poisonous experimentation

The skull marked yearling had to travel a distance out from Aerie for his next experiment, too uncertain on whether the adults around (read: Riva, the senior healer) would be gracious about his porcupine's lesson plans. They had taken the long trip east to the prairie with him, for privacy, each carrying a portion of the materials he would need for a day of extracting potentially deadly herbs into a potent tincture. He had been forced to trade away some of his herbal concoctions to gather the proper supplies, which was a bit silly in hindsight - what was he spending all this effort on crafting shit for, if he had to trade it away to craft the next? His porcupines assured him it was all part of the deal of learning, and begrudgingly he accepted their wisdom and carried on.

Settling down in the middle of the prairie, he spread his materials out around him in a circle. A cluster of the soft blue flower wolfsbane at his left, a reclaimed air-tight(or so the trader assured him) jar and sinew in the middle, and some vodka he had pilfered from Aerie's stores on his right. The porcupines were chattering quietly to themselves a few meters off, rattling their spines occasionally like they were having a disagreement on how to proceed. Acacius was used to their squabbles and sat himself in the grass, awaiting the right time to begin.