Private Tales To play with fire

[Nina]

“If ya want some ‘lone-time, Ragdoll, just go for a leak behind them bushes and take your sweet time like ‘nyone else, if ya catch my drift.” A lone snicker irrupted at the back the group. The speaker, a tall orc whose white-painted braids hit their cheeks as they walked, seemed unperturbed. The speaker’s steps made the forest path shake, just like the other four orcs wearing the same dusty, sweaty studded leather armor. The speaker wasn’t even the strongest-looking (that was Ghorbash, whose wrists were thicker than Nina’s thighs) or the most frightening (that being Gears, with scars that crisscrossed his face like a canyon). But there was something in that voice that marked them as the leader. It didn’t matter. Either of the orcs could have broken her spine like a twig. “No need to climb up the friggin mountain.”

No, Nina didn’t catch their drift. Her fists clenched on her sleeves.

“I hear ya, Suds.” She said carefully. She was the lone human, half-running at the edge of the group to catch up. It was always a thin line to walk between the respect the Blight Orcs expected from the lesser races, and the impudence that was expected – no, desired – of her as Naghi’s personal magician. “I’m still going.” She was not a thrall, and behaving with too much deference would just get her in trouble. “I did promise that I would not get in your way, so why are you getting in mine?”

Suds snorted. Fangs half-bared between cracked grey lips, they looked frightening to the human girl. Nina didn’t know whether Suds was a male or a female, and she hadn’t felt suicidal enough to ask. Rumor had it that Suds got their name by the way they foamed at the mouth when angry.

Nina couldn’t tell when the orcs were messing with her. She could barely tell when they were insulting her, given that quite a tad of their soldier culture was crude language and banter. The girl could barely read human faces as it was; drop her in the middle of a completely different species, and sometimes she failed to grasp the difference between ‘amusement’ and ‘murderous rage’.

Today marked the seventh day she was travelling with Naghi’s army, and she was going crazy. When the opportunity arose to tag along one of the hunting parties, to breathe fresh air again and walk under green trees, at the foot of the Spine, she took it.

Strangely, it was the orcs that seemed to tense up as they left the parched plains of the Blightlands and were swallowed by the green shade.

“One o’ the scouts saw a shadow flying over the mountains. Big.” Suds didn’t need to say more. Like the others, Nina had seen the writing on the map. “HERE BE DRAGONS.”. in big letters. “(and their pets)”, scribbled in smaller letters underneath. If you could call that a map. Buncha doodles on a piece of parchment. What sort of army didn’t have a cartographer?! A band of roving lunatics, that’s who. “I wouldn’t climb too high if I were you.” Suds spit out.

“I’ll be careful.” Nina nodded. She could reiterate that some herbs only grew in the alpine meadows, but Suds didn’t like herbs. If an injury couldn’t be fixed by applying fire and steel to cauterize it, Blight Orcs weren’t interested.

“The Lost One won’t always be there to protect you.” Suds replied. The Lost One being Naghi. A warning? A threat?

“Then, I have to rely on my shining competence, don’t I?” Nina grinned.

They kept walking. In ones and twos, the orcs broke off from the group to follow animal tracks, until Nina was the only one left climbing up the mountain. She still felt Gears’ gaze on her back. Ten minutes later, the girl let out a long sigh, and stopped in her tracks. Her body was shaking.

What the hell was going to happen when Naghi realized she was not actually a mage?

She wrapped her arms around herself, and looked up the path. How fast would she have to run to escape Naghi’s orcs? Once they figured she wasn’t coming back. Assume that none had been following her. She stared at the tip of her boot digging through the leaf litter. Too fast, she guessed. As a travelling painter, Nina wasn’t unaccustomed to endless treks through strange lands, but the orcs were professional soldiers. Daily marches had hardened them to the point they’d have little difficulty chasing a deer until its heart burst of exhaustion, never mind a travelling painter.

There was another reason for Suds’ name, that Nina had heard. ‘They deal with scum.’

Besides…Her fingers dug in the skin of her arms. Even if she by some miracle managed to escape, what did she think was going to happen? Naghi won’t just accept being mocked by a human. Whereas at the moment, the warlord was willing to listen to her pleas of clemency, as long as she could argue it was in his interest, if she just left…then…then…It would just solidify in his mind that humans are too morally fragile to be trusted. That they were sub-orc. That the only place for them was as slaves.

