poisonous experimentation

Acacius' bright brown brows furrowed briefly as she admitted she was hunting. He blinked, looking to her, back to his porcupines, then back to her once more. Hesitantly, he ventured. "But.. you're not hunting anymore, right?" Poke and Prick were some of his very best friends, and not even the friendliest stranger would be allowed to harm them.

She questioned him then - or maybe the porcupine, Acacius wasn't sure - and the skull-marked boy glanced in panic back to the porcupine leading the lesson. What the hell was monkshood? His gums slapped together absently as he tried to come up with a reply, but without knowing what this other herb was, he couldn't say whether it was better to be extracting then the wolfsbane was.

Thankfully, his porcupine caught his glance and gave the woman a reassuring smile. "It is. He knows to be careful, and to respect the dangers of it. Once the tincture is complete, we mix a very small portion into a much larger batch of lotion. Applied topically, it's used to manage certain types of chronic pains." The porcupine nodded down to his gloved paws, made from material that was near color-matched to his fur "Now they go into the jar, Acacius. And then the vodka."

With his companion fielding the difficult question, Acacius moved on to the next step of the process. He carefully tilted the jar's lid into the container, allowing the flower to fall to the bottom, and then poured the vodka overtop it until the porcupine nodded to alert him to stop. To the woman, he spoke once more. "Is it nice living on the coast? I live by a lake, it's kind of cool, but I bet nothing compared to the ocean."