New Situations

Sagelight busied himself with collecting tansy leaves, delicately selecting the best with his teeth and plucking them off the plant. He had built up a growing pile of them on top of an ivy leaf. When that leaf got full, he found another one and restarted the process. He wasn't sure how much tansy he would need but it was better to be safe than sorry. Every now and then he would look over at Honeykit to make sure she was okay. She seemed to be doing just fine, trying her hardest to get leaves too. He smiled to himself; he had good things to report back to Spottedleap. Hey, if StarClan allowed it, maybe Honeykit could become his apprentice when the time came. The tom's ear flicked when Mossbloom reappeared and he turned to face her, just barely catching the tail end of what she said. She was smiling, though, so it must be a good thing.

"...coltsf--t. Do yo- know what to d- with it, Sa--light?"

"Coltsfoot?" he echoed, padding closer to inspect the herb she held in her mouth. "It's got something to do with paw pads...It helps with cracked pads, right? And something else...whitecough? No..." Pausing a moment to think, Honeykit caught his eye. "Oh, kittencough! Coltsfoot cures kittencough." Sagelight grinned, pleased with himself for remembering. He turned back to his pile of tansy leaves and gestured towards it with his tail. "I think we've got enough...I'm gonna see if I can find anything else." He trotted off deeper into the forest, searching for any plants he recognized. Just as he was about to turn and go back, he spotted some star-shaped blue flowers. "Hey, borage!"

The member 'Aspe-ider' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Effect Dice' : 2

"That's right! Well done, Sagelight." Mossbloom purred, brushing the tom's flank with the tip of her tail. He was doing so well, truly, especially in light of everything that had happened. He was certainly a strong one, Sagelight. Following his gesture, she nodded in agreement. "I think so too, that should last us a while. And now we know where there's plenty of it for the future!" She set down her finds next to the bundles of tansy as Sagelight went further into the woods, and as she looked around herself she heard his exclamation. Good, he was recognizing most of the plants on his own, if not all, that was a good sign. There was certainly a lot to learn. Borage would be useful to have on paw as well, she thought as she looked in his direction, spotting starry blue flowers.

A purple flower caught her eye off to the side of the borage, and she headed for it. Lavender! With cold weather coming, there was sure to be fevers and chills, lavender would be perfect for that. As she nipped some of the stems off of the plant, a sharp pain flowered in her paw pad. A sharp hiss of pain came from her, interrupting the quiet chirping she had been unconsciously doing, and she set down her mouthful of lavender to look at her paw. A small thorn was lodged in it, not too deep, but still enough to cause a thin bead of blood to well around it. Tail wrapping around the three paws that weren't on the ground, she lowered her head to remove it herself when her eyes landed on Sagelight and she hesitated. Keeping the paw with the thorn raised, she called him over.

"Sagelight! Over here, but be careful, there's a thorn bush." Once he was close, Mossbloom held out her paw, showing him the thorn sticking out of her pad. "I was going to take care of it myself, but this would be a good chance for you to practice, if you'd like to. Have you ever removed a thorn from a paw before?" She asked, looking slightly up at him.

Herb Haul: Daisy, Tansy (x2), Coltsfoot, Borage, Lavender, Thorn

The member 'Mossman' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Effect Dice' : 4

With a soft, squeaky heave of breath, Honeykit fell back on her haunches, panting and looking at the significantly smaller pile of leaves she had managed to collect compared to Sagelight's. There was no way she was going to be able to reach the rest of the larger leaves all the way at the top of the plant, and Mossbloom had told her not to pick the smaller ones. It also seemed that Mossbloom was teaching Sagelight something again, so she couldn't ask them for help. Turning her head, she looked up at Sunflower and squeaked, "Um, I can't reach the rest of those leaves. Could you get them for me please? If you don't mind, that is."

Another color had caught her eye from the side of her peripheral. Turning her head, she saw a bunch of clusters of pretty purple flowers. Well, the yellow flowers turned out to be tansy, so what if those purple flowers could be a good herb, too? "I also wanna look at those flowers over there, but Spottedleap said I'm not allowed to wander off. Can you come with me, Sunflower?"

The member 'Yoshachu Spookachu' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Effect Dice' : 3

He was carrying back the borage leaves he had found, about to drop them off in their growing herb pile when Mossbloom called his name. Sagelight raised his head, the plants still in his mouth. "What is it?" he called back, his voice muffled. He deposited his borage onto the pile and trotted over, minding her words about the thorns. It took him a moment but he carefully picked his way through the thorn bushes, finally stopping at his mentor's side. He couldn't really see the thorn that was in her paw pad but he trusted that it was there; there was a faint hint of blood beading where the thorn was stuck.

