The Way You Do

Káti spent the morning exploring the Vericona Plains that made up Valhalla's territory, his new home. He'd grown up on a vast prairie so the plains were a nice reminder of home. He knew he had a lot to do to make himself useful to the pack but he felt he was off to a good start. Káti had spent the season prior gathering herbs of all kinds and stashing them away in little hideaways. Now that he had a permanent home he could move the herbs from one location to another and add to Valhalla's stores of healing supplies for the winter.

He had a good storage den dug now, near his personal den, until he had time to consult with the other healers and add his total of herbs to the packs official stores. Káti had paused his exploration to grab a deer hide. Once that was done he set out to gather the last of his stores. He had a set of dried herbs of various kinds stashed away in the Algoma Prairie. It didn't take too long to dig them up and add the herbs to his hide. Bundling up the precious cargo, Káti set back off for Valhalla.

He had just made it back inside the pack's border's when he tripped on a prairie dog hole and went crashing to the ground. Káti winced as he sat back up. On the way down he had managed to slam his left forearm against a rock and it throbbed where a good bruise was certainly going to start forming. Káti sighed and opened his hide bundle. He had a number of herbs he could use but the point of gathering them was to add them to Valhalla's stores, not to use them himself for so silly an accident.

Káti glanced about and noticed that he wasn't too far from a stream. Perhaps he could find some comfrey. Wrapping the herbs back up in their hide bundle he set them aside before limping down the stream bank in search of the hairy plant that might help his injury. At least it was a gorgeous fall day and this far west it didn't even really feel like fall yet. The weather was warm and sunny, a perfect day to go for a walk for anyone who wasn't so clumsy. Well, at least he hadn't sprained anything.

As the healer walked along he soon spied a leafy plant standing about two and a half feet tall. It was a stout plant covered in bristly hairs with lower leaves that were nearly a foot long. Yep, that was comfrey. Káti padded over to the plant. Bending his head, he carefully started to chew off one of the leaves. He only needed one for this injury and once he'd gotten that taken care of he could gather more leaves to dry and store. It took some gumption since the leaves were so bristly but soon he had what he needed.

Káti gathered a few more leaves for his stores, making sure to leave enough to support a healthy plant. Once that was done he trotted back over to the herb bundle and set the leaves down. He only needed one to take care of the bruise. He pulled one out and examined it. It was a good leaf and he planned to make a poultice out of it. Comfrey leaves worked well for calming swelling and slowing bleeding. He'd also herd that it helped against infection though he had yet to test this for himself.

Ideally he would heat up water to make a warm poultice but it didn't seem worth the effort in this case so Káti girded his loins and started chewing on the leaf. He used his fangs to break it down into a mush while his saliva added heat and moisture. It was not pleasant and he wrinkled his nose at the texture. Once he had the mixture made he laid down and spat it out onto the injured forearm. Káti then used his other paw to spread the mixture out evenly across the bruising area. There. That was done. No much to do now except relax and let the poultice do its work. Luckily it was a nice day.

Káti had to admit the poultice was working already. He could feel the throbbing pain start to ebb a little, aided by the heat at first and now the coolness as the air started to wick the moisture away from the mixture. He knew the plant was also useful for easing the swelling around broken bones. Hopefully, if he paid enough attention to where he was walking, that would never be an issue he had to deal with personally. At some point he need to run an experiment on how the powdered root in water compared to the leaves when it came to easing swelling in bruises. Hopefully he wouldn't have reason to test it soon. He certainly didn't need more bruises.