Work Text:
The sounds of glass clinking, liquids bubbling, and fires burning fill the air. Bundles of dried fragrant flowers, bottles of acrid fluids, and vials of all manner of spices and herbs lined the shelves in the busy workshop, meticulously organized and labeled in an ancient language. Sitting at a desk, a blue scaled dragoness dressed in dark blue jeans and a gray long sleeved shirt would be holding her head in her clawed hands, slowly running fingers over her pulsing temples to relax a growing headache. She’d sigh and pick up an alchemical array from the stack papers in front of her and held it in the air and stared at it, as if glaring and squinting at it long enough would intimidate the runes into making sense. After a few minutes, she drops the charade and gets up from her seat. Her research would have to wait until later, when her partner would be back from her latest adventure. Right now, work needed to be done. Placing the paper back onto the table, she goes over to a small standing desk plastered with stacks of small paper notes, each one a set of orders from towns, and picks up an order she knew was due later in the day. This one was a mother asking for something to ease the swelling of her child's broken ankle. She shrugged. The small human would be fine in a couple months, but anything to make the short lived ones time easier is worth it to them.
She taps her clawed foot against the stone floor, lost in thought for a moment, then takes the order over to a cork board stuffed with nailed outbound orders for the week and adds it to the growing mess. Sorting to be done for another time she told herself, the books didn't need done for another month. She moves to the wall of dried flowers and runs a finger through them. She knows they hold a great many uses, some digestive aids, others aphrodisiacs. The one she sought was known as comfrey, a long, green stemmed plant with delicate drooping blue and purple flowers and large ovoid leaves. Finding the bundle she was looking for, she finds a centralized workstation in the room that has her compounding tools and a built in water basin, and selects a bowl and her trusty marble mortar and pestle. Laying out her supplies in an orderly fashion to know where everything was and in reach, she takes a claw and slips it underneath the bundle twine and pulls, slicing the thread. Separating the plants out, she begins to meticulously sever the roots, leaves, and flower heads from each one, being careful to keep the flowers and stems away from the leaves and roots. Gathering up a handful of the roots and leaves together, she puts her mortar and pestle to use, beginning to pound the plant parts into a pulp, dipping her off hand into the water basin every now then to scoop a small bit of water into the mixture to change the consistency. Eventually satisfied with the mixture, she empties it into the bowl and grabs the next handful, repeating the process, and would go on for a couple hours doing so.
Finally finished, she shakes her hands to rid them of stiffness, then clutches her right wrist to rotate it in circles, eventually getting a satisfying pop as well as relief in her hand. She may be functionally immortal from being a dragon monster and some alchemical misadventures, but boy does that not prevent arthritis from setting in. Nodding to herself after loosening her joints, she walks over to a cabinet of darkened brown and green glass bottles, selecting a rounded brown one and bringing it back over to the bowl. Lifting the bowl over the lip of the bottle, she begins to carefully transfer the thick poultice over, trying as best she can to not spill anything. Tapping out the last bits, she sits them down and reaches for a piece of cork, a chunk of blue and white marbled wax, a burning candle, and an iron stamp with her atelier's symbol on it: a perched linnorm coiling it's tail around itself in a circle. Popping the cork in place, she holds the wax chunk over the candle and patiently waits for the wax to begin melting, paying close attention to completely seal the cork from outside air so as to seal the poultice properly. Setting aside the two once the bottle was properly sealed, she takes the iron stamp and slowly presses it onto the top, ever so careful to keep the air tight seal intact. Lifting it up after a few moments of cooling, she smiles gently. It was always a small joy to the dragoness to complete a product, no matter how large or small. She picks up the bottle and takes it back over to her research desk and rummages around a built-in drawer for twine and stationary. She begins writing out care instructions, warning not to place on open wounds, and to only use a dose every one to three days, taking care to use dry bandages in between so the skin would stay healthy. Once satisfied with the notes, she rolls them up into tight scrolls and then binds them to the bottle with the twine. Taking the bottle to a window in the room and opening it, she mutters a short incantation before whistling, then extends her free hand with her pointer finger out. After a moment, a small flame descends from the sky and perches on the finger, shaping into the form of a small raven. She brings it to her muzzle so that it could nuzzle her, then offers the bottle to one of it's talons.
"This one to lady Moira in the town to the south of here. It seems her child has broken his ankle. Again. Be swift Ember, the poultice doesn't last for more than a week and 3 days. I’ll have your favorite charcoal ready when you get back as a reward.”
The elemental raven bobs it's head in response and takes the bottle in it's talons, seemingly unburdened by it's weight, and takes off with lightning speed out the window. She sighs again and closes the window before walking back to her workstation. Cleaning up the work space, she goes through the motions of adding salt to her mortar to rinse it, then picks up one of the leftover purple comfrey flowers as she's swiping the plant matter into a bag for composting, and twirls it. Such a delicately pretty and useful flower, but the Gods forbid you smell it , she thinks. She leans onto the counter with her elbows and rests her head into her hand with the flower, and whispers to herself,
"I wonder when Bean will be home, it's been some time. Maybe I should send Ember out when she gets back from the delivery, just to check.”
Her partner was a hellcat ADHD disaster of a monster that runs a clinic and global delivery service, and more often than not she got herself into trouble of all sorts. One of the most life changing of those for them was long ago in their original AU before it collapsed, where she’d stumbled upon two skeleton children that just so happened to have been made by the lost goddess Nim, and adopted them. Without consultation. And ever since, the adoptive family grew to include nine Outcode skeletons, one of which continues to bring by bitties to Bean. She loves that ball of energy, but it never ceases to amaze her what she’ll manage to do on her travels.
The dragoness tilts her head to stare over to the stacks of orders on the standing table and contemplates how many there are. She'd had the idea to establish an atelier to set aside funds to continue her family's alchemical research, but she had no idea how in demand one was for the nearby people in this AU. Both of them had decided to stay more separate from humans in this AU, and had witnessed the increase of technology the humans had come upon, but it seems the need for magical items and natural medicine still remained as in demand as ever. A couple centuries later, once humans had finally started easing out of hating monsters, an opportunity arose and she had earned a name for herself in a small village as Balesong, the Linnorm Alchemist of the North. Fitting, now that she thinks of it, considering her family originates from Scandanavia. 300 years later and she's still at it, now with seven different towns near and far depending on her craft, while Bean delivers supplies she’s made and uses her alchemical medical devices to help monsters in need.
She stands upright and walks back over to the orders and starts sifting through them for the rest of the day's orders, carrying on with her work. She picks up one from a town an hour’s walk away, and then laughs aloud once she reads it. She recognizes the handwriting belonging to one of the skeletons, Cross. It seems that another one, Killer, hauled off and tried to fight a golem and got his left arm and ribs broken from being swatted away. One would think trying to fight something immune to the thing you're made of would be a terrible idea, but Killer would tell you it's going to be a great fight. She shakes her head and smiles.
“Oh well, at least those guys keep things interesting. Guess I need to make a house call and plaster him until I can get a proper magic balm made. Now, where did my casting supplies get to?”