to eat a whole cake!

"I don't think it's that, then. Unless there is something we're not seeing. Has anyone ever ingested it before?"

If they hadn't...maybe the symptoms were a new observation, which was deliciously interesting...but it did mean that there was less of a chance of being able to help the patient.

Though, as long as Gretchen brought back the correct diagnosis, that was all that mattered. (Which sounded cruel, perhaps, but it was also true. A mechanism of injury was one of the most important pieces of helping someone...or knowing if you couldn't help them.)

Su dimmed significantly and was left to shrug, shaking her head. "No, not that any of our records are aware of anyway. It's a shame, but not a lot of the native species of Enchantra have really gotten looked at properly. It's really only those at the university who have been studying them since magical plants aren't everyone's favorite species in the botany community."

Why, Su would never know. Well, actually she did know– anti-magic sentiments, and any Magick scientists in the field were few and far between, let alone around to give Enchantra their time of day and be cutting a bigger check elsewhere

Sigh.

"Sorry– I didn't mean to lead us down a rabbit hole. Just trying to think of what other plants around Kohaku that they could have come across," she said, squinting as she peered off into the middle distance to wrack her brain.

It was easier with runes than it was with potions. While there were some basic runes that everyone learned, nearly every sorcerer ended up adding their own flare which could be as distinct as a fingerprint. As soon as she saw a rune drawn by someone, she could keep an eye out for whoever else might be using that signature and track a charm or a spell back to that individual. No matter how well you hid, the signature lasted.

But potions were trickier. They consumed and blended their reagents, and the process tended to obscure who had provided those in the first place. Sometimes the sorcerer had a strong enough 'voice' that it could be identified anyway, but it was chancier.

"They can't be that experienced. I mean, there are some pretty basic mistakes in this potion construction which is why it went so badly awry in the first place. Its probably why they tried to dump it instead of properly neutralizing it - I bet they couldn't even figure out where they'd gone wrong."

Which, to her point, made them dangerous. Who said they wouldn't try and do this again?

"Do you think they might be at PrideU?"

Su's fire calmed a little at that thought– inexperienced probably meant they were young, huh? Which wasn't an excuse to be throwing their trash around willy-nilly, but a kid doing it was a lot different than some lame adult who should know better. It was sad, but in a completely different way.

She had been wanting to tear this person a new one. Now she was probably going to just feel bad for them and their lack of magical network to have been able to taught them proper waste etiquette.

"Maybe. Or maybe even the Secondary if it's that rudimentary," she said with a frown. Ough. Awful, she had been thinking about bullying a child!

A child. Because she was an adult. Man, that was weird to think about, eh?

Gretchen was very familiar with the hum of a hundred cicada. On summer nights, she used to like to keep her windows open--the sound a gentle white noise to send her off to sleep. She'd never understood people who said they hated the sound.

"And what is the function of the noise? Does it have a magical property too? Can it disorient you? Or is it like a rattlesnake?"

More very good questions! Questions that Su was more equipped to answer than the more medically inclined things that they had been trying to sus out in the beginning of the conversation.

"A little of both, actually! It just depends on close to it you are and how long you've been exposed. Initially it acts like the warning signal to back off! but if you get closer, then the the noise will start affecting you physically. It's not been recorded as anything more harmful than a slight headache or dizziness, though," she explained. And, wow, what a fun thing to be able to share this with someone!

Only then she remembered– the reason for this visit wasn't fun. Far from. She swallowed, schooling her expression into something more serious as the conversation called for.

She couldn’t help herself. She scooted over and immediately wrapped her arms around Su. Her little sister. Her littlest sister. Her baby sister. 

“Oh sweetie, it was your house first,” she said. “You can live here as long as you want to.”

Ting wasn’t sure what the future held. Of course she hoped that she and Wolf would stay together. And of course, she sometimes thought about him moving in… But for now, they weren’t close to that stage. They were slowly figuring things out, at their own steady pace. 

Regardless — there wasn’t a universe out there where Ting would kick Su out for anyone. 

She ruffled Su’s hair.

“If anything, I’m anxiously anticipating the day that you decide you’re too cool to live with your older sister and get an apartment or something. And still, you’ll always be crash here no matter what.” 

Su had looked away, assessing what the next thing they needed to go through in the pile should be, and didn't realize what Ting was doing until her sister's arms were around her. She stiffened for a moment, about to ask what was going on, when Ting spoke. It made Su soften instantly, squirming so she could get her arms free to return the hug in kind because, honestly?, she needed it.

Just like she needed that reassurance spoken aloud– mostly to hear that her big sister hadn't gotten tired of her hanging around despite being as old as she was now. That she was still a priority on her list even though she had a lot more people on it these days.

