• Warm and heavy against her chest, the wire-wrapped citrine pulses gently as Coriander channels the energy she needs, focusing on sending it through her palms and into the girl splayed out on the cot in front of her. She can feel Sage’s presence in the corner of the tiny cabin and she’s tempted to send him outside - his ever-analytical gaze is throwing off her concentration. Instead, she turns her attention back to the task at hand.

    The maze of the girl’s spirit is simple, uncomplicated. She’s still young, hasn’t yet matured into the tangled labyrinth that can take hours or even days to navigate. It should be easy to find out the problem, yet there’s a thick fog obscuring her vision, stifling her magic. When she pushes, sending out tendrils of consciousness, it only becomes thicker and less permeable. Eventually, she gives up.

    “That makes three this week,” She murmurs, picking up her journal and jotting a quick note next to two others. She draws a small question sign next to it. Unsolved, uncured. Just like the last two.

    ”You don’t need to save everyone.” The low rumble of Sage’s voice is always calmingly familiar, but this time Coriander is too on-edge for it to be a comfort.

    “Maybe not, but I have to try. It’s what mom would have done.” She places the notebook back on the table beside her, and smooths the girl’s covers over her sleeping body. The girl furrows her brow in her sleep and shifts restlessly, fingers clutching at the blanket. Coriander wonders what she’s dreaming about, if she has family or friends who are worried about her. There was no one else around when she had stumbled upon her already comatose form, but she must have someone. Someone who might never get to see her again if she continues to sleep.

    The wave of pity that assaults her at that realization feels a little too much like grief and self loathing, and she quickly pushes it away. Maybe she can’t do anything about this girl’s illness, but she can definitely try to make her seemingly eternal slumber more comfortable.

    Coriander turns to her bag to pick out some herbs and, when she turns back, the girl is no longer there. Instead, long chestnut tresses spill out across the pillow, and a much more emancipated form is huddled in the bed. The scratchy wool blankets have been transformed into an elaborate quilt, images of colourful birds and exotic plants sewn with great care into the worn fabric. The woman wrapped within them breathes shallowly through fever-chapped lips, her skin flushed and sweat pooling at her temples. As Coriander watches, frozen, her mother's bloodshot eyes flutter open.

    Coriander blinks, and the vision is gone. Skin prickling and stomach swimming with nausea, she makes the compress with shaky fingers, and applies it to the girl's forehead as quickly as possible.

    “Can you watch her for a minute? I need some air.” Coriander doesn’t wait for Sage’s reply, too much in a hurry to get out of the room that suddenly stinks of medicine and death. Outside it’s mostly dark, the sun still a few hours from rising, and the glowing fungi that cling to the surrounding trees and pepper the clearing are the only source of light. It was eerie at first, but after a few weeks of inhabiting the run-down and abandoned cabin she had grown to find it peaceful - simply a shadowy and more mysterious version of the forest she had grown up in. She knows there’s a town among the trees only a small distance away, but she’s used to living alone, surrounded by wilderness and her own thoughts.

    Maybe I should never have left home, Coriander thinks, but shakes it off. No, she needs to do this. She needs to find him. She'll even admit that she's just a little bit grateful each time she stumbles across someone sick and in need of help- it means she can continue to put it off, keep inventing fantasies instead of facing what she might really find.

    But she knows she came here for a reason, and it sits in the back of her mind, fingers coiled around her unconsciousness. She’ll venture into town eventually, she knows she has to. But today she has a patient- today she can put it off for that much longer.