Solo Easing Symptoms

[Ari'Ellin]

85th Spring, 521AV

It was later than usual when Ari’Ellin woke up and she spent the time before she left for work running around panicking, trying to gather everything she liked and gently stroking Pebbles before she turned and ran out of her house, running across Sharai peak and then across the sky glass bridges until she finally found herself at the
Healing Hands, wheezing and coughing from exertion as she realised that trying to run all the way was a bad idea.

She spent a few minutes just breathing and trying to catch her breath before she entered the shop, nodding at Remus and smiling at them before walking into the back room to see Kita with some sort of device made of glass with two flasks and a glass tube connecting them together.

“What is that?” she asked, curious about the thing.
“It’s an Alembic for philtering. We use it to distil different compounds from things. You should have a look into philtering. I think the academy does some classes?” Kita suggested and Ari grinned slightly.
“For philtering? Academy... okay!” Ari’Ellin nodded and smiled slightly, making notes to look into the academy to learn a little about philtering. “What need today?” she offered and Kita hummed.
“Well, we have some fresh leaves that need tying together and hanging up to dry. Just group them together, maybe nine or ten of them, and tie the stems together, okay?” the woman said, gesturing to some baskets of leaves in the corner of the room. “There’s mostly fennel so focus on that for now, okay?” Kita asked and Ari’Ellin nodded, practically skipping to the baskets and looking into them, seeing the green plants.

There was thick pale green, almost white, stem, and from the stem branched off slightly smaller stems that then had small wiry looking leaves coming from them. The plant looked distinctive and it was one that Ari had seen in a handful of gardens before, the owners claiming that they used it in cooking. She’d never considered what else it could be used for, and she’d never found out the name of the plant before.

Nodding to herself, she picked up one of the stems, finding it attached to a group of about six stems by a spherical shaped version of the stems.
Humming she glanced around, finding a sharp pair of scissors on one of the shelves and she began to carefully cut the stems from the ball, making sure the cuts were as close to the sphere as she cut get it.
Soon the six stems were freed from the ball and she grabbed another set of connected stems, carefully cutting them away from the connecting ball and then setting the stems aside.

She counted the stems, separating nine of them from the rest and setting them to the side and grabbing a length a string, checking its length and then humming softly, using the scissors to cut it down to around six inches in length. In her mind she was certain that six inches would be just right to tie the stems together.

Word Count515

[Ari'Ellin]

Humming softly to herself, she lay the length of string along the edge of the table and picked up the selection of stems that she wanted to use, use her hands to try to level the ends of the stems before laying them down, perpendicularly on top of the length of string.

She grabbed both ends of the string and wrapped them around the stems, wrapping around them three or four times until they seemed secure and tying them tightly in place.

She picked up the stem by the edge of the thread, holding it an inch or two from her work surface to make sure nothing would fall, before one of the stems of fennel from the bundle, causing the others to loosen and fall as well.
She couldn’t help but frown to herself as she shook her head, untying her knot and laying the string down on the edge of the table again.

She looked at the stems again, this time opting to see if using just six stems would work better and she chose six of the stems, setting the others to the side as she levelled the stems and lay them down on top of the string again, wrapping the string tightly around the stems again, this time managing to wrap it five times before she tied it off.

This time when she picked it up it seemed to be much more secure and none of the fennel stems managed to escape.

Nodding to herself, she cut several more lengths of the string and cut more stems of fennel, gathering them into bunches of six and tying the bunches up with a length of string until there was no more fennel in the baskets, instead a few other leaves that she couldn’t identify yet.

Now that the fennel was tied into bunches, Ari cut a few more lengths of string. These ones were around eight inches, and there was one for every bunch of fennel that she’d tied. Calmly, she picked up one bunch and one length of string. She threaded the string through the stalks of fennel, just below the initial string, and lifted it into the air, seeing how the fennel hung downwards and the two pieces of string held it together. She tied the two lose ends together and glanced around.

“There’s hooks just under that shelf… there.” Kita said softly, pausing to gesture to the right shelf and Ari nodded thankfully, smiling as she did so. She quickly made her way to the shelf and hung the fennel from the hook before returning to the others and tying them the same way, tying all of them before carrying them over to the hooked shelf and hanging them there to dry.

“How long will take dry?” she questioned, her eyes looking to Kita. “And what fennel do?” she hummed as she questioned the older woman, her head tilted in curiosity as she waited to learn from the woman, her uncertainty of the common language briefly fading enough to allow her to feel less insecure. “What fennel use in?”

Word Count515

[Ari'Ellin]

“We’ll check how much has dried every day or so. In this weather it’ll be around two weeks though.” Kita explained and Ari’Ellin nodded in response.

“How we know when dry?” Ari questioned, her voice soft and quiet as she tilted her head waiting for Kita to answer.

“It won’t be a flexible anymore. When you try to bend it it won’t really bend and eventually it’ll just snap. After that we’ll harvest the little fronds from it and store those in a jar.” Kita explained and Ari nodded. “As for what fennel is for, it’s good for digestion. If someone is having indigestion or cramps they can take a mix of fennel and a few other herbs like ginger, make a tea from it, and then drink it and they should be okay soon. It isn’t the strongest though, so I’d never recommend just using fennel. Instead mix it with some ginger, mint, chamomile. Herbs and plants like that.”

Ari’Ellin nodded interested more in what the woman had to say, though soon it came that the woman had finished.

“What else need doing?” Ari’Ellin asked and Kita hummed thoughtfully.

“I want to extract some essences from a few plants later, but that’ll take some preparation. Can you take a look at those Calendula’s over there. Sort through them and make sure none of them are rotting, then just rinse them thoroughly. Get rid of any dirt and pests. Sometimes there’s little insects all over them, and I don’t want anything of them in this essence.” the woman said, her tone sounding slightly annoyed as she spoke of the insects and Ari nodded, quickly rushing to the pot of Calendula’s and beginning to search through them.

The flowers had beautiful, vibrant orange petals that were long and very thin. The petals were attached to a darker orange centre that was covered in dark dots that would have developed into seeds if the flowers were still attached to the plants.

She sorted through them first separating the more perfect flowers from the ones with uneven colourings, and oddly coloured spots. Then once the pristine flowers were separated, she took the time to wash those flowers ensuring they were free from any dirt or insects, before she turned her attention back to the less desirable flowers.

It was possible that the variances in the colour were caused by dirt, and so she rinsed the flowers in water a few times and then started sorting through them again. She managed to find a few handfuls of flowers that looked fine once the dirt had been washed off them, though some were still dubious.

Some had patches of petal that were rotting away to blacked stumps. Others seemed to have been tainted with something else and had a sticky, reddish coating to them that rinsing hadn’t taken off from them. Then a handful of them had had the central seed holding section damaged somehow and most of the petals had wilted to the point that Ari’Ellin doubted that even Kita would be able to extract anything useful from them.

Word Count515 Words