A Bumping Into [Theying]

[Adamnen]

Adamnen right and left down the rubble-laiden crossroads. Where was a street sign or city map when you needed one? He again glanced at the address on the deed in his hands, as if hoping staring a hole in it would reveal some hidden directions.

Directions, Adamnen cursed himself silently, I can't follow directions as well as a halfling...

He came to his conclusion while staring blankly at nothing. Whats the worst that could happen? He got lost, which by definition he already was. Nobody, evidently, was about in this ruined, probably poorest section of the city... nobody to ask more directions. The only option was to pick a street and walk.

Whipping sharply left, Adamnen took two long strides, shaking his head. When he opened his eyes, he found himself face to face with a human's chest. He drew up short suddenly. Leaning so far back he had to plant his tail on the street to keep balance, he looked up into the man's face.

[Theying]

Theying had mostly been just looking around town, trying to determine the extent of recovery and the shape of the city to come. So far, he had been largely unsuccessful. The signs were mixed, areas that were totally abandoned butted up against isolated area of bustling idea where people clustered around a hastily reconstructed or revitalized pillar of the community. Landmarks, or the ghosts of them, sheltered what seeds of civilization remained.

It was a shame that Theying wouldn't be ar...

A Katta? And a small one at that.

...

Whatever.


"Excuse me," The master herbalist apologized. "I wasn't watching where I was going." It happened. But there was no point in dwelling on it.

[Adamnen]

"Same, eh..."

I bloody hate asking directions.

"Would you mind? I'm trying to find this address..."

Adamnen glanced around. He'd dropped the deed. Cursing himself he picked it up in haste and displayed the address to the human.

"I'm told it's barely a hovel and may not even be standing any more..." Too himself he muttered (rather louder than he'd wanted), "oh how did my uncle talk me into this...? I'm not this gullible."

[Theying]

The young man looked at the befuddled Katta with soft eyes, that expressed something of a kinship. Theying had been forced to do the same thing several times in the past. He didn't exactly have the best sense of direction. At the same time those hazel eyes expressed a certain helplessness.

"I'm quite sorry," Theying replied in kind. "I am quite new to this place, and it is quite in disarray. I can give no assistance in this matter."

He gave it a little more thought. He didn't want to leave this little fellow all alone out here. He didn't seem all that, well, certain of himself.

"BUT," the master herbalist continued after only the slightest pause. "I would be happy to help you search."

[Adamnen]

"Well," Adamnen considered. Asking directions... bad enough... this... gah... "I suppose thanks are in order, though I'll save them 'till we've found the place. For starts... the guard I asked directions said it should be to the north, up here... but I haven't seen a street sign not burnt to a crisp for three blocks." Or was it four...

[Theying]

"Lead on, my fuzzy friend," Theying commented. He had absolutely no idea of where he was going. This was especially true because he hadn't been given any clues to go on except for a cardinal direction.

"Say, what do you do for a living?" the relatively short human inquired by way of small talk. "Do you have anything that you're really good at?"

[Adamnen]

As he walked, Adamnen sharpened his eye for clues as to their location relative to the hovel.

Fuzzy friend...? I aught to call him a hairless bald.

"Well... I have no living. I came here recently, hoping my father's fortune would prove to be at least a place to live while I got one. And I assumed a city would be an excellent place to start. However from what I've seen, that may be hard. I did a lot of different things for my uncle... but I've never been very strong. I don't see how I could be of help in the only job I can imagine this would-be city needing: rebuilding."

He shook his head. His stature never helped.

"Here in Paxia, or what's left of it... I have a feeling it's going to be hard to get job with the training required. There seems to be enough people crammed in the livable areas to make getting a no-skill job more or less impossible."

[Theying]

"Really, that's a shame," Theying answered, still looking for something although not quite knowing what. "You see, I was hoping to find another herbalist. I would normally stay and open a shop around here, but I have a wife and child in Jaedaxia and property in Alleria Prime that I must check up on."

The master herbalist sighed. He was beginning to think that there weren't any herbalists left in the area. He had been looking for quite some time.

"It's a shame, too," the young mand continued. "I'd even be willing to finish training someone who knew something of the herbal arts. But, I don't think that I have enough time left to go hunting for someone with those qualifications,"

[Adamnen]

Herbs...

Adamnen remembered a time, his uncle had left him to tend a garden for a week while he was away on a journey... when he'd come back he swore the garden looked cleaner of weeds than ever.

Not that gardens have a thing to do with weeds... all that took was persistence to find every weed. They kept appearing somehow.

