[MEETING] Overdrive

Winter was usually a slow time for healers other than the usual bouts of disease or injury, without many herbs available to gather and dry. Kassander, however, had never been one to like to waste time in idleness when he could be doing. All winter he'd been holed up in his den, mixing concoction after concoction using the new tools he'd worked up that summer and fall, expanding the den even further, furnishing it with newly tanned hides for the comfort of future patients. His den was now a neatly organized grotto. The dried herbs of the summer before had been ground finely and stored in their own separate jars, or mixed together in readiness for specific remedies. He wanted to find some way of heating water to pour over some of them, having found that it extracted the necessary potency much more efficiently from the herbs than cold water or simply swallowing them, and some external remedies worked much better as a water rinse than as a poultice. He wondered again if there was some safe way of keeping a small fire going outside his den... or perhaps keeping a single hot coal in a horn of sand ready to build a fire to heat water in an emergency.

Overall he was pretty satisfied now with how prepared he might be for any medical issues that might pop up. He was even feeling rather relaxed and considering expanding his hunting to supply hides and other supplies to the other pack members. Maybe Brandr or Lark or Corentine - really the only wolves he knew in the pack having hunted with them - would want to learn how to craft things out of their kills.

All that comfort and planning vanished like the popping of a bubble into a swelter of anxiety when he heard the call for a meeting filter through the thicket and into his den. Oh no. All those wolves, all at once. In reality the pack was few, but in Kassander's mind the group took on looming proportions, a profusion of wolves all gathered together and he, Kassander, would need to...

Well actually he just needed to BE THERE, not actually do anything. With a deep breath to ward off the lurking panic he forced himself to step out of the den. When he'd enlarged it, he'd enlarged the entrance as well with the thought that it would be easier to get unresponsive patients in to where they could be cared for, with a near-ninety degree branching off to either side of the main walkway with large roomy den areas. One a crafting area, one a storage area, and further down away from drafts the sleeping and treatment chambers. It was the roots of the thicket overhead that stabilized the roof enough to allow for the chambers, and a rather large old oak spread thick sheltering roots over the round entrance hole and walkway, providing the necessary pillars to hold it all together.

Thinking about it was what allowed him to hold it together, too, pride in his work keeping him from slinking anxiously as he headed toward the meeting. He still moved jerkily, hesitantly, without Rommel there for support. The fox was off hunting somewhere. Kass would be fine. He wasn't a child, was in fact the eldest wolf in the pack. He would eventually have to act like it.

He was a little surprised to find he hadn't dawdled as long as he'd thought in his anxiety. Only Corentine, Brandr, and, of course, Sparrow were there when he moved to take a place shyly near them. At least he felt like he knew Corentine and Brandr, even though they had not spoken outside of the pack hunt. He was just more comfortable with wolves he had worked alongside than those he'd only known in passing.