The streets were quiet this early in the morning, only a smattering of civilian traffic as house wives and cooks ran last minute errands for breakfast. The sun was just now beginning to peak its head up over the mountain’s tallest point, casting long shafts of light across the terracotta rooftops like a brace of spears. Shiori paused, halfway across one of the bridges heading deeper into the city, when her eyes caught on a particular angle and the brilliance of the sunrise stole her breath. Dawn lifted like a shroud, one minute the streets were full of long gloamy shadows and in the next breath they had stepped full around into day.
It was a pretty sight. One that she wouldn’t have minded staying here to observe play out as the garnet smudges lightened like beaten eggs and shimmered into rose. Unfortunately, the presence of the sun meant that she was due at her destination, and if the mission briefing was accurate she would have little time to spend mooning at the window during this exercise. Shiori wasn’t very worried, as she had been assigned this task by rote rather than due to any misbehavior or lacking on her part – all of which indicated that this was nothing more than a standard practice mission, meant to build up responsibility in the trainees. So even if it did sound rather dreary, working away in a backroom somewhere all day, at least she got to avoid Fumiko-sensei’s extra morning punishment detail.
Shiori followed the directions she’d been given, skirting the edge of the Dawnbringer’s Plaza and crossing onto a street full of apothecaries. The air was redolent with musty smells and an incense shop lay not two buildings beyond her targeted location. There was an echoing reverberation of pestle against mortar filtering through the open door, waves of frankincense eddying in the still air.
Entering the pharmacist’s shop, she felt the temperature drop as thick slabs of granite encased the main doorway. Passing under those heavy sentinels, the thirteen-year old scanned the tiny shop front for the pharmacist himself. There were neat rows filled with stoppered bottles and small containers, the whole shop cramped with boxes of product laying in formation against the back wall and a thin black wood desk at the corner-right. When she stood on her toes to peer over the tops of the shelves she thought she could see an extended shadow behind the desk with its old-fashion teller, perhaps another room or maybe just an extension of this one.
Despite the sheer weight of medicine in the tiny space the entire layout was well labeled, no shelf without a sign and no bottle lacking a name or placard. There wasn’t any dust either, which was an impressive feat, and Shiori had to give a mental nod to the pharmacist’s aide who appeared to do his job well.
Walking down the aisle, hesitant to move quickly lest she knock something over, Shiori paused at the desk and tried to stare through the gloom into what she now could determine was another enclosed room. The door was ajar but there was no noise or any sign that the pharmacist was waiting for her.
Working up her courage, Shiori smoothed at her sleeves and straightened her posture before raising her voice in greeting, “Hello? Is anyone here?” She waited a beat, “This is Kita Shiori, from the Academy? I’m to help with the medical shipment for today?”
Her voice seemed to stir something from the gritty depths of the backroom as there was a sudden and abrupt bang before a short man came speed-walking towards the desk. He was wearing the dark robes that marked his status as a procurer and maker of medicines, his sleeves tied back, and every single inch of fabric pressed and neat. For an older man he had an incredible speed and he was at the desk before Shiori could blink, staring at her with the expression of someone running multiple trains of thought at the same time. For a long lingering minute, he stared, no other visible reaction, as Shiori tried to hold still and not bolt for the door mission or no mission. But out of nowhere the pharmacist just blinked, his eyes slowly focusing on her as he nodded in a distracted manner. “Yes, yes, well, come along now, we haven’t got all morning.”
He turned and headed towards the backroom, and Shiori had to hop the counter just to keep up with him. The pharmacist sounded exhausted, or maybe stressed, so she was pretty sure his earlier act wasn’t the results of a spiritual misalignment. And even if Shiori had still been worried about interference from the spirit world, all such thoughts would have fled when she stepped into the backroom with its row upon row of smooth metal tables and closed cupboards.
It was such a strange apparatus that she paused in the doorway, trying to take in this lined reproduction of medicinal products. There were bottles and bags and little square tubs with lids all over the place. Huge dried out gourds hung from strings along the left wall, little bits of colored ribbon tying off their mouths. Bins with snap on tops and sifters for dried goods had their own space and above all this industrial metal were bright fluorescent lights so strident they made her head hurt just to stand there.
The pharmacist was standing before a wooden file-cart, flipping through the index before he paced to a large iron cabinet and grabbed a sheaf of papers from within. He turned, at the nearest table as if he had never moved, and then looked around in confusion when he didn’t find her standing there as well. Shiori raced over, trying not to get too concerned over this strange man who had yet to even give her his name, but she had no time to worry as he foisted the papers into her hands.
