Sleepy Time Potion
Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:36 am
Ash 13th, Year 120, Age of Steel
Alyssum made her way back to her Vardo as quick as she could possible manage on her less than powerful wings. It was a reminder of how much she really needed to take the time to train them, but that really wasn't her main concern right now. The little voice in the back of her head reminded her that finishing the potion request was a lot more important than getting side tracked by something like learning how to fly better. It wasn't like that was something Alyssum used to do a lot when she was younger. Start one project and then jump to another. Work on a potion for three hours, leave it half finished, and then start trying to make a necklace before she'd even started learning about jewelry... Having gotten older, Alyssum really pitied Rúnar in some respects.
He promised that he'd teach her how to make jewelry, or more so would have an acquaintance of his teach her, as soon as Alyssum was done with smithing. The key detail he really wanted was for Alyssum to focus on one topic at a time. That way, learning the skill went faster and smoother than it might have if Alyssum was bouncing around between eight or nine different things she wanted to learn within the span of a single season. Little Alyssum had, unfortunately for Rúnar, possessed an attention span that was shorter than a piece of dried pasta. A drawback of having been raised in the woods by Isra where focusing on the present had been the most useful thing Alyssum had learned.
Older Alyssum thankfully had a bit more patience and could keep herself from getting derailed with a little bit of prompting. At least, that's what she liked to think as her feet once again brushed against the ground and she quickly unlocked her Vardo and slipped inside, dumping out the satchel of chamomile on the counter. "Alembic, alembic," she muttered to herself as she looked through her potion supplies. She paused as she was going through the different shapes. "Wait, no, retort," she told herself as she pulled out a retort and a small glass vial instead and placed one of the alembics off the side for a later step.
After tracking down a knife, Alyssum minced up the chamomile entirely, cutting indiscriminately the entire plants after doing a second check over to make sure nothing unexpected would be getting into the potion. That was partially why the purification step was so important, but it wasn't perfect. More than anything, it was just to get rid of bad ether in the existing component, and often purification would miss unexpected details like a bug accidentally getting into the brew because it happened to be sleeping on the petals and someone missed it.
That was something which happened once when Alyssum was a pup and she refused to acknowledge the event. It ended... painfully. By which, all Alyssum could clearly remember was having to let a doctor pluck shards of glass out of her hands for half an hour and Rúnar repeating how they should just be grateful she didn't ruin her eyesight and had been quick enough to protect herself. She shook her head slightly, banishing the memory. Most easily obtained ingredients wouldn't explode like that had, but there were always outliers when it came to every rule of thumb.
After mincing the chamomile Alyssum then proceeded to grind it into a paste of sorts in her mortar and pestle, watching all of the pieces of the plant start to blend together into a uniform color she was well acquainted with. Alyssum hummed quietly as her tail swayed, ears twisting to catch stray noises as she worked peacefully on her project. She had to get a new alchemy kit not long ago, and before that she was working with what really didn't count as an alchemy kit and was mostly of use for potions that weren't going to be legally acceptable anyways. In that time, she'd missed working with a proper kit. She'd need to track down a guild and speak with them about getting a custom set commissioned, but that wouldn't be for a while. She at least needed to start making money first before she started thinking about spending it, and one thing Alyssum knew for a solid fact was that she severely lacked money.
After turning the chamomile into a paste Alyssum carefully got as much of it as she could into the bottom of the retort. Afterwards she poured in an equal amount of hot water. Not hot enough that it was boiling, but hot enough that anything nasty and bacterial was probably dead by now. Again, she didn't want to accidentally introduce something new to equation when the core elements were supposed to be lavender, chamomile, and water.
The girl hummed, ears twitching as she carefully swirled the mixture to emulsify it and then placed the retort onto a burner with a vial carefully placed to catch the extract.
Alyssum turned to her recipe book and began to flip it open. "Two ounces chamomile purify, 4 ounces dried lavender ground into a powder, two cups water, boil in alembic at high heat and then allow to rest at below room temperature for ten minutes," she repeated the recipe to herself easily as she began to rummage through her dried goods. She had lavender, she knew she had lavender, the question really came down to her being able to find the lavender in the controlled chaos of her Vardo. Oh, this would be so much easier if Alyssum had the money for an inn room. Then she could use the Vardo just as her shop and when she was on the road there was no difference between the floor of the Vardo and camping outside. Except to get money she needed to actually, you know, do her job.
