The scent of dried silverleaf and embermint clung to the hands and clothes of Kaelin’s. A copper kettle steamed gently over a low flame, and her desk was cluttered with pages from her fathers's old journal—most of them faded, ink smudged by time and use.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, a battered recipe open in front of her. The heading read: Cradlefire Elixir—a concoction rumored to soothe agitation in Skythari. Below it, a list of ingredients she mostly recognized, though the measurements were vague.
“Three pinches of sun-dried thistle, crushed but not powdered… Add before it boils, when the base begins to shimmer.”
Kaelin frowned. “Shimmer? That’s not a color.”
She did her best to follow the instructions anyway, grinding the thistle, adding a dash of windroot tincture, and carefully measuring in a pinch of crushed stormseed pollen—a rare catalyst noted in the margin of her father's journal with the words: ‘Volatile if improperly mixed'
The mixture hissed in the cauldron, and the surface began to ripple faintly. Not quite a shimmer, but maybe close enough.
“Now or never,” she murmured.
She drizzled in the final component: a silken dusting of stormleaf residue—collected after a skyquake.
Her hand paused over the vial as memory swept in unbidden.
She remembered the skyquake clearly—how the floating isles had trembled in sync, even those miles apart. It had been her first time witnessing the phenomenon, standing near the cliffs. The clouds split open above her, and the central isles, despite their differing terrain—jungle, desert, mountains and valleys—had each answered the quake with their own resonance. Somehow, they were connected, bound by something ancient and unseen.
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What struck her most, though, was how the large landmass that Lumen Hollow sat on had remained calm and steady throughout. While the other isles rippled with force and sound, Lumen Hollow had stood untouched, as if anchored deeper than the rest or protected by forces she couldn’t name.
The potion pulsed. For a moment, the air around her shifted, tugging at the edge of her awareness. The flame dimmed, and the elixir turned a soft golden hue. It smelled like memory—like her father's old robes and the dry earth after a summer storm.
She leaned over it, curious, holding her breath. “Did it work?”
The elixir flickered.
Then burst into smoke.
She coughed, waving her hands frantically, tears springing to her eyes as the room filled with acrid haze. The potion sizzled out in the bowl, leaving behind nothing but a chalky residue and her pride in tatters.
Kaelin fell back on her heels, groaning. “Well, Father, I either nearly created something … or almost lit my room on fire.” She wiped her hands on her apron and looked around at the lingering haze. “Maybe I shouldn’t dabble in unknown recipes without a proper teacher.” She paused, then added under her breath, “Maybe I should ask Liora for help."
Still coughing faintly, she pushed herself upright and began the meticulous process of cleaning. She poured the scorched remains into the compost jar, scrubbed the soot-ringed bowl until it gleamed, and cracked the window to chase the haze away. Her fingers moved with practiced care as she gathered the scattered pages of the journal. She brushed the edges smooth and aligned them neatly, returning the notebook to its familiar place on the shelf—tucked between a thick herbal compendium and an old, faded book about Skythari.
With a sigh, she rose and began the meticulous process of cleaning up. She poured the scorched remains into the compost jar, scrubbed the soot-ringed bowl clean, and opened the window to let the last of the haze drift out. One by one, she gathered the scattered pages of the old journal, aligning their edges with care before returning them to their place on the shelf—right where she always kept them, tucked between weathered herbals and the an old book about Skythari.