[Flashback] Peril of the Rainbow (Solo)

[Erato]

Flashback: Spring, 209 AV

“Chammomile in drink for calm
Thyme oil extracted for cleaning
Willow chewed to relief the pain
Hot coltsfoot boiled for a weary throat
Passionflower tea to soothe the nerves
Marshmallow root for the sick in stomach
Aloe for a burn that stings
Wort extract to soothe healing wound
Ground ginger root for inward irritation
Calendula salve for those small cuts and bruises
Spearmint in hot drink to relieve a cold
Holy basil and motherwort to heal the mother
Comfrey for the bones and sprains
Horsetail tinctures to ease the flow
Shepherd’s Purse compress to heal a bleed
Marigold rubbed to soothe the head and teeth
Sage to invigorate mind and throat
Sorrel heals the sore stomach and fever
Honeysuckle oil in effleurage to soothe
Yet many more exist to aid misery
Such uses only a healer can see
Apply them wisely, treat with care
Someday a life you may spare”

Erato softly recited the song as she moved about the garden, her fingers itching for her lyre rather than the herbs. It was odd—despite the dry and factual nature of the “song,” it held many memories for the young healer. Certainly, the words and tune was not her most creative work, but it had served many years of rote memorization to learn the vast variety of treatments from her master. Those had been more bitter days when the sight of blood startled her gentle eyes and the cries of the injured wounded a poetic heart.

But those days were past now. It was difficult to say if Erato’s heart had simply become more hardened, or perhaps found a deeper truth and even peace in the binding of wounds. It was more than compresses and stitches, more than tears and pleadings: to heal a broken body also required the healing of a soul. Even the children, upset by the sting of a bee, had learned something more about the world and feared it. To remove the pain was to give them greater hope, and with any luck, greater care for themselves. Healing also extended past physical injury and even birthing, bringing harmony to the mind and body in one continuous cycle.

That was why Erato kept her own garden near the busy port. The healing quarters themselves were small, a few rooms with clean cotton beds (Erato positively refused to ruin silk covers with blood) and shelf upon shelf of tinctures, books, and dried herbs. Her patients could never quite attribute any one scent to the place, for there was always a myriad of strong smelling medicines—everything from mint to ginger lingering about. Some amused locals had even begun to say that merely a whiff of the place could cure a cold.

And as for the books—Erato was a notorious collector, but not of the sort that ought to be expected. There were a few hefty novels full of dry plant catalogues and recorded medicinal recopies, as well as an assorted collection of field journals and some borrowed tomes from the Opal Temple’s library, but also littered among these were some plainly English novels. Titles such as, “Into the Sunset,” and, “Kiss Under the Conifers,” were plainly written in ink on leather covers, just a few particular reads that Erato had received from a tourist or two in return for some herbal tea and health advice. It had started first with a rather beaten book, “And Her Hair was Gold,” and the collection of odd romance books had since expanded over the years, tucked away in discreet corners of the place to be enjoyed at quiet hours.

If one indulgent trait could be attributed to the healing muse, that collection was it. In all other ways, she preferred practicality and simplicity, having a place for each particular kind of remedy and each particular kind of patient. Even her garden did not follow the traditional art of konti style, with each bed of herbs planted in neat boxes, lined and labeled for quick use. There were no flowers grown here that did not serve some greater purpose than ambience. Some of the visitors thought it a shame that she did not take greater care to make the garden’s appearance more pleasing, as it would “make for such a lovely hideaway for the injured, for even insects avoid the purity of the place.” But Erato was never one to be swayed by the whims of others.

“The reason this garden is so pure,” Erato would reply, “has nothing to do with beauty. Aphids and beetles, flies and ants do not care if a flower looks nice beside a tree or if the yellow compliments the green. They care for taste: it is the nasturtium and parsley that drives them away. Not all remedies for infection are pretty, but they are used because they work. Would you then hamper my work for the sake of a petty distraction?”

And so the comments about the garden were never long winded. Patients, could, however, go on about the plainness of the healing shelter. Erato was its only permanent resident, keeping a small bedroom to herself at the back corner of the building. There were only three other rooms to accommodate patients: two small private rooms for birthing and serious ailments, and one large room that acted as both a lounge and a healing center. Each had cupboards and shelves filled with supplies and herbs relevant to their tasks, the largest room serving only as a temporary shelter for those with minor injuries.