No.

Nina seemed to break in two, bending forward as she held herself.

The only path was to keep up the charade.

She kept walking up the path. Occasionally, she’d stop to gather useful items, such as pine buds, the young stems of wild grapevine, strips of bark, lichens, mushrooms. She washed her face and feet in a cool mountain creek, and heard a waterfall higher up. This close to the water, everything was covered in a thick carpet of moss. Her shoulders ached under the weight of her backpack.

As Nina walked into the clearing leading to the waterfall, her eyes caught something. She twisted on her heels. No movement. Just…A dark spot among the shadows.

Carefully, Nina reached one hand out to poke it. Her fingers returned covered in soot.

Charred vegetation. Like the remains of a campfire.

Except it was on a tree.

“Well that’s some quality charcoal.” Nina whispered.

 

[Izerth]

The water was rushing by quickly causing the earth around Izerth to shake. She liked it, sitting on one of the vibrating rocks behind the curtain of water the small dragon was feasting on one of the salmon she had gotten her claws on. During the first half of the day her target had been a bird. Unfortunately, for the little dragon that is, the thing was fast and got away before Izerth had managed to fry it mid-flight. Signs of their small game were still littering the surroundings of the waterfall. After that fruitless attempt, she had turned to the water. A nice swim, a quick turn, and now she was enjoying a fatty salmon under the cover of the waterfall.

Her ruby red eyes were shining with delight when she tore into the fish again. This meal was delicious and she was proud to have gotten it herself. Her muscles had grown, together with her claws, fangs, the tail and her wings. Gradually she was becoming quicker and stronger. The fire-range was slowly extending as well, together with the heat. No melting steel just yet, but by now she could make more than just a bonfire.

With white scales glittering from the mist coming off the water, she quietly enjoyed her meal until something caught her attention. There, through the semi-transparent curtain of water she could see a two-legged entering her territory. Well, of course this wasn’t truly her part of the forest. However, Izerth was keen on this spot and the invasion of it by the hostile type of creatures was something that irked her. Immediately she dropped the meal. Where mostly satisfied she usually would have devoured all of it before taking a nap, but that was out of the question now. This infiltrator had to be gotten rid off, somehow. First, however, she would have to check whether others of the human kind were near. Should there be too many, she would have to ring the alarm.

One wasn’t a problem, a whole group would certainly be a mess.

Slipping from under the curtain on the side of the waterfall, she took flight, high above the trees to get a good view on the things below.

* * *

 

[Nina]

‘Dragons.’

As if she would believe that. Nina drew her fingers over the scorched surface. So fine, was the black dust left on her fingertips. When she brought them up, her fingers smelled of smoke. The girl slowly advanced through the clearing, sinking in the moss down to her ankles. She could hear water flowing under the moss, entwining with the roar of the waterfall.

There were scorched patches scattered through the greenery. That didn’t worry her. There was obviously no dragon towering over the little meadow, in fact no movement at all apart from a bird, a heron or a white eagle of some sort that flew across the edge of her vision to the safety of the skies. Nina sat down and rubbed the back of her neck. Maybe it wasn’t even charcoal, she thought, but some strange sort of fungus. A large creature, such as a dragon, would’ve left traces of some sort in the soft mossy ground.

Either way, it was the finest-looking charcoal that the travelling painter had seen in these forsaken lands. A smile budded on her face. Nina lost little time in scraping some of the black dust from the back of a tree into a pouch, and breaking off the ends of a branch sticking out of a crown like carbonized fingers. It was one of those thin branches that she twirled in her hands, scraping off the leaves, as she sat by the waterfall to rest.

Strange, very strange. Normally you’d need to burn wood in a kiln, at high temperatures, to get this kind of quality black. A seed of fear sprouted in Nina’s mind. But because there was already so much she was afraid of those days, it just…Flickered across her eyes for a moment.

Didn’t register.

Instead, Nina took off her backpack and took up her sketchbook, and the thin burnt branch was the perfect size to be a stencil in her hand. Her hand moved across the page, and inside her mind it finally felt like she’d sat down to rest. Mossy boulders grew under her hand, and were stenciled into reality with contours and shadows. A starry flower growing over the moss became specks of charcoal; the waterfall, gently flowing lines. Nina was a travelling painter. For the past few days she’d barely allowed herself to remember it, caught in a constant state of fright between keeping up her charade and learning the daily realities of living an orc war camp.

