COMMUNITY - FORUMS - FAN FICTION & ROLEPLAYING
What Makes Us (An Herbalists Journey)

Loss & Purpose (Part 1 - Carrier)

"Mother! Mother..?"

A gut-wrenching fear gripped her when no response came. The cottage was not large and her mother should have been a-bed. The illness...the plague...

She couldn't make herself cross the hearth, past the small breakfast table and the hanging herbs. The worn rocking chair by the fireplace was draped with a thread-bare blanket and the flames within had all but extinguished.

What met her...was the silence of death.

The small bottle, the elixir that the Sage had given to her, was forgotten in her grasp as she finally managed to step in past the flower-strewn entrance. The soft clink of it touching the table top followed in her wake, as step after step took her through the cottage, to her parent's room and the beloved woman who had taught her everything she knew.

The red-haired Neran woman whom she so closely resembled, with fair skin and a ready smile, lay there unmoving. Her flesh was sunken, shriveled and pale. The illness had taken a terrible toll on her but she appeared so peaceful now. Unbidden, tears sprung to Sibyl's eyes and by the time she reached the side of the bed they were falling from her cheeks. No breath lifted her mother's chest and on the side table lay a folded parchment.

She could barely read it past the tears, her hands shaking with grief.

'Dearest.

My child of empathy. You have been raised well. Grieve but do not let it take you. Use what you know, find your comfort, follow your heart wisely. I go to be with your father.

I am sorry I could not stay.'

Her tears fell on the parchment though her mother must have been fading even as she wrote, for the last few words were almost illegible.

Daughter of an herbalist and a merchant. Her father had come home from abroad sick and succumbed days later, likely ill long before he knew it. Now they were both gone. She wandered back out of the bedroom, sank down into the rocking chair and cried. She sat alone for hours, the tears tracking down her cheeks, but as dusk began to converge on the lands and the chill of evening set in she finally stirred. Her mother's last message vibrant in her mind.

She stoked the fire, took up her mother's small sewing kit and got to work preparing the body. Her mother deserved burial but she knew a few things about plague, namely...it needed to be purged with fire. That was how her father's remains had been seen to and the pyre was still nearby. She would inter her mother's ashes with his and then...she would dedicate herself to helping others while she could. It was entirely likely that she was already infected, though she felt fine enough.

No one else should have to lose loved ones to the Searing Plague and if there was a cure, she would dedicate the rest of her life to finding it.