Naturally, the complaints did not center at all on the perfect functionality of a former fish storehouse turned seamlessly into a healing centre, but on its plainness. There were no decorative tapestries or mosaics, not even shells or native plants to add some sense of nature. The sturdy stone walls had only white paint as a flourish and hanging herbs for decoration—wispy dry things that were constantly being stuck up and plucked off for use in salves and tinctures. Even the beds and benches were plain, white cotton sheets whose only attractive quality was their cleanliness. Nowhere, the patients complained, could one feel at home in such a place.

That was just fine with Erato—as far as she was concerned, this was her home and no one else’s. The only running water in the place was a small fountain in her room, which had a small glass window that overlooked the sea. Her own furnishings were also very simple, being a bed with light linen sheets, a simple dresser for clothes, and a desk at which she wrote her own works. There was also a door in the room that led outside, which had formerly been the packing ground for fish crates. It was now her humble herb garden, extending down a worn stone fence and ending at a small pond ripe with watercress and lilies.

Erato considered the place to be her own, though it was subject to the whims of the community. It was Erato’s former master who had truly established the place and started a real healing center immediately available at the port, and she had done it with the help and consent of the locals. To everyone, it had sounded much more convenient to have a healing centre immediately nearby, though serious cases and training always carried further to the Opal Temple. Tourists could expect simple herbal remedies to please and relax, and the konti who fished, farmed, and crafted within the port community could quickly visit to soothe a cut or a sprain inflicted by daily work.

Thus, the community gave up an old fishing storehouse that had lost its current use due to a larger, newer structure being built to accommodate a need for larger space and functionality. Since Melina, Erato’s master and former student of the Opal Temple, had been mingling with the port’s community at the time, she had seen in the storehouse’s abandonment a new opportunity. It was not an enterprise of wealth, but a teaching opportunity for her apprentice and a profound means to give back to the community. So the fish stench and scattered scales had been swept out, harpoon and net racks switched out for beds, and herbs stocked on the shelves instead of fish.

Before that time, the young Erato had learned of medicine in Melina’s own home, where she prepared tinctures and cared for a few sickly konti within the pleasant and artful city of Mura. She had never spoken much of why she choose to leave the temple, but sometimes spoke of a “call beyond a prison of knowledge.” Tiring of books, Melina had dived right into practice, encouraging and building self healing wherever people were willing to learn.

That was why Erato knew she should have seen it coming. One day Melina simply announced that it was time for her to leave the konti and share healing with the world—pretty shrines and pampered patients were not challenge enough for a healer who wished to reach out to those in true agony. What happened to her after that… who could say? Melina’s last letter came nearly four years after the establishment of the healing centre in the port, speaking of superstitious and useless doctors among other races and criticizing communities for not providing better facilities for their sick. It was all her rudimentary complaints and hopes, the same remedies and patients, and then all of it had suddenly stopped. One last normal letter to her pupil, then nothing.

It was all speculation now, and the worries and wonders of Melina’s whereabouts lost interest as time passed. The healer’s sisters did grow saddened and vexed without news of their sister, but even their visits to Erato to enquire after letters and news had become slack until they were mere formalities. Either Melina had forgotten her people, or something terrible had happened. There was no way to know without searching the mainland, though some konti visionaries had professed that the woman was, at the very least, still alive.

Such things do not matter now. Yet Erato found her jaw to be slack and her cheeks pale, a deep sigh escaping from her chest. She dearly missed Melina’s company, Melina who was practical and understanding and scholarly. People had never questioned the validity of her skills or her healing centre when her presence had graced the simple rooms, commanding sickness away with her wisdom and strength. A few days more, and it would be Melina’s 152nd birthday. Alive or no, Erato had no means of providing congratulations or gifts, but had started her own ritual of making Melina’s favorite honey rosehip tea, which they had done in days past.

But that was not her purpose in wandering into her garden today. She quietly made her way to one of the more colorful flower patches, stooping down to touch the petals of a rather exotic blossom. The flower had bright petals of white and a center of many purple tendrils, as well as small bulbs that protruded out of the radial ring of color. Even its smell was soothing to the woman, who carefully plucked off a few blossoms and leaves from the plants. She cradled the fresh materials in her hand as she made her way back inside, moving into the main room to continue preparing the herbs.

The lounge was the airiest of all the rooms, having eight windows that peered out into the port and surrounding woods. Bright light fell upon three plain beds rested against one wall and two benches set against the opposing wall. Between these was a desk and working table, and above everything were hooks and ropes supporting an array of drying herbs. She glanced only at the working bench as she approached, moving straight to the clay mortar and pestle.