Now she could finally breathe again.

Her right hand drew; her left one thinned or erased lines (that was easy to do with fresh, uncompressed charcoal). Focused on the drawing on her knees, the artist barely noticed anything else but her landscape. At some point, gradually, the itching sensation in her mind finally subsumed. Nina let down the branch-pencil, and sighed.

She picked up a paintbrush, and dunked it at the edge of the water. It was time to add color.

 

[Izerth]

The blue of the water and green of the foliage intertwined and curled like a snake as Izerth flew above it. She loved to see things from this height because it had her feeling safe. Most looking up would probably only see a white dot, if that. It really depended on the sun too. Her snow-white scales had the tendency to reflect sun. From down below one might see her as a sliver of their own imagination briefly shining across the sky. Or a bird. Depending on how good one was with estimating distance they might view her as a large bird or something tiny flying by. To Izerth it was all the same as long as nobody was trying to point their arrows at her, and since she’s been here and flying freely, that hadn’t been the case.

Widening her circle around the waterfall, she watched some orcs on a hunt. They were far enough from the lady at the water, and heading ever further. Perhaps they didn’t belong together, hopefully not. Izerth didn’t quite like orcs. In fact, now that she thought about it, perhaps it would be a good thing to warn the human about the danger lurking down the road. Of course that conversation would depend on the tone they would start with, but it was worth a shot. Some two-legged were quite alright, and the one sitting in the moss who had disturbed Izerth’s meal didn’t look too dangerous. Sure, there was always magic to keep an eye out for. Luckily, dragons weren’t as easily corrupted by it as others were.

Cautious, curious, and set on helping out the stranger if necessary, she landed on one of the bigger branches above the female. Her claws dug into the wood while ruby red eyes looked down to get a better view from behind the leaves at whatever this human was doing. To her surprise she wasn’t fishing. Nor was she sleeping. This one was doing something quite odd, something Izerth hadn’t witnessed before.

“Ello,” the dragon tried from above, sending her thought in a gentle way as not to cause a hostile response. “what are you doing?”

Keeping the marching orcs in mind, she still wanted to know what these lines meant. A map, perhaps, but not quite. Looking at it by turning her head a bit more, she bowed further to think to recognizing the landscape around them.

“How do you do that?”

* * *​

 

[Nina]

A friendly voice broke the silence. From reflex, Nina replied:

“I’m painting.” And the joy of doing such carried over.

She smiled and turned around, but there was nobody there. Slowly, Nina stood up, holding her drawing block at her chest. It just occurred to her that the eerie voice hadn’t seemed to come from any particular direction. Her gaze brushed over the edge of the forest, looking for shadows among the green shade. Images of echoes and magic wove in her mind.

“Where are you? I can’t-Ah!...” She yelped and stepped back. Her eyes caught sight of two red eyes above her. There were white scales glistening like mother-of pearl and a reptilian face practically lunging towards her. Two steps back were taken before Nina as much as breathed. Still alive. White-knuckled, she eyed the creature. It was perhaps the size of a cat, but obviously reptilian, though with the eyes arranged on the front of its head rather than the sides, as one would see in lizards and snakes. ‘Good depth perception’, Nina remembered from one of Gray’s books. Perhaps expected, because folded along its curled body there were wings like silk kites, just like those of a d-d-

More confidently than she felt, Nina asked. “Is that…is that yours?” The waterfall couldn’t fully cover the tremor in her voice. She took a step forward.

Izerth

 

[Izerth]

Wondering what painting actually meant, aside from creating a copy of the world around them in black and white, with gray tones in-between, Izerth kept quiet while her curious eyes continued to trace the lines. She enjoyed the sight until the two-legged realized something was wrong and started to look for whoever had destroyed her peaceful moment. Just the way she had shattered Izerth’s lunch break.

Once discovered Izerth wasn’t sure how to react. Most of the time she was the one to back off and fly or run into the forest before they could lay their hands on her. Here, however, it was the young female who seemed to be confused. Probably not quite afraid, but certainly cautious if you asked the little dragon.