“There. Those are lists of all the ingredients and quantities needed for today’s work. You will follow the list, collect the proper component over there,” he pointed towards the bins, “measure the correct amounts, place them in these containers, and mark your work.” And that was all that he said, as the man returned to some complicated mixture that was bubbling by an oil-fed burner two tables away.
Shiori waited, stunned by the abruptness of this task, but eventually realized the pharmacist wasn’t going to add anything else to those instructions. Rifling through the pages, she shook her head at the lengthy list in cramped writing. She wasn’t even sure what any of this was, really, except a few of the herbs that popped out. Taking the list to the bins along the wall, she figured it would be faster to collect larger quantities of the compounds she would use more than once and then work from there. It took her a while to figure out how to measure everything, as some of the notations called for dried products and a few were liquids, but she found an old manual tucked away behind one of the bins and used that as a reference when things got tough.
Trucking her little plastic tubs and cups back to the metal table, Shiori set up shop. The task wasn’t difficult. Just take some ground up powder from one bin, add it to this other thing, measure out some more powder, mix it with something else, then sift, add the oil, and set the whole concoction aside in one of the aforementioned containers. Many of the recipes had a standard number of repeats, and once she’d figured the first batch out it was easier to get through the repetitions without having to pause and look something up.
Shiori had a neat little pile of finished containers going by the time the pharmacist stalked by, sweeping away five of her powdered blends and stalking back to his burner. Since he didn’t correct her, or say anything contrary, she kept at the task. It grew easier to measure things as she gained a mental map of how much a sai was compared to a shakku or that it was time to switch from her cups to her weights when the instructions called for 1 and ½ momme.
Strangely enough Shiori soon forgot the pharmacist lurking silently and drifted away with her work. Her hands moved automatically from one task to another, a sort of dulled lull to her actions as she repeated the same steps again and again. She wasn’t exactly daydreaming, but neither was she fully cognizant of her actions, and there was a relaxing atmosphere to letting oneself join with the act.
It was a surprise therefore when she flipped the page and saw that she was done, her steadily rising pile of mixed compounds stacked to one side and her bins of unguents and additives to the other. The pharmacist was still laboring over his own task, pressing something thick and wax like in texture through a cheesecloth.
Shiori carefully returned the ingredients to their bins if she could do so, having taken care to avoid mixing anything unless it would go directly into her finished product. There was a large stone sink that she appropriated, washing off her implements and wiping down the table until it shined just as when she’d first arrived. Shiori tossed the cleaning rags into the trash, having read that much about proper safety and anti-contamination regulations in her purloined handbook, and was just casting around for something else to do when the pharmacist appeared at her side.
She hadn’t even realized he’d finished whatever he’d been doing, but in his arms, were two cardboard boxes layered with brown glass bottles and folded paper bags. The top box seemed lighter, almost, and Shiori wondered if the bottom box held the ointments she had seen him craft earlier in the day. The pharmacist deposited the boxes on the table, weaving past her to grab some pamphlets that he dropped unceremoniously on top of the pill bottles.
“Those are for the Academy’s infirmary. Do not relinquish them to anyone other than Sai-san.” His voice, after the long hours of silence, was no hoarser than before, and Shiori shifted her weight from foot to foot as she waited. The pharmacist had already turned back to his station, fiddling with the flame as he pulled a box of crushed white chalk closer. When he looked up next, he seemed surprised to see her, “Well? You can go now.”
The whole time he had yet to look her in the eyes, and Shiori wasn’t sure if she was running away or just tactically retreating when she grabbed the boxes and hefted them towards the door. “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” she was out the door like lightning, shouldering the weight easily as she headed back to the Academy. It wasn’t too far, which was fortuitous as the boxes were larger than the breadth of her shoulders and that made carrying them awkward and traitorous at best if she lost sight of the path.
Shiori was still ruminating over the strange man when she arrived, trekking her goods up to the second floor where there was a small medical station that served the Academy itself for minor ailments and injuries. Completing the handoff to a stern-faced woman with a clipboard, Shiori tried to mention the intended recipient of this mysterious Sai person, but was waved off and out of the room before she could confirm the results.