He was passing what might have once been a sign hanging from some inn or tavern or somesuch. Lifting it he found the surface was charred but readable. He scanned it (the paint of whatever letters it had held was long since gone) and found the address carved into a corner.

"I think we're on the right street, but the address itself is way off..." He wished he knew which direction the numbers were ascending.

Flinging the sign away, back into the pile of the building it had once proudly pronounced the name of.

Now no one will ever again know that name, or those memories... I wonder how many died in this building.

"I don't know... this whole street looks like a wreck for blocks. Likelihood is that hovels' dust."

Still he kept walking, not really aware of anything around him.

"Then, I don't know what I'll do. Gah, I'm repeating myself. My one and only quality, the one my uncle beat into me with all but a sledgehammer, persistence. I'll get a job done if it takes me a year. Or more."

I wonder is that true any more, away from Uncle....

Somehow he thought it was. He hated loose ends, that much he'd noticed about himself.

[Theying]

They had two very different problems, didn't they? One without a place to stay, and the other without someone to fill a space. One needing employment, and the other needing an employee. Too bad there was no smiple, elegant solution that would resolve both issues.

"Well, you're persistant," the master herbalist contributed in an upbeat manner. "I'm certain that you will find training in a trade that appeals to you. That's really the important part, forcing yourself to learn something you're not interesting is bad for everyone. But that persistance is a very good trait, I wish I could find a student who has that trait".

[Adamnen]

"Come right down to it, given any choice at all... I'd take anything, really, its beginning to look like a matter of survival..."

Then the last piece fell into place. Adamnen halted in his tracks and stared at the human.

Am I a numskull or is he?

Sometimes Adamnen found things just fell into place like... coincidence? Adamnen believed in coincidence. But sometimes things took shape so like puzzle pieces it seemed the hand of Fate was at work. Or a god or goddess. Adamnen had never been one to pay more than a glances attention at the supernatural, though. (Much to his uncle's dismay.)

"Call me ignorant, but what's involved in the whole herbs trade?"

Yes, call me ignorant, I'm young and admit it...

[Theying]

Theying wasn't a numbskull, he just wanted to teach people who were interested. There is a big difference in quality between those who will do something because they want to and those who do things because they have to. To force someone into a path that they don't choose for themselves was one thing that the young human considered wrong. He had prospered by chosing his own path, and he was still quite interested in seeing what this curious Katta would chose.

"Herbalism," the master of that trade commented. "Is the use of plants to adjust what people's bodies do. You can speed healing and tighten muscle, but not create new life or muscle where there is none. It includes the growing of plants, and the preparation of those same plants so that they do what you want and not what you don't as if you aren't careful the plants will do their own things." That should cover the basis.

[Adamnen]

"My uncle always told me," Adamnen mused, "'You don't know if you like something until you try it.'"

Can I see myself, a year from now, tediously tending to plants? Preparing them?

Staring down the block, he wondered what the chances were the hovel was still intact. Probably null. His eyes fell, was it defeat welling in him? Was he giving up his search and now stuck in this broken city? He'd five days worth of travel rations left over. He felt like he was suddenly stuck in a bog.

But was he being thrown a vine?

Adamnen found himself staring at a weed pushing up through a crack in a stone that had once been a stair step.

If I could use that weed, use it to do... what? Save a life? Relieve pain? Would I devote my life to it?

He may need to, one way or another. Either way he wasn't sure what to say.

"I might be interested," he said slowly, "all I can promise is persistence. I've nothing else to do. How long are you staying in Paxia?"

[Theying]

Well, that was true. You really don't know until you try, but Adamnen wasn't as enthusiastic as he would like. Well, he didn't have that much time.

"I'll only be here for about a month on this first trip," Theying said quite honestly. "I have other things to attend to, but I'll be back fairly soon to follow up. Things are complicated, but the sooner I can get places established the better."

The master herbliast looks sidelong at the Katta. It always frustrated Theying that so few people actually knew what herbalism could do. So, he inquired, "What do you think a herbalist does and what he can do?"

[Adamnen]

Raising an eyebrow, Adamnen returned the gaze.

"Didn't I just ask you that?"

No, he's testing me, he realized, wants to know what I expect.

He broke eye contact and let his eyes find the weed he'd spotted earlier. What could a master do with you?

"With herbs?" He chose his words carefully. He felt like each sentence bore the outcome of his fate. "A master would be able to quell infections, cure poisons... or make them. You mentioned altering bodily functions... heightening of strength, reflexes, awareness, senses... or oppositely deprive one of them. Of course there's the requirement of ingestion, or inhalation, the methods of delivery."