Alder's Grove

⚗

After a moment, Kael realized that Gemma was staring at her.  She cleared her throat and, when that didn’t stop the staring, took a long sip of her drink.

“You know....” Gemma said slowly.  “The first thing you said to me started with idiots.  But I don’t see how making a plant extinct is a good idea.  And ah -” If she had been irked about the bar, she was trying not to be angry now.  “Is that how you see everything? Beautiful painting, oh, look, a potion ingredient. Lovely landscape, look for potion ingredients”

“Pretty girl,” Kael offered dryly, “either talk too much about potion ingredients, take her looking for potion ingredients, or think about the forbidden potions where a lock of her hair would be the final touch.”

“There aren’t- those are fairy tales, aren’t they?  Drop of blood, lock of hair, that sort of thing?”

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Idiots

⚗

“Perhaps I will teach you.”

Was she looking for an apprentice?  Or for - well. Certainly she hadn’t been at a lack for invitations since she woke up.  Of course, she had spoken to more people who did not work for her in the last day than she had in many months, perhaps many years, in the time before her long nap.

“I might enjoy you teaching me.”  Gemma smiled at her with an expression that might have been interested in learning - or in other things.  “You have a fascinating way of looking at the world. What is it that you do, that isn’t pretending to be an ancient potions-mistress?”

“Well, mostly, I am a modern potions-mistress,” Kael admitted.  “It helps to have someone in the Tower, I suppose, that knows what sort of potions will actually work, which won’t do anything, and which could be fatal if handled incorrectly.”

“It certainly has to add verisimilitude.   But there have to be other things you could be doing - working for one of the big corporations…”

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Preparations

⚗

Kael slid herself into the bustle of people with the strange feeling that no time at all had passed. True, when she had been - when this had been her land, say that - she had needed to put a little more work into a disguise.  True, the clothing was stranger now, the faces had a wider variety of shapes, the hair colors and skin colors were more varied. True, the buildings - other than her Tower - were taller, and there seemed to be far more of them than there had been around her Tower before she went to sleep.

But the people bustled around and talked in much the same ways.  They were worried about children, and partners, and money, and food.  What to wear and where to get it, all of the things that had been common a thousand years before.

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: The Hoija

⚗

Kael didn’t need the potion to tell her what he was asking; what she did need was some way to tell her if she wanted to agree to his proposition.

“Maybe not tonight?” she offered, hoping that would go over as she meant it.

From the rueful look on his face, probably not.

“I just moved in here,” she tried.  “And I don’t even know where everything is yet.  In a week - next Yorday? - I’ll have drinks to offer you that aren’t potion reagents.”

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Dinner, and Things to Chew On

⚗

She ate her food slowly, but with gusto.  It may have been only one long night to her, but it still seemed like a long time since she’d had a taste of home.

Dennor Hightower was staring at her.  She looked up from her food and waited, patiently.

“Kael,” he repeated slowly, “is not a Lerienoijen name.  You said Lerienoijen.  How many scholars know that word?”

“I don’t know.  How many?”

“I know three.  One of them is me.  And I’ve never heard of you.”

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Taking Stock

⚗

Half Yordiy off was better than she’d expected to get, if she was being honest, and all she had to do was draw up a safer version of things she’d been doing for years.

“Thank you, Mr. Vibius.”  He reminded Kael strongly of the people she had known before she’d become a potion-mistress and ruler of her own domain.  She knew how to act around him, but that didn’t make it the least bit pleasant. “You said the food was on the third floor?”

“Yep.  It’s always there.  I don’t get it, I really don’t, but it’s always there.”

Kael suppressed a smile.  Jaoan had been working on that for years.  She wondered how long it had taken him to perfect it.  “Thank you. If nobody is here to ask me about potions, I will go and eat now.”

“You’re really taking this seriously.”  He looked at a small glowing piece of glass for a moment.  “There’s three people in the museum, but they’re taking their down  in the Lives of the Ancient Natives and Potions Then and Now displays.  The Lives one really gets a lot of attention,” he confided. “People like going through how people lived back before, uh,” he coughed, “before the modern era.  We get a lot of yelling, too.” He smiled grimly. “People who say there’s no way things could have been like that.”

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Experimenting with History

⚗

Kael looked between Caron and Hallsey, wondering exactly what she’d said that was getting her such strange looks from both of them.

“Are you offering… to teach us?  On something like a regular basis?”

“But not potions,” Hallsey added to her friend’s question.  “But like… how to find out history?”

“That depends.”  Kael was feeling out her answer as she went,  but she was pretty sure she was on the right track.  “Do you want to learn potions, history, or both?”

“Are you for real?” Caron stared at her.  “Are you really - I mean, what would you charge?”

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Made In the Ikitem Peninsula

⚗️

A map.  She wondered if there were maps anywhere in this place.

The next couple floors proved not so helpful - informative, but not for what she wanted at the moment.  There was a diagram of what a typical house would look like

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Myths

⚗️

The potion was sweeter than she remembered it, and for a moment, Kael worried that she’d made a mistake with an ingredient. Impossible. It might have been a thousand years, but to her mind, it had been barely more than a nap. She could no more have forgotten the ingredients than she could have forgotten her own name.

Her eyes cleared and she went for the note, glad she’d thought to put it away before the tourists showed up.

The letters shimmered and twisted until they were legible and understandable.

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Artle

⚗️

Kael struggled to hide her horror.  The cliff.  They had…  done something to it.  Something about an edict and a gift?  How did you give away a cliff?  Or power it? Power it away?  She needed to drink this potion quickly; there was far too much missing

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Potions

⚗️

She had almost finished the potion when the first “tourists” arrived.  A “tourist”, it appeared, was a person with a flashing glass tablet held in their hand, clothing that did not seem appropriate for any time or era, and a habit of touching

read on…

First: A New World
Previous: Touring

The Kael-room. That was an interesting turn of phrase. Kael knew this tower like the back of her hand; she had been living her for nearly a century before - before she lived here for quite longer in some sort of suspended animation, she supposed. A hundred years. The tower came with a grant. Now that was interesting. Who had provided such a thing? How had the tower’s presence been explained? She was fairly certain much more than a hundred years had passed. Buildings she could see from the windows looked far beyond the current - the current-when-she-slept abilities of normal humans, and there hadn’t been enough wizards in the world to raise so many towers. And yet many of these buildings appeared to be well over a century old, if the aging signs had not changed utterly.

She paused to look out a window. The world around her tower was so much more crowded, and the people in so much more of a hurry, than anything she remembered from before. All those people. Were they heroes? Were they adventurers? Who would come to a seat of the muses that would need to see a Kael - a Kael, not the Kael, and even Kael could recognize the phrase Back Stage.
( Read more... )

Next: http://www.lynthornealder.com/2017/08/25/a-new-world-continuation-potions/

Want More?

Kael drifted off in a haze of fumes.

It hadn’t been exactly what she’d intended to do, but the Blessed Mugwort and the Watery Cress together ought to create a long and dreamless, ageless and still sleep, even if she’d been aiming for more of a quiet watching throughout the ages. Something must have gotten in the mix - probably that last batch of adventurers.

Kael dreamed of a time when such idiots didn’t come traipsing through, just because her tower was black, or just because they’d heard that she was generous with the potions that they needed.

She closed her eyes. This hadn’t been meant to put her to sleep. It really ought to bother her, she thought.

But it was such a nice dreamy sleep. And she couldn’t hear the stupid adventurers anymore.

---

( Read more... )

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1354211.html

Want More?