Standing useless in the hallway, Shiori shook her head and flexed her fingers as she wrote off the odd morning. Maybe she would have preferred Fumiko-sensei’s routine, if only because then she would have understood what was going on. But a mission was a mission, and this one had ended early enough that she could still catch the dinner meal in the cafeteria before they closed for the evening.
WC: 1997
It was a pretty sight. One that she wouldn’t have minded staying here to observe play out as the garnet smudges lightened like beaten eggs and shimmered into rose. Unfortunately, the presence of the sun meant that she was due at her destination, and if the mission briefing was accurate she would have little time to spend mooning at the window during this exercise. Shiori wasn’t very worried, as she had been assigned this task by rote rather than due to any misbehavior or lacking on her part – all of which indicated that this was nothing more than a standard practice mission, meant to build up responsibility in the trainees. So even if it did sound rather dreary, working away in a backroom somewhere all day, at least she got to avoid Fumiko-sensei’s extra morning punishment detail.
Shiori followed the directions she’d been given, skirting the edge of the Dawnbringer’s Plaza and crossing onto a street full of apothecaries. The air was redolent with musty smells and an incense shop lay not two buildings beyond her targeted location. There was an echoing reverberation of pestle against mortar filtering through the open door, waves of frankincense eddying in the still air.
Entering the pharmacist’s shop, she felt the temperature drop as thick slabs of granite encased the main doorway. Passing under those heavy sentinels, the thirteen-year old scanned the tiny shop front for the pharmacist himself. There were neat rows filled with stoppered bottles and small containers, the whole shop cramped with boxes of product laying in formation against the back wall and a thin black wood desk at the corner-right. When she stood on her toes to peer over the tops of the shelves she thought she could see an extended shadow behind the desk with its old-fashion teller, perhaps another room or maybe just an extension of this one.
Despite the sheer weight of medicine in the tiny space the entire layout was well labeled, no shelf without a sign and no bottle lacking a name or placard. There wasn’t any dust either, which was an impressive feat, and Shiori had to give a mental nod to the pharmacist’s aide who appeared to do his job well.
Walking down the aisle, hesitant to move quickly lest she knock something over, Shiori paused at the desk and tried to stare through the gloom into what she now could determine was another enclosed room. The door was ajar but there was no noise or any sign that the pharmacist was waiting for her.
Working up her courage, Shiori smoothed at her sleeves and straightened her posture before raising her voice in greeting, “Hello? Is anyone here?” She waited a beat, “This is Kita Shiori, from the Academy? I’m to help with the medical shipment for today?”
Her voice seemed to stir something from the gritty depths of the backroom as there was a sudden and abrupt bang before a short man came speed-walking towards the desk. He was wearing the dark robes that marked his status as a procurer and maker of medicines, his sleeves tied back, and every single inch of fabric pressed and neat. For an older man he had an incredible speed and he was at the desk before Shiori could blink, staring at her with the expression of someone running multiple trains of thought at the same time. For a long lingering minute, he stared, no other visible reaction, as Shiori tried to hold still and not bolt for the door mission or no mission. But out of nowhere the pharmacist just blinked, his eyes slowly focusing on her as he nodded in a distracted manner. “Yes, yes, well, come along now, we haven’t got all morning.”
He turned and headed towards the backroom, and Shiori had to hop the counter just to keep up with him. The pharmacist sounded exhausted, or maybe stressed, so she was pretty sure his earlier act wasn’t the results of a spiritual misalignment. And even if Shiori had still been worried about interference from the spirit world, all such thoughts would have fled when she stepped into the backroom with its row upon row of smooth metal tables and closed cupboards.
It was such a strange apparatus that she paused in the doorway, trying to take in this lined reproduction of medicinal products. There were bottles and bags and little square tubs with lids all over the place. Huge dried out gourds hung from strings along the left wall, little bits of colored ribbon tying off their mouths. Bins with snap on tops and sifters for dried goods had their own space and above all this industrial metal were bright fluorescent lights so strident they made her head hurt just to stand there.
The pharmacist was standing before a wooden file-cart, flipping through the index before he paced to a large iron cabinet and grabbed a sheaf of papers from within. He turned, at the nearest table as if he had never moved, and then looked around in confusion when he didn’t find her standing there as well. Shiori raced over, trying not to get too concerned over this strange man who had yet to even give her his name, but she had no time to worry as he foisted the papers into her hands.
