25
Soleil
The afternoon in the apothecary flies by.
Vayla, as the court’s top healer, is the one running the show, but she’s backed up by dozens of healers from the city and surrounding villages.
Everyone moves with efficiency, working out any kinks in the system early in the day and running like a well-oiled machine by late afternoon.
Vayla and I take point on the brew.
The stellarin flower essence that we’ve fully refined down is the last ingredient into the cauldron, and after a quick simmer for each batch, the doses are measured out into stoppered vials.
Each one has a dreadfully short shelf life, and will lose most of its potency by the end of the day, so the other healers act as runners who take each batch to assigned locations throughout the city.
It’s a cure as well as a preventative, so as they comfort and tend the sick, they also make sure whoever wants a dose to avoid future illness gets one.
And based on the number of vials we have going out the door, the potion is in high demand.
“You’ll have to be incredibly careful with these,” I warn as I prepare a batch to be taken and administered by a couple of novice healers straight out of academy.
They nod with wide eyes and a slightly petrified look I know all too well.
I’ve seen it on the faces of the students I teach, and I’m sure I’ve worn it on my own face innumerable times throughout the years.
The fear of turning theory into practice, of taking all the learning you’ve done and putting it to the test when there are stakes beyond passing an exam or pleasing a teacher.
“Here,” I say, softening my tone a little. “Let me show you.”
Though I barely have the time to spare, I pull the two of them aside and dismantle the whole kit we’ve put together. I show them how it’s packed, how each individual vial needs to be secured so it doesn’t spill or break during transport.
“And the stoppers?” one student asks, a bright-eyed demon female with olive-toned skin and bouncy black curls.
“The wax can be melted with a small flame,” I explain, then demonstrate with a small piece of kindling lit from the fire beneath my cauldron. “Not too close, just enough to break the seal.”
They watch with rapt expressions, and I have them take turns putting the kit of vials back in order before I send them off.
As they go, I stand and watch for a couple of seconds, something tender and a little bit wistful squeezing in the middle of my chest.
“Kids these days,” Vayla says with a snort. “Need their hands held for everything.”
“We all had to learn somewhere.”
Another snort. “Yeah. I guess we did.”
With that, we both turn back to the mountain of work ahead of us.
The whirlwind is chaotic enough that I’m barely aware of my surroundings until we hit a lull in the late afternoon. The most recent set of runners have gone out, the next batch of potion is in its final simmer, and both Vayla and I take a breather leaning up against the workbench.
“We’ve probably got three or four days of this,” she says, taking a long swig of water.
“At least,” I agree. “You think we have enough of the stellarin essence?”
She nods, eyes drifting to where the carefully packed essence lines one of the tables near the wall. “If we don’t mess up any of the brews, we should be fine.”
“We won’t mess up any of the brews,” I say with absolute certainty, and she grins.
“No, of course we won’t.” She stretches her arms, her back, loosening up limbs stiff from hours of repetitive work. “Goddess, I forgot how hectic this kind of fieldwork is.”
“Worth it, though,” I say as I do a few stretches of my own before going back to my workspace to check on my brew. “And more rewarding than the work I usually do.”
“Yeah? What kind of work is that?”
“Pet projects for puffed-up priestesses who should know better than to waste their subordinates’ time.”
“Damn girl,” Vayla says with a laugh. “Tell me how you really feel.”
“Sorry.” I run a hand through my hair, gathering it up and fastening it into a haphazard top knot. “It’s just tedious, sometimes, feeling like I don’t have control over the type of work I do.”
“And that’ll change if you Ascend?”
I’ve told Vayla a bit about Ascension, about how an apprentice becomes a priestess, sparing a lot of the tedious details about coven politics.
“Hopefully.”
“What if you just told them to fuck themselves and did your own thing?”
I bark a laugh. “You sound like my sister.”
Carefully stirring the brew in my cauldron, I let myself sit with the idea for a few moments.
It scares me.
Or, maybe more accurately, it scares me that it doesn’t scare me so much anymore.
The thought of actually doing it. Leaving the coven. Rejecting the Ascension.
It’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because it’s never felt quite right. Because the little voice in the back of my mind that turned into a scream the last time I was in Esme’s office was trying to tell me something important.
“Is that a bad thing?” Vayla asks. “I like Seren.”
“It’s not… bad. We’re just different people.”
She shrugs and lets it go, and when a runner comes back looking for their next round of vials to take out into the city, we both spring into action.
Goddess, I could do this kind of work every day.
Work that means something. Work that matters. Work that makes the hours fly by and leaves me covered in sweat and grime, but which also gives me so much more satisfaction than my work for the coven has given me in years.