"Don't you just...pull it out? With your teeth?" He looked back up to Mossbloom, blinking. Was there something else he was supposed to do? He wasn't sure. He huffed out a small sigh and went in to pull the thorn out, using his whiskers to feel where it was before he carefully grabbed it with his teeth and yanked it out. After safely spitting it out on the ground, he raised his head to look at her again. "Is that it? Oh, I hope I didn't hurt you!"

Watching as Sagelight joined Mossbloom on the hunt of more herbs, the small voice of Honeykit sounded from the base of his paws. Turning his gaze down to her, the tom listened to her request. It wasn't like he was doing anything else, so he'd might as well help her out a bit, though he didn't really know what to do when it came to harvesting leaves.

Giving nothing more than a nod as his reply, the abnormally tall warrior leaned forward. Opening his maw, he bit into a group of leaves and ripped them off their stems. The foul, bitter taste flooded into his mouth and the warrior spat out the bunch, leaving nothing more than a soggy pile of half chewed up leaves on the ground. Well, that clearly wasn't how it was done. Taking a few steps around the plant, he this time carefully plucked them off the bush, making sure to not destroy them this time.

Setting them down on the forest floor, Sunflower opened his maw to announce his success, but before he could, he noticed that Honeykit's attention had been turned towards something else. Tilting his head to the side and standing up straight, the warrior spotted the more vibrant bush that the kit must have been talking about. As long as he was with her, he assumed them looking around the general area wouldn't hurt any cat, and the last thing he wanted was to disappoint the her and be stuck with a nagging kit.

"S-sure," the meek voiced tom mewed, glancing around and making sure he knew where they'd left Sagelight and Mossbloom. "But s-stay cl-close," he added as the two began to make their way to the next bush. Anything was a danger in the forest and he would have to stay on high alert, just in case.

Sagelight didn't take long, depositing his jaw-full of borage onto the swiftly growing pile before carefully making his way over. She gave him a reassuring nod as he sighed softly, grabbing the thorn between his teeth and pulling it out. She winced slightly as the thorn was pulled from her pad, and as Sagelight spit it carefully to the ground she licked at the blood beads welling from the small wound. "That was perfect." She purred between rasps of her tongue, stopping when she no longer tasted fresh blood. "Small thorns are the hardest, especially if they're buried deep in the pad. If you catch the thorn soon enough, that's all you have to do, and instruct the cat to lick their pad and take it easy, and give a reminder to look for thorns if you want to."

Setting her paw back down on the ground, she continued. "Sometimes a cat that's too proud for their own safety sometimes will try to get it out themselves, or not say anything until it's really bad. That's when you have to worry about infection. In that case, your usual herbs for treating infection will work just fine, but you'll still have to pull out the thorn, and that will be even more painful for the cat who needs the help. You can give them a stick or something to bite on, and make sure you rinse your mouth with water from a stream before applying any poultices. The infection could make you sick, depending on how bad it is, so it's better to be safe. You did very well though!"

She turned and picked the herbs she had been collecting, gathering them neatly and turning to add them to the pile and collect the other two who had joined them. "We've got a pretty good pile here, I think we should be heading back soon. Let's find the other two and be on our way, so we can get these herbs put away before sundown, how does that sound?" She purred, green eyes searching for the other two cats.

Honeykit approached the flowers and sniffed curiously at them, but then suddenly a new color caught her eye. She looked through the bundle of flowers and spotted a bush with small, thin green leaves. Clustered on the shrubbery branches were beautiful red orbs with rather large black seeds inside them. They appeared to be some sort of berry, though it was one she had never seen before, not even in Sagelight's den. Perhaps he had run out of those but had forgotten to look for them? She slipped through the flowers towards the bush and sniffed at them curiously, before turning her head to meow to the others, "Um, I found something else. Can someone help me collect them?"

Following Honeykit over to the bush, Sunflower peered around it, noticing the berries that the young kit had found. Not being a medicine cat or needing to know the names of anything that they'd been collecting, he couldn't quite put his paw on if these were even something medicine cats used, but something deep down told him otherwise. Well, whatever they were, they must be important, seeing as though they were coated in such a vibrant color.

Giving Honeykit a nod, Sunflower leaned forward. Gently placing his jaws around one of the berries, the abnormally tall tom moved slow and carefully plucked it from the plant, as to not crush it in his mouth. Placing it down at his paws, he proceeded to grab more, maneuvering around the shriveled up ones and only picking the berries that seemed more or less fresh. He might not have been good at many things, but he was a good berry picker, that was for sure.