Lavender!
Alyssum breathed a small sigh of relief as she tracked down the bottle she'd filled with dried lavender. She was absolutely going to need to get some more soon, but this should be enough for the first potion. Afterwards she'll have the money to actually buy more ingredients assuming she can find some good ones.
She clicked her tongue to fill the silence as she wiped out her mortar and pestle to get rid of any left over chamomile paste and then carefully dried it. The lavender needed to be a powder which meant absolutely no residue left in the pestle. Lavender was a good ingredient for a potion like this one because of its calming effects. It was something that was usually associated more to the scent of lavender than the actual consumption of lavender itself, but those effects were multiplied and made safe for consumption within the potion.
Lavender actually worked best with chamomile since they tended to influence one another in interesting ways. It was a magnification of effects when the two were used in the same potion and they tended to work together to stabilize the potion depending on if there were other ingredients or not. Lavenders best use form, in Alyssum's own experiences, was usually dried or as an extract. As mentioned, it was the scent of lavender which carried its effects the most. The scent was important for the potion, but also the intrinsic effects were added to the chamomile once the two were mixed together. Dried and extract were better than fresh lavender because it tended to blend with the chamomile better on an etheric level which in turn allowed the potion to be stronger as well as faster with its effects.
She glanced at the simmering retort and luckily just as she finished grinding up the lavender, the chamomile finished purifying. The pulled over the alembic she'd set aside earlier. She glanced once more at the recipe. The order of things was sometimes an important detail, but it didn't seem to matter with this potion in particular. She decided to add them in the same way the recipe was formatted. After adding in all three ingredients she removed the retort from the burner and placed the alembic there instead.
It would take a moment for the potion to finish so in the meantime she decided to take stock. She was running out of bottles so she'd need to get some more soon, not to mention ingredients in general were running particularly low but that was something she could partially deal with herself. There were a couple unique plants that were usually in season this time of year, it would be worth taking a look around on her next day off. There was also the fact that Alyssum had yet to put any potions up on display. That was something Rúnar used to do when Alyssum was a pup. Sometimes window shoppers and adventurers would come along. A uniquely shaped bottle with a fancy looking liquid inside was usually enough to tempt those without caution, which is what made alchemy such a good trade for charlatans and back biters. An actual explanation of the potion, ingredients, and effects was enough to convince some of the more caution to give one or two a try.
Thinking about it, it was really a marketing tactic what Rúnar used to do. Commission potions he'd always put in the same bottles that they could buy in bulk from one of the glassblowers in town, but things the two made together outside of commissions they'd bottle in fancier bottles that they decorated to be eye catching. Alyssum supposed it made sense.
When she was a pup, a lot of their commissions came from people who lived in the area. Both for alchemical potions and items that they'd smithed up. The one way Alyssum could compare Rúnar and Isra was that the both of them were self sufficient for lack of a better term. They made whatever they could and traded for what they couldn't. Money wasn't something that laid around the house often and the majority of the house went unused, the building having once belonged to tons of people had become a house for a kinship of two. So Rúnar did the smartest thing he could. He traded goods for knowledge.
Not for himself, but for Alyssum.
One of the most important things to Rúnar had been that Alyssum grow up with as many skills under his belt as he could impart to her, but Rúnar for all the skills he had didn't know everything. If she was going to go into Etherforging then it would be good to learn smithing, but it would also be helpful to know leatherworking, and glassblowing, and jewelry crafting. That's how it got to point that eventually Rúnar started trading goods for lessons with those in the area. People who couldn't provide classes could either pay in useful goods or regular money, but most of the time money was something they only really took from travelers. Alyssum did have to admit, it was clever. The classes didn't just cover the information being learned, but actually gave Alyssum to opportunity to use the workshops and tools of the people teaching her. Rúnar was a lot shrewder a business man than Alyssum gave him credit for! She'd need to shape up.
Her attention was snagged from her memories by her potion which was finally done brewing. She carefully emptied to potion portion of the alembic into a glass bottle. Dipping outside she dug a small hole and pushed the bottle half way into the earth. It was the best she could do about the letting it rest below room temperature part of the order. Well, that was one potion done. It was still early but the lady would hopefully come pick it up soon. Alyssum would figure the rest out from there.