Grinding herbs was actually rather soothing to the healer. The steady, circular motion crunched the leaves and flowers together into one uniform mixture, giving off a flowery aroma as the powder was made. Once finished, she carefully sifted the raw powder into prepared tea bags, tying them and sitting them into their own separate basket. Fresh passionflower tea had become rather popular with the tourists, who often sought relaxation. There had been some requests for massages as well, but Erato had made it clear that such practices were strictly for healing purposes only.

Effleurage could help the pain of a stingray sting when used above the wound (which was generally on the foot), and gentle head massages helped relieved stressed headaches with techniques like acupressure. She didn’t appreciate the idea of using it to entertain, particularly tourists… male tourists. Erato certainly didn’t want to attract them. It would be too awkward, she thought, particularly because she had never really approached one. They had looked really rather… dirty, for the most part, those sailors that came off of their ships covered in salt water and sea grime. Wealthier men came in linens and silks, carrying an exotic scent from some land far away. Erato was enchanted with such creatures from a distance, watching them mill about the port with fond smiles at the konti.

That was… also something she feared. The feelings that arose in her heart and throat, the warm flush she felt arise in her cheeks—surely it couldn’t be time yet! She was still very young, and the thrum of danger was always present when she gazed from afar with an undesired longing. Surely she did not need a man to complete her, men who cursed and fought and enslaved her race on the mainland. They seemed so… uncultured in comparison to the fine clothes and creative works of her people, but she could not deny that they had an elegance of their own. Some of the men carried themselves with a strong and elegant gait, their deep and calm voices alluring when they spoke or sang. They were also more muscularly defined than the women of the island, some with darker skin and darker eyes. But would it ever be worth the risk?

It had driven her mother crazy. Erato had never felt particularly attached to her mother, but they did look out for one another. Rather than pursuing deeper training into divination or even poetry, Erato had chosen to follow the healing arts. She had no gnosis mark of the healing and thus could not be a serious member of the Opal Order, but one generous teacher of the temple, Melina, had already left to start healing work, and had been very willing to take on a simple apprentice who would help with the menial chores it required. Erato had been eight years old when she first began the work, but soon came to find Melina to be a powerful mother figure. She was sensitive to the pain of others, and that was indeed her gift from Avalis: she knew the physical pain of another without any spoken words or appearances.

On the other hand, Erato’s mother, Lilly, seemed to have a different sense as to what healing was. Her gift from Avalis had been a visionary sense of loneliness: she could see the image of what another person longed for the most. Erato had the feeling that her mother had not particularly liked what she saw in her, for the majority of her lectures had always centered on self control and gratitude.

“Are you not content to stay with your own family?” Lilly had protested after hearing her young daughter’s resolve to study under Melina. “You have a wonderful gift for music, my daughter. Even while you were in the womb, I could see that you desired to hear my voice, not just in speech, but in the lullabies I used to sing to you. And then when you were old enough to speak words of your own, you wanted to sing, toddling about as young ones do and laughing at wind chimes because you so loved the sound. I have given you an instrument of your own choosing, a lyre which your nimble fingers tease so delightfully—why now do you choose to dirty your hands with herb hunting and follow after one who stains her hands with blood rather than resin?”

“Melina says I can help people.” Yet even then Erato had known she had not spoken truth. She had been bored of Mura’s society, desiring to wander deeper into the woods and to discover the secrets of the sea. Healing then had been an excuse to wander from the pearly halls where artists and musicians buried their heads in their own fictional worlds and find a reality of her own. Her tingling sense of danger did warn her of wandering too far, but her heart was too restless to be content in merely sitting and singing. Lilly had known this.

“Help people? My daughter, what gift have you for healing? When did you take interest in acupuncture and wound stitching? What gift from the gods has pledged you to this cause so suddenly? Look deeply into your heart Erato; do not rashly act on desire when you do not know to what end it will lead you.”

Erato had replied rather simply to that, and her words became the basis of disagreement between mother and child ever since: “I know what I want.” Slowly, however, after Melina’s passing, Erato was loosing direction again. Even after years of study, her work was still deemed amateur and did not begin to compare to the healers of the Opal Temple. Instead of musical colleagues, she found herself spending most of her time alone with her lyre, pondering if there was some manner of cure for the pain she felt. There was so much she had learned to fear, so much uncertainty that came from always knowing the presence of danger, yet her heart always desired to expand, to know the world beyond her own and partake of its beauty. As was an old konti proverb, “How can one view the wonder of a rainbow without being touched by the breath of sea and sky mist?”