intro & starter: at the apothecary
The small stream of light that bent through the transom window sitting above the entrance painted the walls of Arudstrand Apotek in a soft, peachy glow. The shoppe already had a warm and gentle aesthetic without the beautiful spindle of light, but somehow, the early morning light sneaking above the tree-line made it more heavenly.
“Mum loved mornings like this,” Panacaea muttered to herself as her eyes swept from the cast sun rays to the botany bench littered with spare herbs and dark, milky glass bottles below her hands. How Pan desperately wanted to work alongside her mother once more, the pair of them humming the sweetest songs of birds as they worked to restock the shoppe.
It had been only a few fortnights since Pan’s mother had passed on, and she was already back in her shoppe creating ancient tinctures sold to heal those who pass through Elysia. This work was all Pan knew, all she had been allowed to know after inheriting the gifts of natural earth magic; a blessing once bestowed on the founding Arudstrand matriarch generations ago and passed down from Arudstrand woman. In a way, it was therapeutic for Pan to continue in her mother’s foot steps and take over the shop as the head apothecary, even to the dismay of her mother’s assistant, Sigrid, who hoped she would be the one to take the role.
Panacaea’s nimble porcelain fingers started to flutter across the bench, pulling different dried herbs called for in her ancient tonic recipe. “Elderberry... eleuthero... ginger root...” Pan thought to herself and plotted a small amounts into a mortarium to be ground to fine dust. She was so concentrated on the concoction that she barely heard the melodious sounds of the front door charm radiating across the shoppe. “We’re not open for another several hours,” Pan said, glancing up toward the figure disrupting her sweet and soft strand of light. “I don’t have much to offer to you, straunger.” Pan’s soft green eyes flickered back to her tincture.