(no subject)

[imaginary_wife]

☄Audio

This testing is utter nonsense.

[She's been unconscious for a week because of it, and Doc Yewll is not happy. In fact, she's livid this is even something that's been requested of her.]

I didn't even need this! I've already been married. [She's angry enough to blurk that, but doesn't even miss a stride. Because that doesn't matter anymore.] But noooo. Instead I get to spend a week in a tube because that's the way to show a girl a good time.

Their little matchmaking system can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the infirmary doing my damn job.

Comments

[earthandpine]

[Rosethorn sounds grumpy herself a lot of the time. She knows better than to take it personally.] I'm not assigned to the infirmary and don't want to be, but I have some medical experience. I'll be there shortly.

[She's already inventoried her kit to see what she has to spare, and spent enough time in the garden to know what she has to work with by way of new plants.

A few minutes later, she'll show up in the Infirmary.] Hello, I'm Rosethorn.

[imaginary_wife]

[Lady carries herself well, Meh can give her that.]

I'm Doc Yewll.

[She approaches and offers her a hand to shake.] What can I do for you?

[earthandpine]

[She takes the offered hand in a firm grip.]

I'm a gardener, primarily, and that's my position on the ship. I also make and strengthen plant-based medicines, and I've done a fair amount of work with infectious disease research and treatments.

used the same icon twice need to fix

[imaginary_wife]

Then we have a common interest. Those medicinal flowers growing in the garden are mine. I use them to make customized medicines.

They're Votan.

Come on, I'll let you see what I got. [She wriggles he finger at her, beckoning her to follow, before she heads over to where she extracts plant materials.]

[earthandpine]

[Oh, Rosethorn is certainly interested. She follows, offering as she does:]

I can probably strengthen some of those for you, if you'd like. I'm a plant mage.

[A lot of what Rosethorn does is based entirely on the natural properties of plants, no magic involved. Some, though, is enhanced by her power.]

[imaginary_wife]

That would be useful. Especially since most of these come from planets that don't even exist anymore. I have to rely entirely on maintaining a population without letting them become functionally extinct.

[Especially those glass looking ones.]

Sometimes I have to refine it, sometimes applying the leaves directly will do the trick.

[earthandpine]

That's another thing I can help with. It's not good for plants in the long term to speed their growth cycles, but I should be able to get batches of seeds for you, and then grow new plants from those seeds to maturity at their normal rate.

[She's done it before, when her own stock needed replenishing. Rosethorn didn't recognize some of the plants, but they'll tell her how they grow best.] Could you tell me what you've been using them to treat? Getting to know a new plant population means starting over on figuring out their uses.

[imaginary_wife]

Alright. [She holds up a red flower, broad petals curling around like twists of a debutante's hair and dangling down.] The petals of this contain a chemical that relieves inflammation. It's one that needs to be extracted from the petals to be effective.

This- [She holds up something that could pass for a sunflower, except the petals around it look more roselike.] -is a pain reliever. It can be used directly on humans but it doesn't do much good for many other physiologies.

And those particular glass ones are hallucinogens. Don't touch them with your bare hands at all.

[earthandpine]

[Rosethorn nods at the explanations, including the warning about the glass plants. She won't tempt fate by touching them. There is one relevant bit of information about that, though.]

I won't.

I hope you won't have me as a patient, but in case you do, be aware that I'm likely to be less susceptible to some plant-based substances than most people are. I'm an ordinary human, just... one who can deal with most plants with minimal side effects. My own kit will have stronger versions of a majority of the standard medicines I carry, or you can increase dosage in most completely plant-based treatments without damaging my body.

[imaginary_wife]

[Meh closes her eyes, and looks utterly exasperated. But, surprisingly, not with the fact she will have to be patient.]

The most irritating part of hearing that is that I want to understand how you do that, and I can pretty much bet that I'm not going to be granted the means to understand. [She grunts unhappily, before offering her a pair of sanitary gloves.]

Here, you can take some small samples of them and tell me what you think.

[earthandpine]

Magic, especially ambient magic, which comes from an element of the natural world, isn't as quantifiable as you might like. I'm connected to plants in a way that most people aren't.

[She puts on the gloves, reaching over to pluck a couple of leaves from the nearest glass plant.] I've never seen anything like them. The closest I've ever found was a living metal plant, and that was created in a magical accident when a plant mage and a metal mage accidentally combined their powers. These were naturally occurring?

[imaginary_wife]

Yeah, they were.

Beautiful, aren't they? I had grabbed some as soon as I got there. I always look for new plants wherever I can find them.

Now they and whatever ones they make will be the last of their kind.

[She says it with the same somber reverence she has for the Votan worlds, their people. They only were saved because of the Arks.]

I might try to breed some viable hybrids.

[earthandpine]

We have that in common. [She's been traveling for a year now, and she picked up a number of plants along the way.

Rosethorn frowns at the revelation that these plants are the only surviving members of their species. The only thing keeping them from extinction is the small store of them on the Moira?]

They are beautiful. I'll certainly help with propagating and crossbreeding them. [She would have anyway, but this puts it at the top of Rosethorn's list of priorities when it comes to the garden.]