~Elara~
The green-bound herbals took the better part of three days before Henrik decided I was allowed near the brown ones.
I copied dosages until my hand cramped. I cross-checked root names against the dried bundles in the rafters. Twice I caught a northern assumption in my own notes and struck it out before he could.
Freja watched this process with open amusement and kept refilling the paste pots I emptied while trying to match eastern preparations to ones I already knew.
Oscar Vale came through on the second afternoon with a satchel of fresh cuttings and the smell of the deep forest still on his coat. He named two plants I had only ever seen dried. I wrote both down twice.
Felix took work where it appeared—mending a shutter, helping Lucas with a difficult horse, carrying water for Ingrid when a birth in the lower dens ran long. He didn't ask how the shelves were treating me. He only checked, once each evening, whether I had eaten.
