[ti]Private[/ti]Herb Gathering

[Mama]

It was a beautiful New-Leaf day, with the trees blocking out the bright, energetic sun, and herbs starting to sprout up from all around. Lilydawn decided to spend the time to look for herbs and educate her apprentice on them. The river was flowing soundly as they padded along, while she pointed out the various plants on their walk. The first plant she spotted was Mallow, and though it was still morning, they could gather some later.

"That right there, with the purple heart-shaped leaves, is mallow. The flowers are good for helping with pain and bellyaches, and I've found them good with helping stop stinging and bites from bugs. The leaves, however, is what we need even more. It helps speed up a queen's kitting in the case it's going too slow, and they make cats more fertile. Newer queens won't get any, but older, experienced ones may need some if they hope for a larger litter." Lilydawn gave a nod, before pointing to the plant next to it. "And the one with crinkled leaves is parsley. It's good for mother's pains, but also for drying up milk sources, so I don't like to use that one on mothers with living kits that need the milk. We can pick some of that later."

Wobbling along, she tumbled once and hit some stone rather hard, and there was a bit of a rash from the spot she slammed down on against her fur. However, she didn't seem to take mind to it besides a quiet curse under her breath.

"I'll point out more as we go, but we mainly need Feverfew, Fennel, and Comfrey Root. Feverfew for Rookstar, who I need you to help me with, Fennel for queens and elders, and the Comfrey as we can never have enough... especially with the young and reckless." Lilydawn said as she stopped a distance from the water. She was always scared of falling in, as she didn't know how to swim and doubted she could. "On the note of Rookstar... we need to figure out what's wrong, and quick. It's a headache, but I'm not sure from what. And if it's been lasting this long, it could have been an injury."

[Storm]

Finchtuft
IvyClan | Medicine Cat Apprentice | She-Cat | 55 Moons | Heterosexual 

Finchtuft felt the most spry in New-Leaf, her paw hardly ever ached during the pleasant weather.  If she got any free time she'd surely find herself relaxing on a warm tree branch, but she doubted she'd get to enjoy the sun.  She had much more important things to tend to now with this role of hers, but it was all for her clan so she would get it done despite the stress.  For an older apprentice she felt awfully behind.  Lilydawn was often to busy for training like this, but without this training Finchtuft was nearly useless when she needed to help out.  She was feeling a lot of pressure to retain every word of teaching, but this was no learning like she'd done before.  Warrior training... It was a feeling you could remember- the depth of the crouch before bunching muscles to spring on prey or the instinct to swing claws back at an opponent.  This was all... memorization; This plant that looks like this does this, but don't mix it up with this similar looking plant it may be poisonous, blah blah blah.  So hard to remember but so-SO important to keep her clanmates healthy.  She wasn't dwelling on it, but every time she found herself losing focus she thought of how her failure to pay attention could affect IvyClan and she'd snap back to Lilydawn's words.  She nodded along, blue eyes deeply inspecting the shapes and colors of the growing herbs she was shown.

The felines ears twitched forward as the she-cat hissed to herself, but she seemed to move on to the next topic on her mind before Finchtuft could ask if she was alright.  She picked her blocky paws up carefully to maneuver the area without falter especially as she heard the water rolling growing closer.  As Lilydawn slowed she did too, shifting her weight to one side to stand more comfortably as they rested.  

"Do you know why he refuses to see you?  He's made... some strange decisions lately, ones the other clans won't take kindly too," she spoke bluntly, it may have been wrong to question their leader, but she was unafraid to speak her mind especially considering the other clans may see these poor decisions as weakness.  The warrior in her wouldn't allow IvyClan to be taken advantage of for such.  Her long whiskers twitched thoughtfully, but she wasn't an extremely clever cat.  She didn't know if she could help problem solve with the more experienced Medicine Cat.  "He wasn't like this before so it must be, but what kind of an injury would cause this behavior?  Surely it's not just the headaches, right?"