She tightened her arms a little, bringing herself that much closer to the warmth and comfort and steadiness that Ting-Ting had always been for Su. She laughed lightly at the feeling of the hand against her hair and loosened her hold, sitting back.

Okay......Gretchen supposed that was on her for not being more specific by what she meant.

She was just so used to talking to her family and her Magick friends that she forgot when people didn't know her own background. That she had been seeped in magic her whole life, without having any herself. And she didn't really want magic.

If she had magic, she wouldn't be able to practice medicine.

And she wouldn't be able to help people the way she wanted to help them. The way she knew she could help them.

"Noises?" Gretchen said, not acknowledging the other piece. "What kind of noises? Something disorienting? I am not sure our patient mentioned hearing anything..."

Su, not noticing that anything was amiss, nodded at the initial question and then hesitated at the next two.

Gosh, how did she describe it?

She had heard it only once before, but not in real life. It had been in a class at uni, the teacher had played it for the class to listen to from a video she had taken in Enchantra. Her memory of it was a distant thing, not something her brain had decided to pick up and set down a million times over. (Noooo, that was reserved for embarrassing and lame shit she did.)

"It's...uh...somewhere between a Katydids's chirp and a Cicada's buzzing?" she ventured. "Maybe they didn't even notice it was the plant making the noise."

After listing out the three spells, the samples continued to break down and give her some more specific reagents. Practice meant that she was able to write all of her notes down as she continued to watch the potion, taking notes of each individual element and the colors that it reflected. After all, the smallest detail could become something useful later.

"Sure, it can be stopped. It'll take a bit of work, but anything that can be done can be undone in transmutation. The potion stabilized it, but that just means we can come up with a stable cure. It's just - why would someone do alter self and fabricate together? I don't get it."

Su released a breath of relief slowly through her nose, shoulder relaxing an inch. It could be fixed. Good.

She knew, in theory, that if it was transmutation magic that it would eventually go back to the way it was before. But it was winter, and those trees were currently supposed to be dormant, relying on the resources they had been hoarding away during the warmer months. She didn't know what this magic was doing them and that process, if it was making them use the water and nutrients that were supposed to last them until spring. And if they were, she didn't want to have to wait for the potions to wear off. She would rather get them back to their usual forms as soon as possible to prevent any potential damage.

...but Mim did bring up a good point.

Su had been preoccupied to ensuring the lives of the trees and plants. While the perpetrator had been on her mind, they hadn't been her first priority.

Now that she knew the trees could be spared, though...

It was that irritating.

Digging through the rushed sound though he did pick up on a pattern. A sound on repeat going over and over - then played backwards to create the static sound. Bram just couldn't make out what the sound on repeat was - it just sounded like....sounds. Tones.

What the fuck was that.

It even took him a second to notice that Su took off - holy shit after the lady. Bram didn't exactly mean that when he asked if she could get the reagent vibes. Then again he didn't really know how all of that worked - he just assumed it was vibes.

Picking up the pace he chased after her only haulting on his heels when she stopped. Bones bounding beside him - hair on his back sticking to the sky as they chased the spirit. "Did you get anything?" Bram said quickly expecting her to say something only to see the shroud she had in her hands.

"Oh shit what the hell is that -" he held his hand out to see it.

Su's body felt like she had just played a full rugby match and her brain was fuzzy in a similar way after writing an essay or having taken a long exam. She was tired across the board, needing everything all at once. Food, water, to sleep. She hadn't felt like this after using magic since she'd been a child, new to the concept and not sure where her limits were.

And all she had done was pull a freaking reagent! It hadn't even been that big of one, either. That was how much effort that sort of thing took, she guessed, pulling from something she was so unfamiliar with that it took more magic than it usually would for something she had prepped and studied.

When Bram caught up Su straightened up and regretted it when her vision swam with black dots, head rushing with blood. Oof, she'd moved too fast. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the sensation to pass before opening them again.

She simply couldn't do that. There was no option in which she didn't come back with at least some theory, even if it was wrong. To show that she had done the work. But, Gretchen didn't like the idea of that. She wanted to win.

When the girl jumped up, so did Gretchen's eyebrows. Her gaze stayed on the girl's chair as it spun from the momentum, before she trailed to where the girl was.

Her head tilted when the binder was slammed down.

"Magical in nature? What does that mean?" Gretchen said, taking a step closer to look at the picture.

It wasn't...a horrible theory.

Su had always been pretty bad about explaining magic to other people. Even other people who were sorcerers or had some form of magic. She never did have the right words for it, the converging path of her just not being able to talk to people in general and not having a proper grasp on magic itself.

