Pebble. Moss. Pebble. Pebble. All-heal. Early. Moss. Hoy. Daisy. Hello? Black pebble. Are you looking for something. Huh?
Arindiis looked up. Dazed and interrupted. She was skimming the edge of the rose-hedge. "Arin, did you drop something?" Yrsa asked in a distant and careful tone, quiet below the ambient woodland. The wild blue eyes stared up at her and the gentlest of a breezed brought rivers of ashen brown hair to flow across her face and muffled her answer: "No."
Arindiis felt an intense shyness around Yrsa. It was a shyness of emotions she was not yet familiar with but, for sure, she felt differently about Yrsa than anyone else in the Vales of Anduin. It was scary but it was wonderful.
"What are you doing?" Yrsa asked and cupped the lower of her swollen stomach and slowly bent her knees to kneel before Arindiis. She, the little girl, lingered and allowed a trail of thoughts to entertain her mind while she watched the strange roundness of Yrsa's belly. She knew she was with child and the girl was occupied with the mystery this presented.
"I was looking for violets. They have a special colour, like blue but not really. They are shaped like this." She made a shape with her hands while her eyes still explored the midriff of Yrsa, protuding from her undyed linen apron. Yrsa had nodded, listening to the girl, "That's right," she said and smiled and Arindiis looked up into her dark brown eyes, "And what will you use them for?" Arindiis, slow as she always was to respond, spoke quickly now. "I want to find out why they smell so good."
Yrsa knew that Arindiis was lost. She was an apprentice in the Weaver's Lodge and was likely neglecting her needlework. Of course, this was not unusual, especially when summer was on its way and life sprung out all around. It was common knowledge that Arindiis was not a very useful little girl. She did what suited her and scolding, by anyone, never upset her.
Yrsa, the healer, was Arindiis' mother's sister and Arindiis' first nurse. "When you are done with using the violets you pick, will you bring them to me? And milkbuckets too, the yellow ones with saw-like leaves. Here, take this pouch. It will be a great help." Arindiis needed no further instruction. Politely, she took her leave and came back at sunset with the pouch stretched and full.
It took no less than a week for Arindiis to be put in Yrsa's apprenticeship as a collector of medicinal herbs and, when Yrsa bore her daughter Bergljot, Arindiis became the healer's hands and feet, eyes and nose.
Years into her womanhood, lying under the heavy, star-filled sky hours past midnight in the intense landscape of Evendim and among the soft, sleeping breaths of her female companions, she reminisced and realised that among the pebbles and moss by that rosebush, she had found her passion.