“Mine?” Izerth titled her head a bit further. Confusion laced her voice. “The spots? I was.. hunting, but the fish is easier to get than the birds.” There was an amount of shyness in her tone, mostly because she was admitting a bit of a failure to a stranger. This one, though, didn’t appear evil. Instead, there was something familiar about her. The unsteadiness with which Izerth lived her life, or had been until very recently, well, it was visible in this young human. That or Izerth was hallucinating things while being way too naive once again.

“The waterfall isn’t ‘mine’, but I like it here, and wouldn’t appreciate if you brought others with you. The Orcs have taken another path, you should be aware of them, they aren’t.. what I call a nice company.” Switching branches while still staying out of the stranger’s reach, she then decided that it was time for an introduction.

“Call me Izerth,” she dragon announced, then, carefully, curiously, she pushed to know who she was dealing with. “What’s your name and.. how did you end up here?”

* * *

Nina​

 

[Nina]

Green shadows and golden rays moved faster and faster until they blurred in her gaze, as Nina shook her head trying to find the speaker. Nothing. No one. All that remained clear was the white-scaled creature staring at her. A guardian? The tension in her chest. Sparks floated across the water, and a voice as clear as the creek that touched her mind before her ears.

The voice didn’t hush in ethereal tones, or declaim grand curses against intruders. It was, all in all, just about the most reasonable disembodied voice that the traveling painter had ever encountered. It spoke of hunting and enjoying places. It didn’t like orcs. They weren’t ‘nice’.

“No. No they aren’t.” Peals of laughter irrupted behind the drawing block as Nina raised it up to her nose. The absurdity of a disembodied voice sharing her thoughts was enough to bring her chuckling to her knees. Her eyes kept flickering to the cat-sized reptile, in case it took her sudden movements as a cue to attack.

Perhaps she was going insane.

Something clicked. Perhaps there was something about those eyes like embers, or perhaps a small tilt of the head reminded her of the way she’d fidget.

“Izerth.” The young woman repeated, carefully. Wondering who would answer. “I apologize for assuming, but would you happen to be a dragon?”

Something cracked in the yarn ball of emotions Nina kept for a heart, and she felt free. As if just about anything could happen now.

“I’m Nina. I…I came here with the orcs.” Her lips parted, as if trying to breathe her words back in. “Don’t worry. I don’t think…They won’t climb this far. They don’t seem to like…dragons. They said it was unwise to climb too high. I guess I am unwise.” A smirk curled in the corners of her lips.

“Is it okay if I stay for a bit?” Nina asked the baby dragon. Her tone was light, but her eyes were serious. “Or are you going to try to hunt me? You, or perhaps…” Her eyes flickered to the blue skies. “…your mother?”

She adjusted her footing. Legends had it that some dragons were large enough to make the earth shake.

Izerth

 

[Izerth]

Unsure what about this encounter was so funny, Izerth tilted her head to the other side. The white square used to “paint” on was now hiding a part of this female’s face. Izerth cautiously wondered if it could be used to attack with, but decided against having her thoughts follow that path. Surely this rumbling and belly tickling sound that was laughter wasn’t meant to be a roar before a fight, right?

“Yes, I am,” the small creature with the white scales revealed her fangs and teeth while offering something akin to a smile. One that turned into a small growl when the Orcs were mentioned. Thin lines of smoke escaped her lips. “You came with them?” The tone changed slightly, from a light and curious musical one to a worried and somewhat darker one. Soon, though, Nina calmed her down a little by telling her what seemingly was the truth.

Izerth had seen them move away with her own eyes. The moment they would appear, she would fly high, but hopefully that wouldn’t be necessary. “Why are you with them? You’re not an Orc?” she asked before agreeing for her to stay a bit.

“If you mean us no harm, we won’t harm you either.” Was the right reply to the mother bit. Izerth had no mother, only a newfound family of sorts. There were others, dragons and Draconians, her kind, but none were blood related.

Curiously starting to circle Nina, she allowed herself to smell her. First her leg, then a bit higher. The back, then, without a warning, she jumped up and landed on Nina’s shoulder. Making sure her claws didn’t cause the painter to bleed, she sniffed the side of the female’s face and her hair. There was plenty of Orc scent, but mostly this one smelled like human. Giving her a quick lick on the cheek she was reminded that before this little interruption she had been eating. Of course, she didn’t bite.

Soon enough Izerth was back in the tree, watching carefully.

“Why don’t you leave them? They don’t seem to pay any attention to you? And you did agree that they aren’t nice.”

