trouble and toil

Aliana watched with focused, curious eyes while Siren demonstrated her process, filling a glass jar with the buds and blooms of the lavender before pouring some of the clear alcohol on top to nearly fill the jar. Ali gave a tentative sniff of the liquid, recoiling instantly from the acrid scent of the alcohol as it burned at her nares. She wrinkled her nose and had to resist a sneeze. That was the stuff wolves liked to drink? Why on earth would anyone willingly ingest something that smelled so... strong? Siren explained the uses of the extract and how to best use it. She knew of the relaxing and sedative properties of lavender in pharmaceutical purposes, so it made sense that the extracts would just be a more powerful and potent version of the flowers' natural properties.

"Fascinating," Aliana cooed while Siren capped the jar and set it aside to ferment. The petite fae turned her blue-green gaze across the other plants strewn across the table's surface. "Will we be making extracts of all of these, or do you have different purposes for these?" Aliana lifted the sprigs of rosemary, taking an exploratory sniff of the woody herb. She loved the scent of fresh rosemary—she loved the smell of most fresh flowers and herbs, actually. Ali began to wonder if she should take up cooking some meals for the pack. Certainly culinary arts couldn't be too starkly different from mixing medicines with herbs, right?

"Aliana"