This job had been helping with that, too, believe it or not. Dr. Yoder was a Mundus. Granted, he was one with a good understanding of magic environmentalism, but she had often found herself being questioned by him about it. For her opinions, for her experiences, for her thoughts and feelings. And she would sometimes have to explain things to someone in another department, relaying a situation or recounting a problem that involved magic. Conversations she hadn't had before, giving her experience in the practice.

Yet, she still felt under prepared when asked such a question.

"It...exhibits an ability to access and use what we consider to be magic that manifests in one way or another. In this plant's case, it produces its own noises," she said.

A lot of the old school assignments used to pile up in Baba’s office, where they would inevitably migrate after being displayed proudly on the fridge with magnets. Ting-Ting had tried to keep up the same tradition here, but Mei had made some comment about how it wasn’t the same and that they were too old for it … so Ting hadn’t kept it up.

“I wonder how different everything would’ve been if we stayed in San Francisco,” Ting said, softly.

In some ways it would’ve been easier. No adjusting to a totally new country. No raising two teenagers when she was just 25.

But then again, the people who’d taken Mei after Tanya’s big piece might’ve come for them sooner.

And then again, Matilda would not exist. 

“I like it here,” she said, finally, though she wasn’t sure if Su would feel the same way. 

Su made a face, brows arching briefly on her forehead, as she silently put in her vote on which option she thought it was. (For sure the latter.) She opened her mouth, taking in air, about to say that she would be happy to throw everything of hers in the recycling. But then her older said what she did and Su's eyes slowly drifted up, regarding Ting with caution.

That sentence didn't make Su think of how her life would have been different. She, too, was thinking of Ting-Ting's. Of the two of them, she'd had more big life experiences happen. She'd had a freaking baby here! Literally! Right in the backyard!

How would her life have gone? Would they have been as close as they were now? Would they even see one another? Or would Ting have left earlier, before Su had finished high school, to go live her life?

She didn't realize how scared she was to hear what came next until Ting cut through it with her verdict. Su smiled, relief lifting the cement block in her stomach.

"Me, too," she agreed. Then made a little sound, nose scrunching slightly, "Could have done without a few traumatic events but– over all. I like being here with you, jie jie." She held another beat. "I mean, I would understand if you wanted to kick me to the curb if your tall mans ever wanted to move in for some domestic bliss. Just give me a few weeks notice to get the plants sorted, eh?"

"Okay, yeah, its got some elements of alter self in there - I figured that one. Makes sense that when it hit the plants it started making them other plants instead. But why the randomness and the breakdown..."

"Wait, is that fabricate? Huh. I suppose that would do it. Although why someone would mix together alter and fabricate..."

Straightening she said, "Haste! Fucker put haste in there too! No wonder i spread at that crazy speed, its literally designed to change things as fast as possible and give everyone extra energy while they're doing it!"

Su got through maybe five seconds of looking at the potion at work before she had to avert her eyes. She didn't really get motion sick, but she couldn't look at something that changed that quickly in succession for whatever reason. Probably because her brain had some form of distaste for when it happened on a screen– bad shaky cam, bright colors changing, lights flashing. No, thank you.

She focused on Mim, watching and listening to her instead. As she listed out the reagents Su shook her head in disappointment and indignation. Then her mouth dropped open at the last one.

"From what they told us, they didn't present with vomiting." She knew not to wholly discount anything just because the patient didn't check one of the symptoms. People were all different, that was what made something like this so challenge.

"They did say it was a berry, but--I don't know. They been rather disoriented since they came in. It has been hard to get anything out of them. Their partner told us where they usually like to hike, but even that is just a guess. What kind of poisonous berries are there in the forest? Ones that might cause acute onset liver failure?"

Ah. Well, there went that theory then.

Which sucked on a multitude of levels, mainly that they hadn't found the solution for the poor person at the hospital since their livelihood was the main priority here.

Her mouth squished to one side as she considered those variables. Berries that could have been growing by the Kohaku River at this time of year.

"Uhm, a few. Yew trees are over all pretty toxic? Except for the fruit. But if they didn't spit out the seeds, that could be the cause? Black bryony, maybe? Or– no, sorry. I think they effect the kidneys. Uhh." Everything else she could think of usually always had vomiting as a symptom...

"Oh! Wait," she said, then quickly shot up from her seat to go into Dr. Yoder's office. When she returned it was with a big ass binder between her hands, flipping through its contents quickly. "There's this plant called Red Plumula? It's totally native to Enchantra and are magic in nature, I believe they have some sort of ability to produce their own noise. Uh, but it doesn't grow berries."

