Once we finished up lunch, we headed to the stables to head out on the afternoon’s leg of the journey. We did get some funny looks from others. They were clearly wondering why we were heading out in this sort of weather. Inside the stables I first had Istan fill up buckets of water for the horses. I placed my fingers in them like had become the habit and started to brew the medicine. 

Once the horses started to drink, I then took the water bucked that we were going to use to refill our canteens and made the medicine for our party. “Do not feel rushed to drink this medicine quickly. Just drink it like you normally would. But please make sure you finish it by tonight.” I had learned that these types of medicines worked best if they were given more time to be absorbed. My guess was that their bodies would start to reject the compound if they got too much of it at once. This would explain why spreading it over several hours was better. Faun did say something like that once, but it was hard for me to understand.

Gray took a sip of the medicine and said, “Wow! This tastes really good.” Emily and Leafia were nodding along. Though they did not seem as surprised. Probably because they had some similar medicine last night. “Emily, you should learn how to make medicine like this. This tastes so much better than yours. People might just start drinking this for fun.” Emily’s face quickly fell into a scowl. It looked like Gray’s lack of tact was back. He had been really well behaved after my first encounter with him, but it seems that he had not been cured. 

Emily then said in a dark and ominous voice, “Remember how we have talked in the past that sometimes you need to think more about how you phrase things?”

“I was just trying to help you figure out how to improve,” Gray said as he started to sound scared.

”You are always saying how you wish your medicine was better.” 

“It is not the content of what you said that has upset me. I have already asked Laurel to teach me how to make better medicines.” Emily was staring right at Gray, but he was doing his best to avoid looking into her eyes. “Gray, Please look at me,” Emily said sternly. Very slowly Gray’s eyes made their way to Emily’s face. “Can you think of how you could have phrased that better?” Gray’s eyes kept drifting down from Emily’s face, but he seemed to know what would happen if they strayed too far because they would quickly dart back up again. Gray seemed to be hesitating to figure out what he did wrong and how to fix it. 

I looked over to Leafia to see her biting her lip. I could tell she was trying really hard to keep a smile off her face from the way her cheek was twitching. Leafia had spent a good amount of time with Gray hunting for food during our stops. It must be odd for her seeing the usually confident Gray cowering away from the gaze of a little lady who was noticeably shorter and much lighter than him. I had not had much of a chance to see the relationship between couples since humans had developed a more agrarian lifestyle, so to me this whole exchange was very interesting to watch. Even though the wife was much smaller and weaker than the husband, she seemed to have a power over him that I could not explain.

Gray was still pondering while I looked over at Istan. He was just looking at his canteen with great reverence. But as I looked closer I saw him cast his eyes at Gray with what appeared to be sympathy. It looked like elven relationships were not that much different. 

“Well?” Emily said sternly.

“I… Um… could have said ‘Laurel, your medicine tastes great. Do you think you could teach Emily how to make this?” Gray said softly.

“Better, but no,” Emily said coldly. 

Gray thought a bit more. “Emily, this medicine tastes really good. I think this might be what you were looking for to improve your medicine.”

“Now what else do you have to say?”

“Will you forgive me?” Gray said with big watery eyes that really did not fit his typically rugged look. 

Emily then warmly responded. “Yes I forgive you. And I agree I should find out how she gets hers to taste so good.”

“This truly is the nectar of the Goddess. To think that I would ever in my life be given such an honor to be able to drink it.” Istan’s comment came out of nowhere. Well, I guess not. We were talking about how the drink tasted. He looked to the others with pleading eyes. He evidently was trying to change the conversation. But was worshiping me really the best way to change the conversation? 

Leafia decided not to leave him on his own. “Laurel, how do you make this taste so good?”

“Not all leaves have a bad taste when you let them soak in water. Those that are used for medicine almost always taste bad to you humans and elves. I think that is to stop you from having too much. After all, too much medicine is no different than poison.” Leafia seemed a bit shocked but Emily was nodding her head. “But just because medicine tastes bad does not mean I can’t add things that taste good. The only trouble is finding herbs that will mix well with the taste of the medicine. For this one I added mint and cocoa.”

“I have never heard of cocoa,” Leafia said looking confused.

“I am not surprised,” Emily said for me. “It can not live in places with winter like Laurel’s woods. I have only seen it much further south. Even when I lived in the Killi kingdom south of the great desert, they could only be found occasionally.”

“A dryad I once taught named Cocoa showed me many plants that can’t grow around here.” I smiled slightly, remembering. “I even followed her down to her land once. But this was long before I had to worry about humans hurting my forest in my absence. She wanted to learn more from me, but she could not tolerate the winters, just like the plant which bore her name.”

“You lived all the way down there?” Gray asked Emily hesitantly. There were 300 hundred years of life that, until recently, he did not know that Emily had. It seemed that he had not fully processed all that this would entail.

“I had to move a lot over the years. I originally started south of Estiban, where I was born, but I did not like the heat that much, so after a hundred years or so I headed north. Wars were also getting more common down there, so I wanted to move somewhere more stable.”

It looks like Istan did manage to get the conversation to change topic, but I still did not approve of his method. Well, we could talk more about this later or on the road. “We should get heading out. It looks like the horses have drunk their fill. We should get on our way if we want to reach the outskirts of the capital today,” I said, derailing the conversation. 

Everyone was slightly hesitant to head back out into the rain, but they had all agreed to it so they did not complain.