[open post: the apothecary is in]

[wickedwit]

With Dark well in the rearview mirror (a metaphor Claudius is allowed to make, with his newfound automobile expertise) Claudius can finally stop stockpiling spices, and dedicate himself to the more frivolous sciences. It’s taken him three seasons to isolate the compounds from the remarkable plants that bloomed all Rainbows, or to find a use for the shimmering salts his elfin counterpart guaranteed were magic. Claudius would have declined to buy bags of 'magical salts from another world,' but the other Claudius insisted they were a gift.

(Because, he wrote at his most condescending, apparently Hydaelyn knew you weren’t getting anything from your planet this Rainbows, and deemed this worthy of pity. No wonder they call her the Mothercrystal, she is so endlessly ... mothering.)

Regardless of the source, those salts were magic. Lan Wangji said he could sense the subtle, twisting flows of qi within them, and so could Galahad. Which led, of course, to Claudius heaping praise after praise upon his husband, asking for details on every qi-bearing object in the room. (Which was, of course, all of them.)

When he got around to testing, the otherwordly salts produced results Claudius would have once considered unlikely, if not plainly impossible. He had a lifetime's disappointments to draw on: herbals all over Europe possessed plantlore to improve a person's luck, or protect loved ones from harm. In alchemical texts, the more outrageous of these claims could be explained away as metaphors, or as codes and keys. Alchemists loved to hide their secrets behind coded language, almost as much as they loved an extravagant metaphor.

In the end, no concoction ever changed Claudius's fortunes, except for poison. He had no magic salts. Simply by mingling with salts from a magical world, dill and vervain warded off malicious witchcraft. (Modified cells from the Sun-Moon Dew Mushroom -- phyllobaeis humiformis, he's taken to calling it -- improved the admixture's efficacy.) Distilling a fern flower brought out all its promised luck, though Claudius found love-lies-bleeding to be superior as a sleep and fertility charm. Days passed in his workshop, refining formulations, filling his batch-book with recipes. That done, he began brewing and bottling batches.

With crates he certainly didn't move himself, Claudius set up shop in Café Ami. He sits at the table with his stock is on display, indulging in a glass of full-bodied wine and waiting for custom.

Comments

[sporesprouter]

"Obviously. What's the point if you don't at least try to figure it out?

[wickedwit]

“Obviously,” Claudius agrees. It pleases him to see how similarly he and Tress think, despite being such different personages. Tress is young, heroic, the sort of whipsmart young lass who features in tales where sly derring-do is rewarded rather than punished. Outwitting a dragon, impersonating royal infantry, stealing an imaginative nobleman away from a respectable (and boring) life to one more worth telling stories about.

It makes Claudius proud to consider her his niece, not only because they share a certain inclination towards risk for knowledge, but because she’s so much more pragmatic, sensible, less vulnerable to tragic extremes. He can see someone like Tress creating a better future, making her own, unique mistakes along the way.

All that said, he ask, “By the way, what do you think of the new boy? What’s his name … Gaheris?”

[sporesprouter]

"Gaheris? He's sweet. He did think I was a witch for a moment¹, but definitely sweet. A little bit flustered sometimes."

¹He was never actually disabused of that notion, but that's not the point.

[wickedwit]

"It doesn't take much to be a witch in most people's eyes, I find. In your world, a sorceress is something someone can come out and say they are -- in mine, witches are known to work in shadows and secrecy, and there's always a great buzz about court whenever there's rumor of one." And then, of course, there were the burnings. Claudius did his best to stay above all that, to avoid even the appearance of sin or sympathy with sinners. "Gaheris has respect for witches, at least. He certainly respects you."

[sporesprouter]

"Rumors do have a way of gaining lives of their own, I guess. But I showed him some sprouting."

[wickedwit]

"That would do it," Claudius says, with no small amount of pride. "Know thou, I was also struck with wonder when I witnessed my first sprouting. There are two sorts of things people tend to call witchcraft: misfortunes with unsatisfactory explanations, and wonders outside their understanding."

[sporesprouter]

"Do any misfortunes have satisfactory explanations? They might be logical and accurate, but they're going to be unsatisfying anyway."

[wickedwit]

“There you see the trick of it. Logical, accurate explanations are often the least satisfying at all — people prefer to believe in grand conspiracies, invisible battles between good and evil.”

[sporesprouter]

Tress frowns thoughtfully. "I think that maybe," she says carefully, "that's a way to not have to do anything about it. If there's a grand conspiracy or an invisible battle, there's not much a single person can do to help with that. But normal problems and misfortunes... anyone can help with that, at least a little. And if you can help with something, it's probably a better thing to help."

[wickedwit]

“Thou mayst be on to something. Imagine thou wert a witchfinder — that’s a sort of pervert the crown pays to check women for witch’s marks,” he explains, in case Tress’s parents never warned her against the type. (Or in case her world was kinder than his, in this regard.) “Imagine thou wert called to a town suffering a calamity. Perhaps a drought followed by famine, unrest and incivility fomenting among the townspeople. By sheer luck of the draw, some fields fared better than others, and those with fewer mouths to feed … women without husbands, men without children, outsiders whose livelihood doesn’t depend on this year’s crops … are looked upon with envy. An thou hadst the learning for it, thou couldst examine the fields thyself, judge whether the surviving crops share any commonality, perhaps in the cultivar or quality of soil. At that point, thou art already practicing witchcraft in the minds of small men … but even if thou couldst explain to them all of nature’s cruel predictabilities, that explanation still doesn’t satisfy. It doesn’t put food on anyone’s table, or settle anyone’s old-held grudge. If thou hadst the authority, thou couldst redistribute the yield among the town … but that means managing a great deal of moving pieces, getting everyone to agree when they’re already at each other’s thtoats. It’s easier, for a witchfinder, to simply find a scapegoat to blame. Blame, thou see’st, can be as satisfying as bread — and then thou needst not give them any bread. For those with no interest in helping, the secret plots of witches are always an excellent excuse.”

[sporesprouter]

As Claudius relays this tale, Tress mulls it over, frowning in thought. "I can see how it makes sense as an explanation. But it's not right. And the satisfaction you get from bread lasts a lot longer."

[wickedwit]

Claudius feels yet another swell of pride — when doesn’t he, with Tress? (With Prince Hamlet, Claudius felt like he was waiting, watching for when he’d prove himself corruptible and rotten as the rest of the royal family, a category in which Claudius thoroughly included himself. It seems impossible that Tress should ever repeat the mistakes his generation made. He still thinks when Tress returns to her world, not if, with stubborn dedication, but whether or not Tress returns to her world, she’ll make whatever world she lives in better than the last.)

“Ah, Tress,” he says fondly. “Thou art wiser than all the educated ministers who are ordained to teach wisdom.”

[sporesprouter]

"It's just being sensible," she says with a shrug. "And probably actually caring that other people are all right."