“Well then, lad.” A voice said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Well then!” August echoed, avoiding a rock in his path as he walked.

“I can’t say I picked you out as a healer. What did you say your name was again, lad?” Said the voice. It was gruff, and full of gravel. August had tagged along with a caravan of 6 carriages due for the Commonwelth far to the north, and was making his way down the line of them looking to provide his services.

“August! And I didn’t. I’m new to the caravan, you see. Joined from…” August pondered for a moment. He couldn’t remember the name of the town he had originally started in.

"Cantwell?” The man offered.

“I don’t think so, further north.” He pulled out a thickly bound leather journal and started flipping through pages.

“Sapsted.” August had found the page he logged the town he had departed in a score of weeks previous.

“All the way from Sapsted, lad?” The man said, incredulous.

“I’m a traveler, good sir.” August said in explanation. “Trying to spread the good word of medicine. You don’t happen to have any sick, do you?”

“I have one…” the man said, after a while of letting the sound of a cart underway fill the silence.

“I would be happy to offer my services, if you’d be inclined to accept them.” August said.

There wasn’t a place in reality where he could be this confident in himself. However here, in this world, August was eager to put his best foot forward. There was also no place in his world where advertising yourself as a medicine man was easier.

The man guided August into the back of his carriage where a woman was lying on her back. Her face was a little pale.

“What happened, Madam.” August said, eyeing her.

“A wound, I’m afraid.” she said, pointing to a mean red mark on her leg.

Minor abrasion, use the salve.

He washed the wound with water he had boiled, spilling some due to the instability of the ramshackle carriage, passing her one of his glass vials of ‘health tonic’.

“Drink- it won’t taste good but drink it anyway.” He said this as the woman gagged on the liquid, but his encouragement gave her the strength to finish the vile.

After he saw she had finished it, he began to apply the salve

“Guh!” she exclaimed after. “That was horrible!”

“No medicine that tastes good is proper medicine.” He soothingly patted her good leg after wrapping the wound on the other in a bandage. That was true too. He had given her a mix of clear liquor he had picked up in Sapsted, some of the Honey-Reed sap, a steeped tea made from Estelle’s Bloom, and a squeeze of Citron. It was an astonishingly foul concoction, but the liquor and tea made the after effects seem worth it.

“And suck- but don’t chew or swallow- this.” He said, handing her a little sliver from a sheet of caramel colored toffee in another one of his pouches. It was his version of a throat lozenge. Candy in flavor, but medicine in purpose. He had thrown it together in hopes that the citron in it could curb the foul tasting medicine he had made.

All of this to hopefuly prevent the wound from festering. This world- as fantastical as it was- was seriously lacking in the fantacy elements. August would complain but... There it was.

"Any better?" August asked. The woman finally stopped grimmicing.

"lots..."

Powerful brew there. August thanked himself for prepping it. He'd done this before, he knew the tonic worked on a fundimental level, but he also knew it was too little for him to be happy calling himself a healer. Onwards.

“Take these.” he said, handing the man four of his glass vials with the same heath tonic mix he gave the woman from his medicine bag.

“Give one to her every 4 hours. It’s a health tonic. She’ll be rather sluggish a few minutes after drinking, which is normal.” The man sniffed the liquid in one of the vials. His face contorted in disgust, and when he looked back at August, he gave the man a reassuring smile “I pray to the stars she gets better, good sir.” He nodded toward the man.

_______

August continued like this throughout the day. Asking after sick people, helping where he could. Night struck five miles from the Commonwealth. As it happened, word had been going around the caravan. People who hadn’t noticed him applying aid, now flooding his mug with a copious amount of Ale that night, which sparked an idea. Drunk as he was, he thought: Maybe this would be a better vessel for the ‘health tonic’. Certainly wouldn’t taste as bad.

The rest of the night kept to a trend, with the entire caravan making certain that “The medicine man’s mug must never be more than half empty!” August certainly knew that tomorrow he wouldn’t be as happy with himself. He couldn’t nurse a hangover here like he could in the real world.

He found his thoughts wandering to the woman he had helped that morning. In his book, which he used to keep a record of his medical supplies and where they went, she was designated as F0078. The caravan master called her Mily. He hadn’t got her name originally and August was worried for her. Other injruies he'd seen, Injuries like hers, tended to kill in his experence. He would only be able to check in on her tomorrow. The caravan master, whose name he had learned was Kout, wasn’t present. He was busy tending to Mily. Soon, after a night ripe with mead and joy, August closed his eyes, after laying down on a comfortable patch of earth, to sleep.

He opened them a pinch of seconds later. He could feel a rush of… something as he woke, inhaling comparatively stagnant air to what he was barely acknowledging as he drifted off in an ale fueled warmth. It was like he was moving through syrup. His buzz was gone, and there wasn’t the slightest weight of a hangover. He sat up, intended to get out of bed and get dressed. He was stopped by a furry mass which sat sleeping primly on his legs.

“Come on, Minute.” He said warningly. “I need to get up. We both know how much my alarm-“ the loud blaring sounds of his alarm on his phone told him he had slept in a little later than normal, and Minute peeled off of August’s legs at the sound.

Ouch. Another scratch to add to my collection.