#rivervale_lodge

It's a different sort of shopping list Kerri's making now that much of the high school crew is off to college. Of course, there will always be a supply of Dr. Pepper on hand, and there are certainly still PLENTY of mouths to be fed.

She checks another kitchen cabinet and adds a few items to the list.

"Thank you, Eir Frey, it is just a scratch" A voice firm, Squire Valter speaks up

"young man" Ironic as she's talking to a man in his forties, "You are a warrior but I've done osme healing and that wound looks small but nasty"

Kerri puts down her list and waits to see if she needs to reach for the first aid kit or a cookie.

Entering the main room of the lodge Kerri can see the silver hair troll grandame gesturing to a gash along Valter's hand, long but shallow. But mroe than that, the edges do look jagged. He's run water over it, but it's possible there's still dirt in the markings

"What happened?" Kerri asks. She brought both the kit and a cookie, just in case.

"It's just a chimerical wound. A creature attacked, I managed to slay it" Squire Valter says, "It did manage to get a tendril down my gauntlet." He admits "Surprisingly nimble."

"What did the Chimera look like?" Eir Frey inquires

"A mobile plant of some sort, leaped from a patch of flowers, where it lay hidden, and attacked. Thorny scratch"

Kerri frowns. "Was it one of the rose bushes?"

She says, "May I?" as she claims Valter's arm for a better look at what's been left inside the wound.

"Something about this, alarms me, Hearth"

"I'm not thrilled with it either," she mutters.

"I don't remember what flowers it was hiding among" Valter admits

for a moment, Kerri struggles to remember the squire's name, but only a moment. It's possible there's some toxin involved in that wound

"Squire...ah..." a pause "...ah...Valter?" She shakes her head and leans back. "Oh...oh, that's not good."

There's glamour in tthe wound, active and invasive

Eir Frey says "Look Walter.. pardon, Valter that.. ooh my. We need to get that out, we need to get that out now." She looks at Kerri "Hearth, he's been cut by a Forget me Now... it's a nasty botanical chimera... it renders a curse on it's target so folks fail to remember them, and eventually notice them. They get weak, and the plant feeds on them with no one the wiser. It's like a Veiled eyes cantirp but malefic"

"Oh, good grief. How did we get one of those around here?" She puts on gloves from the kit to avoid contact. "Is the curse connected to spores or shards? Or is it just in his flesh now?"

"Well, back in my day we had a two fold attack, a hard rinse with alchohal that killed the toxin on the outside, while drinking a some Liquor to change the blood in the man to being less welcoming. Doesn't always work. You'll probably fine some tiny bits in those jags that a simple light rinse of water wwouldn't get" She says

"You expect me to get DRUNK?" Squire Valter frowns "I do not do that often."

"Do you have any moss or the like meant to draw liquid out? " Eirfrey ignores the man's love of dignity

"Alcohol we've got, and moss too, in the treeline out back. Come to the kitchen." She leads them there and pulls out a large bottle of rubbing alcohol from a cabinet. "Let me go get that moss...."

And soon all the materials are gathered, including a couple of large bottles of cheap whiskey.

"If the Chiefftain sees me as a drunkard, it will make a bad impression." Squire Valter mutters

"The Hearth outranks us both and thank goodness she does" Eirfrey says to him "Or else you'd clearly listen to me. " She looks at the moss "Oh this is perfect."

"The Chieftain won't mind, and I'll explain it to her. Now..." she pours him a large shot to get started. "We'll play a game. When I say 'Drink' you say 'Okay' and drink the drink. Understood?"

"Eirfrey, how can I help?"

"Well," Eirfrey directs her how to apply the moss , and if Kerri is willing to learn ,teh woman is willing to teach. In truth Kerri would probably get this on her own now, but experience shows how to streamline it

Valter does not wince as the alchohal is poured on his wound. He does look a bit less pleased when he has to take a swig but he does

Kerri is a willing student. She intermittently calls out "Drink!" to Squire Valter as the work is done.

He swigs!

The moss being plant material itself seems to greedy suck up the botanical chimerical toxin, while refusing the booze

meaning it comes out as a kind of filter

"Oh, that's clever," Kerri murmurs about the moss, then calls out "Drink!"

Another hit

"You're forgetting to say Okay," she reminds him.

"Yes, the moss you picked seems particularly good at it. "

"Okay" He says

And adds "Okay" to make up for the one he missed.

"Do we go after other little bits with tweezers? Or should the moss get it all?"

He may claim to be unseelie, but he has trollish dignity and clearly isn't crazy about the assault on it, but he's a grown man and doens't grouse outloud

At THAT Eir Frey looks a bit chagrined "It might speed the process. I don't have my glasses handy so I can see such tiny things"

Kerri nods and gets out the tweezers, running them under alcohol first. As she leans in to pluck out some of the tiny splinters, she calls out, "Drink!"

"Okay" A drink

She nods. The fact that he remembered to say it is a good sign.

She works, Valter drinks, and he starts to get chatty "A lot of missed opportunities in my life... but a man has to stand strong for what he believes in, or what's the point? "

By chatty, we mean troll chatty, not pooka chatty- thank the Dreaming

Kerri's skilled hands and strong eyes soon plucks the little bits out. Valter doesn't seem to feel a thing