washed clean

The flooding had done a serious number on the pack's living quarters and stores. Even Aris' workshop with its heavy door wasn't waterproof though it had resisted the floodwater better than she'd have thought, but the seams had let the water spray in until the flood waters had risen nearly to the ceiling, and being in a cave everything had taken forever to dry out which meant mold and mildew destroyed what the water hadn't. Her den didn't have a door at all, which meant that all her sleeping furs and anything not stowed away in the workshop had been washed out into the warren itself and she'd had to go looking for it all when the flood had finally receded. It had taken her enough time to find her sleeping furs that most of them had mildewed beyond repair. That was annoying, but not important. The wreckage of her workshop though was absolutely devastating in the sheer amount of work that it had taken to build up those stores and equipment that the water had ruined. It was going to take an almost overwhelming amount of work to clear it back out and get it back to where it was before. The worst loss had been the various medical texts that the largely self taught healer had been learning from since she was young, scrolls and texts that she'd hoped to pass on to her kids. Gone, ruined, along with all the dried herbs she'd had stored, and any tinctures and ointments that hadn't been in perfectly watertight jars.

Aris had brought a cart into the workshop itself, and was pulling baskets and bags of herbs out of the individual cubbies and throwing them directly into the cart. Nothing that hadn't been sealed with wax in a glass jar could be trusted to be still good at this point, and she grew gloomier and gloomier as the cart filled up with what had been the work of years at this point. She was only partway through, not even halfway, when the cart was too full and she had to pull it out and dump it. It took several more trips before the shelves were bare, and she wiped them all down with a disinfectant to clean up any lingering nasties from the flood water. As she waited for them to dry again, she went through the glass jars that had survived, and made sure they'd all remained in good condition. Some ended up being dumped into the trash as well, and thoroughly cleaned, but the others she put back up in their cubbies after they were dry. She would start gathering replacements immediately as they became available, but many of them were out of season or from too far away to gather herself, so she'd have to start looking to make trades for what she'd need. She'd need to start working on replacing ointments and tinctures herself since she didn't trust trading for those. She preferred knowing for sure what was going into something, and it wasn't as easy to check those for shenanigans as it was plain dried herbs. The Armada had too many enemies to not be careful.

Yarrow was something she'd likely need immediately since it was so common to use. Plantain too. Both of those she could get out and start collecting again fairly early in the growing season. Dandelion too was an early enough herb to collect quickly and easily. She could send Zeejay out for dandelion, though, easily recognizable as it was. A lot of the other more common herbs were summer plants though, like lavender, chamomile, comfrey, and calendula, but there were probably stores outside of the col that survived of those. She'd check with the other healers and potentially trade for them. Aloe didn't even grow near Armada's lands, so she'd have to either go a good ways away or trade for it. Hm. Witch hazel? Willow? Willow she could harvest herself now, and was a good basic painkiller that could cover a lot of uses. Nettles were another early spring plant she could count on to be able to find soon, if it wasn't actually peeking up already.

Ugh, what else would she need? Aris stopped her work to stretch and shake out her coat, using the rest to try to decide what else. A lot of her equipment was comprised of leather and wood, so some of those were completely waterlogged. She'd need to replace a lot of the pieces she used for splints, but at least the bone ones were still good. The cloth pieces might be able to be salvaged, at least, if she scrubbed them down and dried them. Some had mildewed badly though, so they'd been thrown out immediately.

She surveyed the workshop a moment in the light of the lanterns and gave a determined nod to herself. Yes, it sucked absolute ass that she had to start from scratch, but she'd done it once so she could do it again. She just needed to get back to work.

So she did.

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