Torvallis!'s herbology training

[Torvallis!]

[Sep 26th, noon]

Torvallis! waits patiently in the inn for Master Malva, to finish up the herbology training they had been getting recently.

[Malva]

Malva walks into the inn.

"Hi Torvallis!, do you wanna do some gathering?"

[Torvallis!]

"Yes! Yes I do! Right now, or were you going to grab some food first?"

[Malva]

"Yes, let's eat first!"

The two eat their lunch and then head up into the woods. Eventually they happen upon an orcthorn.

"Now see here Torvallis!, this is an orcthorn and as the name suggests, it's thorny. You can pick it using gloves or forceps, but if you don't have any of those, you can pick it by holding the flat side of the leaf."

[Torvallis!]

"Ah! This looks different in the forest than it does in my little herb garden. ((OOC: I have income:orcthorn)) Is this a more matured plant, or what effects the appearance of it?"

[Malva]

((OOC: I should've remembered that))
"Well in your garden, you've probably been using a pretty decent fertilizer, or at the very least have some very good composted soil from all the kitchenwork you do. Those great growing conditions will make a home-grown orcthorn have much fuller, wider leaves, while a wild orcthorn has these narrow, spindly leaves."

[Torvallis!]

"Ah, I've only found it before when it's well fertilized then . . . which isn't much of the time in the wild, I'm guessing.

Hm, alright, that's another thing to add to the list, like discolouration from improper water supply"

[Malva]

"Alright, now let's keep looking."

The two wander deeper into the woods. This time they find a dwarfnettle plant.

"This one's a dwarfnettle; it stings to the touch. Most people pick it using gloves or tools, but some people try to build a tolerance to it."

[Torvallis!]

"Eh, it can't possibly sting *that* much, I'll just build a tolerance to it"

Torvallis! moves to pick the dwarfnettle, and then absolutely freezes in place.

[Malva]

"Ye-you okay there?"

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! barely manages to get a whisper out, while crying, " . . .It does sting that much".

[Malva]

"Uh- okay I'll go look for some sorrel."

Malva wanders off for a moment and comes back with a couple of plain, red-veined leaves.

"These need to be chewed up and put on the sting. Can you do that, or should I?"

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! shakes their head and takes the sorrel.

After some chewing, they spit it into their effected hand and spread it around the stung area.

Still grimacing, they manage to say: "Move on?"

[Malva]

"Do you think you can? That should've dulled the pain a bit, but you may still need to be medic'd."

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! shrugs

"This hurts way less than alchemy training did"

[Torvallis!]

[[oog: boop! Finish this when you have the time?]]

[Malva]

[Oh! It the thread didn't turn orange last post...]

"Alllright then."

The two move on up the trail. Eventually they find another flora.

"Look here, this one is a moonflower. It's a little past its prime; we'd better collect the seed rather than try to use it as an herb."

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis! freezes.

They turn to Malva slowly, a look of pain and anguish on their face.

" . . . it has honestly never occurred to me before to collect seed from plants that I realized were unharvestable."

[Malva]

"Yeah; as you can see here it has a seed pod that we can either tie some fabric around and wait for it to drop its seeds, or we can try to cut them out."

[Torvallis!]

" . . . so many passed up seeds . . ."

[Malva]

Malva takes out her scalpel and carefully cuts into the seed pod. She pops out a couple of seeds and puts them in her bag.

[Torvallis!]

Torvallis!, still reeling from the unexpected object-function overfocus in their own thinking, numbly follows behind Malva.

[Malva]

"Are you doing okay?" Asks Malva.

[Torvallis!]

"Have you ever . . . like, when you've been looking at a tool for so long, all your life, that you forget that it's just a piece of material with particular geometry, and you forget that it can be used for anything else that needs the same geometry and structure?

And then someone comes along and crumbles up some metal foil, and scrubs a pot with it, and you can't believe all the previous times you haven't ever made the connection that an iron scrubber is just a scrunched up piece of iron foil that was shredded into lines beforehand.

And you just . . . your world is changed because you've never thought about the way things actually are, just about the way you've used the, and the categorical boxes you've put them into so that you can navigate your flimsily built worldview as a method of physical movement through the world.

And it's just . . ."

[Malva]

"Sounds like you've had a bit of a revelation..."

(Signing off on Herbalism III for that, but you can  keep going if you want)

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