Fait Accompli: An Unwilling Tutelage

[Seperallis]

Lesson 2: Fundamentals of Magic

True to her word, Nevina was sat downstairs in the Cozy Canker's dining hall, sipping on the warm remains of her favorite albidium root infusion just as the first feeble rays of day poked through the deep violet dawntime horizon. A certain little red squirrel lay sprawled upon her lap in a most convincing display of gruesome and dramatic murder, were the façade not betrayed by the occasional flick of a tufted ear tip, mouth agape and nose twitching with every inaudible squirelly snore.

Nevina's lips curled into a smile at their edges as she gazed distractedly into her empty cup, her mind drifting somewhere between now and nowhere by the time Elke would eventually find fit to make herself present. The wanderer seemed on first appearance to be in a simpler mood this morning, brighter of attitude and chipper of posture...relief, perhaps? That would probably be an apt feeling to have when one no longer feels the weight of possibly not seeing next day's sunrise due to an unfortunate wailing of claws and gnashing of teeth.

"Come, eat. The road will be long, and I regret we will not pack as well a variety for it." Apparently not as entirely spaced-out as appearances let on, she set her cup upon the table and motioned Elke to a prepared place beside her, where an as-yet untouched plate of various fruits, toasts, and cheeses awaited someone with the appetite to claim them. "I am sorry, I did not know what you might enjoy."

Before her, on the table and just beyond a plate of abandoned toast crumbs, sat a tiny thumb-sized crystal beaker, a rust-colored & quicksilver-laced concoction swirling slowly within and of its own volition.

"'Falulf's Blood'... I never thought I'd have need of it," Nevina offered, a name one might recognize as an ancient folk remedy for lycanthrope victims, a vile-smelling (and tasting, should one so dare) brew of rue, vervain, Hawthorn root, and Valerian petals; the last ingredient caused much of the previous evening's labors as the elf spent much of her night foraging around the trunks of the local forest's great ash trees outside the town's crumbling walls, as Valerian only ever blooms in the night, and she wasn't about to kill another man with its unflowered bud, no sir!

Preparations to leave the vial in Forlag's care and the agreed-upon payment already transpired the previous morning. Instructions, too: how to prepare the bandages of the creature's victims with the potion, where best to add the remainder to the town's well water, directions to not drink from the river...all of which the old tree-rat man-thing dismissively passed off as so much information he "naturally" already knew. Of course he would, that's just how eccentric old squirrel-men are; you know the type.

Forlag grunted in protest at the new morning commotion - such as a squirrel could grunt - and snorted amid snores as he drowsily rolled himself into a coiled red poofball of fluff atop his new lap-cushion, a much more comfortable position by which to continue his nutty dreams.