The past few days had been hectic. Indeed, Anorieldis had rarely found time enough for sleep over these past few days. The busyness of the Mortar and Pestle gave her time to distract her mind from the conversation she had had with the physician, Elias Dimheim, and had furthermore nearly kept her mind from what had been becoming an obsession with grave-moss from the Barrow Downs.
As she sat by the fire in her small, nondescript room, she pondered that conversation. She had been emphatic about the properties of grave-moss, especially that which grew in the Barrow Downs. She had read a few things on the matter, and it had captured her imagination and curiosity. One text even claimed that the moss gathered at the Barrow Downs was enriched in such a way as to be a cure for many ailments. The panacea, she thought. The thing which would cure every disease and increase one's lifespan.
But the physician disagreed. He had said that the moss had no properties that other moss did not carry. Yet...she could not help but desire to contradict him. After all, she did have evidence in a tome by an herbalist from the area. But it was no matter, she thought.
Furthermore, Dr. Dimheim had mentioned a risking of her reputation and legitimacy as an apothecary if she were to travel there. He had mentioned "grave robbing." But there was no need for that. She cared little for treasure or other material things, and the remains in the Barrow Downs were altogether too ancient to be of use to her, by all accounts. No, she preferred fresh corpses for her anatomical studies.
She sighed. When she had left the physician's practice, she found herself even more desirous of going to the burial site than before. If only to prove the man wrong.
But something happened to make her rethink the situation.
She had received a letter from a certain Thinthil, who had a complaint of pain. The nature of the pain was unclear to her until he visited her shop and told her a story of his own venture into the Barrow Downs, and the venom of the crawler, which apparently had punctured his arm.
As she regarded his arm with a keen gaze, she puzzled on this. He had spoken about wights, and she was familiar with the term, but not with the possibility of the things actually existing. Perhaps the venom had made him delusional, she thought. He had pulled out of his pockets several things including bones and more macabre items. It did nothing to assure her, but did make her think back to the words of the physician.
On the man Thinthil's suggestion, she had made a poultice from athelas, but the wound looked swollen and unfortunate. She was not in the habit of dealing with venom in that way, that is, the removal of it. But she gave him the poultice and instructed him to see the physician, even if it was someone with whom she had disagreed.
As she sat in her chair and stared into the fire, Anorieldis contemplated these things carefully. What, she wondered, was the truth? Did the Barrow Downs hold some mystical properties, and were they some sort of place for the unliving? Or was it the delusions caused by the venom which had made her client think so? She had been shocked by the wound and the tale.
Did she still desire to go? Perhaps more than ever, it was true. If she could harvest the venom of these "crawlers," would not that be something? It could have curative properties, she reasoned. But it was, perhaps, not worth the risk. She would have to think on it.