* * *​

 

[Nina]

The dragon spoke.

In her mind.

She was losing it.

“No, I am not an orc.” Unnecessary statement. “I-“ Perhaps the telepathy was a trap of sorts, Nina thought, grasping the back of a wrist with a cold palm. “Travelling painter.” She imagined the semblance of an intellect but with nothing underneath, just like a praying mantis might perfectly resemble an orchid up to the moment it lunged for a hapless insect. Small, sharp dragon teeth glistened behind wisps of smoke.

It was friendly.

It had peaceful, straightforward mannerisms that put the girl at ease, so that when Izerth finally lunged at her, she didn’t smack him (her? it? they?) across the snout with her drawing block. It was like a cat, with scales, had decided to jump on and sniff at her. Or a puppy. Nina’s tense limbs unwounded enough for one hand to reach out above the fire-breathing nostrils and pet Izerth on the head. Her drawing block slipped to the ground.

“I made a promise.” Nina explained. Perhaps she’d been too forward. Her fingers fidgeted with the moss by her side. She looked at them. “And I don’t exactly like the orcs, but they wouldn’t hurt me. The ones I’ve travelled with. I wouldn’t recommend going down the mountain for a few days, though.” The army would be gathering supplies. She looked at Izerth. Her voice slowed down from its breathless rush. “I guess it’s complicated, but the simple version is, many orcs aren’t nice to many people, and I’m with them because I want them to be nicer.” One of her fists rose alongside a hopeful smile.

“I guess part of my job has always been to be a peddler of ideas.”

Izerth

 

[Izerth]

Allowing the painter to pat her like she had allowed her to sniff and climb her, Izerth tried to grasp the concept of why one would travel with someone they did not like. It seemed counter-instinctive, to be around people or creatures you didn’t like for there had to be a reason for one’s dislike. Either they did things you didn’t agree with or thought differently even if they didn’t act on those thoughts, yet. For the little dragon the painter’s way of living was a true enigma.

It took some more explaining and a bit of thinking for Izerth to faintly get the idea Nina was having. For the small dragon it sounded outlandish. The only thing her young mind had pinpointed right now was that there was a promise made. Probably to travel with them, not to change them. That would have quite an ambitious, and mostly unrealistic, thing to promise to anyone.

“So.. has it been working, the process of changing that group you’ve been travelling with? Have they.. taken an interest to your ideas? Do they heed your advice?” Blinking in her tree, she tried to imagine brutish Orcs sitting around the fire listening to Nina’s process of thought. The imagine was an extraordinary one, but the little dragon knew that she had a lot to discover about the world and its inhabitants.

Leaving her place in the tree she ran down its trunk to settle in the sun. Pleasant rays of warmth caressed her white scales. No rain at the moment, no more clouds. She had to enjoy the moment. Almost purring, the sound was a bit more raspy, the dragon opened its right eye to study the human who’s been bonding with Orcs.

“Have you been to a lot of places, Nina?” She wondered aloud with her tail playfully, but slowly, sliding in the long grass. Back and forth, back and forth, it went in zigzagging waves. Like a white snake.

* * *

Nina​

 

[Nina]

It was the simple questions that were the most difficult to answer.

“ No.” Nina admitted. She hadn’t changed the orcs. “At most, I’ve convinced their leader to be nicer once, because it was more practical to him.” In her chest, despair beat its wings, and burned itself into hope. “But perhaps before I try to change people, I need to learn more about them. To listen.”

She was a hopeless fake. But perhaps only time would tell whether her story would be a breath-taking heist on level with her mother’s, or a grisly one-line obituary. For a moment, Nina allowed herself to imagine the future as only the mind could craft it. Warm light filtered through the windows of a stone castle – tall, wide windows, impractical for war, but the war was no longer. The light glowed green as it filtered through the canopy of a garden torn from the grasp of the Blight. On a throne, the Lost Son of Menalus, just as unreadable as now, rested his chin on his fist and agreed, after all, slavery was terribly impractical. She imagined herself turning on her heels, with a flutter of a long cape.

‘I’ll be going now.’ She’d say, simply, with the satisfaction of a job well done, and keep walking home.

The horizon was her home. In her paintings, she carried the world with her. Izerth asked whether she’d travelled a lot.

“Would you like to see? Nina asked. Her face lit up.