“There. Those are lists of all the ingredients and quantities needed for today’s work. You will follow the list, collect the proper component over there,” he pointed towards the bins, “measure the correct amounts, place them in these containers, and mark your work.” And that was all that he said, as the man returned to some complicated mixture that was bubbling by an oil-fed burner two tables away.
Shiori waited, stunned by the abruptness of this task, but eventually realized the pharmacist wasn’t going to add anything else to those instructions. Rifling through the pages, she shook her head at the lengthy list in cramped writing. She wasn’t even sure what any of this was, really, except a few of the herbs that popped out. Taking the list to the bins along the wall, she figured it would be faster to collect larger quantities of the compounds she would use more than once and then work from there. It took her a while to figure out how to measure everything, as some of the notations called for dried products and a few were liquids, but she found an old manual tucked away behind one of the bins and used that as a reference when things got tough.
Trucking her little plastic tubs and cups back to the metal table, Shiori set up shop. The task wasn’t difficult. Just take some ground up powder from one bin, add it to this other thing, measure out some more powder, mix it with something else, then sift, add the oil, and set the whole concoction aside in one of the aforementioned containers. Many of the recipes had a standard number of repeats, and once she’d figured the first batch out it was easier to get through the repetitions without having to pause and look something up.
Shiori had a neat little pile of finished containers going by the time the pharmacist stalked by, sweeping away five of her powdered blends and stalking back to his burner. Since he didn’t correct her, or say anything contrary, she kept at the task. It grew easier to measure things as she gained a mental map of how much a sai was compared to a shakku or that it was time to switch from her cups to her weights when the instructions called for 1 and ½ momme.
Strangely enough Shiori soon forgot the pharmacist lurking silently and drifted away with her work. Her hands moved automatically from one task to another, a sort of dulled lull to her actions as she repeated the same steps again and again. She wasn’t exactly daydreaming, but neither was she fully cognizant of her actions, and there was a relaxing atmosphere to letting oneself join with the act.
It was a surprise therefore when she flipped the page and saw that she was done, her steadily rising pile of mixed compounds stacked to one side and her bins of unguents and additives to the other. The pharmacist was still laboring over his own task, pressing something thick and wax like in texture through a cheesecloth.
Shiori carefully returned the ingredients to their bins if she could do so, having taken care to avoid mixing anything unless it would go directly into her finished product. There was a large stone sink that she appropriated, washing off her implements and wiping down the table until it shined just as when she’d first arrived. Shiori tossed the cleaning rags into the trash, having read that much about proper safety and anti-contamination regulations in her purloined handbook, and was just casting around for something else to do when the pharmacist appeared at her side.
She hadn’t even realized he’d finished whatever he’d been doing, but in his arms, were two cardboard boxes layered with brown glass bottles and folded paper bags. The top box seemed lighter, almost, and Shiori wondered if the bottom box held the ointments she had seen him craft earlier in the day. The pharmacist deposited the boxes on the table, weaving past her to grab some pamphlets that he dropped unceremoniously on top of the pill bottles.
“Those are for the Academy’s infirmary. Do not relinquish them to anyone other than Sai-san.” His voice, after the long hours of silence, was no hoarser than before, and Shiori shifted her weight from foot to foot as she waited. The pharmacist had already turned back to his station, fiddling with the flame as he pulled a box of crushed white chalk closer. When he looked up next, he seemed surprised to see her, “Well? You can go now.”
The whole time he had yet to look her in the eyes, and Shiori wasn’t sure if she was running away or just tactically retreating when she grabbed the boxes and hefted them towards the door. “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” she was out the door like lightning, shouldering the weight easily as she headed back to the Academy. It wasn’t too far, which was fortuitous as the boxes were larger than the breadth of her shoulders and that made carrying them awkward and traitorous at best if she lost sight of the path.
Shiori was still ruminating over the strange man when she arrived, trekking her goods up to the second floor where there was a small medical station that served the Academy itself for minor ailments and injuries. Completing the handoff to a stern-faced woman with a clipboard, Shiori tried to mention the intended recipient of this mysterious Sai person, but was waved off and out of the room before she could confirm the results.
Standing useless in the hallway, Shiori shook her head and flexed her fingers as she wrote off the odd morning. Maybe she would have preferred Fumiko-sensei’s routine, if only because then she would have understood what was going on. But a mission was a mission, and this one had ended early enough that she could still catch the dinner meal in the cafeteria before they closed for the evening.
WC: 1997