Spring Green Wintergreen

The boy was usually mild mannered, but as he passed his second birthday there had been a shift in his demeanor. Not only was he the Raider's lead healer, he'd also spent the better part of his winter working round the clock to make sure his leader's wife didn't die... and how did she repay all that effort? By leaving her room before she was ready, stumbling into the clusterfuck that was the Raider's lives in general and storming off, away from all his carefully prepared supplies and across several islands to stay on the goddamn mainland. As if that wasn't enough, he'd pretty much depleted his entire stores in the process. He walked with a stiffer spine now, his shoulders back and head slightly more elevated. He wasn't so content to just bleed into the background... at least, not out here.

The run here had done him some good. Most of his supplies weren't as accessible as it had been when they lived on the mainland, but maybe a bit of extra time away was just what the doctor ordered... well, he supposed that was him now wasn't it?

To be honest, he probably could have gotten what he needed around the Whispering Woods, or even in the Fern Gulley, but he had continued, across the scorching sands of the Barren Dunes to get here. After all, he wasn't just gathering for himself. He still owed a debt to the mountain pack. So what around here was worth gathering? What would be best retained for his own uses, and what might prove novel to those who lived at a higher elevation? He was so caught up in his own pondering that he didn't even realise he wasn't exactly alone.

“Speech”