On The Borders Of Safety [Healing Lesson]

Gossamer fidgeted a bit but she didn't have to wait long before Aris showed up with her usual wit and sarcasm. Gossamer smirked. "Well, someone has too," she joked. "If you want to learn to build towers or sing though I'm afraid you're out of luck. I'm horrid at both." In all seriousness she just wanted to share what she'd learned. Gossamer had been lucky to have Ásta who was skilled in both fighting and healing and was able to pass on her knowledge. In some ways the giant fox was like an older sister to her. So much had gone on in their earlier lives that they'd mostly been left to fend for themselves when it came to training. Gossamer felt the least she could do was share a little of what she'd learned. Maybe it would goose other members of the pack to hold more training sessions if one of the more obnoxious yearlings just started doing as she pleased and teaching whatever the hell she wanted.

Ophelia soon arrived afterwards. Gossamer grinned, tail wagging happily as her heavier sister joined the duo. "Hey, Ophie, glad you could come! I had the luck to gather a bunch of yarrow this fall after the floods. Figured it would be a good plant to go over. You can do so much with it and we have plenty so I'm sure it'll be used."

Before she could get the lesson officially underway a scrappy, albino yearling showed up and expressed interest in the lesson. Gossamer was prepared to make a hissy comment until the loner actually offered to pay her for the lesson. She eyed the rooster pheasant and decided she very much wanted the tail feathers. "Yea, ok. I don't care. Just mind your manners. I'm Gossamer and these are my sisters Aris and Ophelia."

Now with that out of the way the real lesson could begin. She wasn't sure how much her sisters or the stranger already knew so she decided to start with the basics. "Alright, so there are a lot of different kinds of healing herbs but you'll find similar ways to approach them so don't get too overwhelmed with intricacies just yet. I'm focusing on yarrow today. Like many healing herbs yarrow has medicinal properties that we want to get out of the plant so we can use them to help our patients." She gestured to the bundles of dried yarrow she had.

"In order to get these properties out you can extract them using water like making a tea, using alcohol like white wine to make a tincture, or using a fat like lard and beeswax to make an ointment. Let's look at water extraction with yarrow today." Now that Gossamer was trying to teach others she suddenly realized how much there was to know about this one plant. She didn't want to overwhelm anyone so hopefully focusing on the main two uses would be enough.

"Yarrow tea is a great treatment for bad colds and it can help with fevers. For the tea we'll want to put 1/2 ounce of dried leaves in a bowl and add one cup of water." Gossamer used her paw pad to crush up some of the dried leaves on a piece of hide. She then folded the two corners together and lifted it to form a makeshift funnel she could use to pour the leaves into the bowl. She then tipped the bowl to show how much was in there. "I'm working on a scale so we can actually weigh stuff but I'm not there quite yet." Gossamer then popped the cork out of her water skin and poured in a cup of water.

"We'll then put it near the fire so that it can start to simmer, we'll want it to simmer pretty good for ten minutes." There was some debate as to whether it was better to boil or simmer so Gossamer just shot for the middle with a good rolling simmer.

"Make sense so far?"