learned that both were extremely capable healers. "Where do you feel them?"
"My fingers mostly," Tony said. "My toes, a little. Sometimes it feels like my lips are numb. They're not too bad."
Kalum frowned, thinking, as Satevis handed Tony the tea. The Drykas man held it in unsteady hands, sipping at it slowly.
Near the entrance to Panacea, pinned up to one of its posts, was a notice, written in Common in large, imposing letters. It read:
Caution: Red Tide
Do not eat seafood until the tide passes.
Take care while swimming.
Do not swallow seawater.
Watch children and pets.