Like a stage magician she pulled painting after painting from her drawing block, spreading them on the green moss. She handled them as gently as windows to her soul. As she crouched among them, she pointed.

“The other side of the Spine. It got…a bit chilly…the higher up I went.” White snow shined over dark pines and breathtaking precipices. Lines trembled, as if the artist’s hands had frozen. The howling blue of a blizzard engulfed the next painting. A single snowflake caught between the threads of her mittens. Obsidian walls rose out of the snow. “An abandoned city of howling winds. A pirate who is a metaphor.” The sketch of a smiling skull with a skull and crossbones hat. “An island far to the east. The gateway to a forbidden empire.” Swirling umbrellas in the rain, people in colorful robes, rustling forests of cane-like grass. A young man sat on a throne at the end of a long room. A painting of unusual detail that, unlike the others, appeared posed for. He didn’t have a face – none of the people in Nina’s paintings had faces – but the way his fingers grasped the armrests hinted at power. “He rules the place. Tried to kill me.” Nina shrugged. A plain room with a narrow slice of window and cozy blankets. “My cell. The door was open.” An underwater scene, with Nina’s hands reaching for the colorful corals and sea urchins underneath. “I swam for days. Chewy and soft, they’re delicious after you remove the spines.”

Nina stopped to breathe. Her face had taken on a healthy glow, as she was reminded of the adventures she’d gone through. If she could survive the Tower, perhaps she could survive the Blightlands.

She looked at the little dragon, and her fingers twitched.

“Could I draw you, Izerth?”

“It’s fine if you say no.” Nina flailed her arms, rambling awkwardly. “I’ll just paint the waterfall and then go to collect more herbs. Through some of them are hard to reach…I’m trying to make the orcs more comfortable with the idea of general medicine, you know.”

Her smile trembled.

Izerth

 

[Izerth]

“Listen and understand others before using that to your advantage when it comes to educating them how to be different.. manipulating them into someone better,” Izerth thoughtfully processed the matter presented to her while chewing on it and making mental notes ‘aloud’.

The way this painter thought was extraordinary in these lands. Most who wanted to convince another did so with power and violence. Like the Orcs. Frowning lightly, the dragon considered how one could passively achieve the change in one’s behavior through a sort of --what could be viewed as a-- patient therapy. Of course, the small white one understood that it was an extremely slow process. Perhaps that’s why Nina hadn’t been ashamed of saying ‘no’ when Izerth had so boldly asked something she should have thought about first.

“Apologies, I didn’t mean to.. discourage you or offend you. In a way, it does make sense.” Not that it was easier for her to understand the psychology behind it. As a somewhat of a toddler, Izerth was quite sharp because she was a dragon, but she was still very young and had a lot to learn. Like thinking before acting. Luckily Nina had taken no offense to the question and even wanted to share the paintings with her.

“Yes, please.” Izerth hurried to appear next to Nina, red eyes glowing with curiosity and excitement to see places she’s never been before. While the snow was familiar, there were so many other things that were not. She paused, looking up the woman whose hands had created these amazing copies of reality. “Forbidden empire?” That was something she certainly wanted to know more about. For Izerth had great plans for the future, when her wings would be able to carry her across fields and seas alike.

“Who is he?” the answer displeased the dragon. Hissing at the painting for the man had tried to hurt this painter, Izerth then allowed her slightly upset thoughts to cross Nina’s mind as well. “I hope you’ve killed him, and if not, you should one day.”

Immediately her mind flew back to the start of their conversation. How silly. Already she had forgotten that there were other ways than violence to handle things. Perhaps it was the fire in her that wanted to burn away any enemies instead of convincing them to be ‘good’.

Still muttering softly about the bad man on the throne, she was quite surprise when the question of being drawn came. “Ehm.. Alright. Where should I settle?” she tilted her head a little to the side, wondering if it was dangerous to be on one of those pages. Then again, one could say it’s not real and move on. Hunters would always be out there, with or without a painting of a dragon carried by a lone painter.

“Will you tell me more about the empire and about how you’ve made it out of that throne room?”

With hope in the tone of her voice she allowed Nina to position her the way she wanted to. If something would become too uncomfortable, the dragon wouldn’t be afraid to let her know.

“We can gather herbs later, if you want some help, I’ll grab the ones too high for you to reach.”

* * *​