Welcome to Gaia! ::

Keeping her palms flat on the desk, Alauniira mind ran through how the room had been arranged, completely dedicated to the lie that she had already started. Luckily, she had only brought her side bag with her, having removed nothing from it, but disposing of her mug as well as returning the plant would be an entirely different task.

Thinking for a moment, a solution popped into Niira's head as she turned in the direction of the new girl's voice, asking a quick, "Oh, Hanille, was it?" She had heard the girl's name earlier and assumed that repeating it would suggest familiarity. "My name is Niira, and well, I hate to rush this budding friendship, but... Could you do me a favor? After working in class on little sleep, I've developed a small headache, which, I feel, will only be worsened by the heat and light of the greenhouse so... would you mind returning my plant when you take yours? I'd owe you one, for sure."

Not only did not care that she was more or less interrupting another conversation, but Niira was also perfectly ready to use this poor girl to help her out. Still, Hanille seemed to emante that squeaky clean nice girl personality so Alauniira felt sure that she would help out another student; it seemed to be in her personality to be helpful.

Cold eyes stared blindly in the direction that the teacher's voice was coming from. "Thanks for putting back the plant," Niira began slowing reaching for the bag that she knew lay against her feet. Her hand grabbed at it awkwardly, sliding it on to her shoulder. "But I don't have time to find a bottle for you. Yeah, you know, I just have a lot of stuff to do. A class. Homework. You know, school stuff."

Lean fingers returned to the desk, holding on to it as she prepared to rise to her feet. "A woman as bright and," her lips searched for the word, "uh, bangled as yourself doesn't need my help finding a colored bottle."

Drawing in a silent breath, Alauniira gripped the side of the table and rose to her feet, sliding around until she was on the other side of the table. So far so good... she thought to herself, inching backwards as she tried to remember the layout of the room.

:: Continued from original thread. ::

(( OOC: The day of my triumphant return to Gaia is the day the class I'm TA in is over... I still feel I should write something here, though. Very well, here goes! ))

Arriving for herbology fifteen minutes early, Hayana had introduced herself to Seccina as her teachers assistant and they had chatted a while about what she could do in class and what her parents had taught her about herbs and spices. Since Hayana already had basic knowledge, Seccina had instructed her to go to the library and fetch a herbology book there, then look up a certain page in it and follow the instructions carefully. She was to bring the final result back to class for closer examination.

Finding the book was hard though. The section where it ought to be in was rather strangely organized (Hayana guessed that size was a factor, but it didn't seem to be the most important one) and it took quite a while for her to find the book in question. The next problem was that she found three different books of the same name. Two were more or less identical, but of different editions. The third was very old and used strange, old-fashioned names for the herbs. All three had different recipies at the given page. Just her luck... She put the old one away after a quick browse through it (what were "waxerplatte" or "potty fingers" anyway?) and then decided on the later edition of the two others, hoping it was the right one. Why hadn't Seccina said anything about this? The recipie was easy enough to follow and it seemed to be some kind of cooling balm. Shouldn't be too hard, provided she had the ingredients.

Wich proved to be another obstacle. Lard, wax and honey would be easy enough and she had both comfrey and mint, but vinegar was probably only available in the kitchen and the nettles, while readily available just outide the walls, would take some tedious work to prepare before use. Who uses nettles in a cooling cream anyway? As a final touch, some poppy seeds should be added and those were to her knowledge nowhere to be found around the castle.

Getting the vinegar wasn't that much of a problem though and she found a poppy in the green house. The nettles made her wish she had used gloves though. The stinging was pretty bad and she mumbled a couple of her fathers most vulgar curses as she rinsed, singed and grinded them. They added a deeper green color to the pastelle yellow-green cream, making it look less like mucus and more like an actual healing balm.

Preparing the cream had taken quite some time and when Hayana returned to class, scratching her hands (although she had put both leftover mint and vinegar on them), she met some of her classmates in the halls. The entire lecture had gone by. She should have chosen one of the other books instead. Maybe they hadn't required nettles. Hayana started wondering if the nettles here were special in any way, if they had been altered or infused in some way by the magic atmosphere. She didn't have time to think for very long before she reached the classroom though.

As Hayana opened the door, she saw Seccina and a girl she hadn't met before looking at eachother. It was kind of awkward to see Seccina this serious and Hayana instinctly felt she had arrived at precisely the wrong time. The girl she looked at was a very long tan elf who didn't seem to quite focus on anything and had an air of both casualness and insubordination about her.

Hayana stood still and waited.

(( OOC: I made a whole lot of stuff up there, but Hayana wouldn't have missed herbology so I had to do something about it. smile I had an idea at first where the book was in the reference section and H had been given a note from Seccina that the librarian wouldn't recognice and there would have been much sneaksie stuff and stealing and such, but that wouldn't be Hayana either so I just did this instead. Hope you like it, it's my first RP post in a while now... ))

Seccina let out a bottled up breath as Niira exited her classroom. She gave a haggard look at Hayana and plopped down in her chair. She hated doing things like that.... It just wasn't her best moment; she always felt guilty and dark when she had to be tough with anyone. But, she hoped that the girl and she had made some sort of headway; she did take the bottle after all...

Gods, she wondered, how can any drow ever come up with any semblance of normalcy.... She let out another sigh... Their kind of instruction was nothing more than useless in her book, but she'd never be able to convince any of her darker skinned cousins of it....

Rubbing her hand over her face, she waved Hayana inside, "May i have a look at that?" This would be her first opportunity to see what skills her assistant really possessed. She was anxious to gauge the level she was starting from and had high hopes for the woman. "This is good, but a little strong on the nettles...." She said a bit absentmindedly. "Come here, for a moment if you will." She said and laid her hands gently on Hayana's. A warmth spread into the woman's skin and soon after was followed by a very soothing cooling sensation. "I don't know about you, but i never could stand to wait for mint and vinegar to work after gathering nettles...." She looked up at Hanaya mischiveously, "Don't like gloves either?" and winked at her.

Well, the first one's always the hardest, she reassured herself. Next time will hopefully go quite a bit smoother....here's to determined optimism anyways, she toasted herself, and took a sip of elderberry wine... "Hayana, I do believe we'll have a very interesting year," she said tiredly. And dismissed the TA, and herself while she was at it, from class.