She turned over several more pages and then set the binder down in front of the other woman, pointing. The page had several, older in quality, photos of a shrub like plant. It was short and stout, leaves as green as anything else in the shot. Su's finger was directed at the little reddish bulbs next to those leaves. "But its flowering buds are red, so maybe they could have mistaken for berries?"

"Up on that shelf over there. They're a little bigger than the ones we used for measuring so it'll have space for the samples."

While Su gathered the bowls, Mim pulled out the different vials they had taken from the trees and the ground just a little while ago. She could still see the shifting colors in the plants, even away from the source. She wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign from them.

With the bowls set out, Mim carefully tipped the contents of each vial into their own separate bowl. Theoretically, since it was all taken fromt he same contaminated sight, they should all come out the same. But that's why she wanted multiple. Magic could be tricky, and they needed as much information as possible. If there were differences, better to catch them now.

Only once they were ready did she carefully dip a clean ladle into the cauldron and scooped exactly one ladleful on top of each sample in its bowl to see what happened.

Su moved, carefully pulling out the bowls that Mim had motioned toward. All too aware of her own lack of grace she did it in two trips so she didn't wind up tripping over nothing and letting the bowls hit the ground. She could just see it happening, like the scenes in movies or television shows that would make her stomach turn over more than anything in the horror genre ever would when the characters turned into infomercial actors. She had always thought it silly, an obvious over exaggeration...then she had gotten her wired headphones ripped from her ears on a door handle while carrying a full mug of water in one hand and a plate of food in the other...

But she was not going to be that today! Not with someone else's bowls that were needed for something important! Nope. She was going to be careful. Because slow was smooth and smooth was fast. Or however that quote went.

She placed them all in neat rows, unstacking them from one another, and then stepped back to give Mim room to work. Even going so far as to tuck her hands behind her back, fingers twining together in an effort to keep her limbs all in one place.

Now this one, though — 

“Oh my gosh — and of course some Swynlake shenanigan happened and everyone out on Halloween turned into their costumes. I was a lobster for most of the night.” She shook her head. “I think I just ran under a table at Town Hall and hid there so I didn’t get smooshed.”

She looked fondly at the claw and part of her did want to keep it.

“Well, unless you want to turn that into a Mr. Krabs cosplay for next year’s BarnCon, we can toss that. Or donate it. Someone shopping at From Farm to Table might decide that they want to be Mr. Krabs.” She laughed, then cracked open a nearby plastic tub. 

 “Ok — I think this box is your report cards and school assignments.” She pushed it towards Su. “Some of Mei’s might be there too.” She squinted. "Wow some of these are from even before Swynlake. Why did we bring all that?"

Su was delighted to hear her older sister's laughter, even more to listen to the recount of the night. So often memories in this town and events, holidays, were paired with horrors or despair. Large landmarks of the year had been tainted– but here was a bright spot among the dark that clouded the Qins' past in Swynlake.

She gave the thought of a Mr. Krabs costume some thought, remembered her bad impression she'd just done, remembered what Ting had just said about turning into a crustacean for a night, and plucked the glove from her hand to return it to the bag. Donate. Definitely donate.

"Eeewww," she wrinkled her nose at the box as it came closer, but cracked it open to peak inside. Blegh. She didn't want to remember her time at secondary, even in the shape of her grades that she had worked hard to ensure they were good.

"Uhhh, did we have to? To prove we could, like, go to school or something?" she asked. Su had no idea how it worked. "Or maybe the 'rents didn't want it cluttering up their space anymore."

As soon as she finished speaking, she picked up the first cup and poured it into the cauldron in front of them. After that, she moved with quick confident picking up one cup after the next and adding them in, keeping an eye on Su as she did the same. It meant that altogether, it took less than 5 seconds to add all of them. Then she picked up the crystal wand she'd picked out and started carefully stirring clockwise as the ingredients were slowly incorporated.

While the individual ingredients had been colored, the gently boiling pot became clearer and clearer until the surface looked almost mirrored. "See? It's looking great! All we need to do now is scoop out a little bit into their own bowls to add the samples to and we can see what it says."

Su bit her lip as she followed Mim's lead, doing her best to simply do and not think to much upon it. That's what she had learned from working in a restaurant kitchen– sometimes it was better to just let muscle memory take over. She had done this motion, letting something drop into a boiling pot or hot pan, a thousand times over at this point in her life. If she let her worries and nerves take the driver's seat then she would surely go too fast or too slow and splashes would be inevitable. If she did as she had been taught, then all would go smoothly.

And it did. Thankfully. Though she felt a little out of breath from having not taken in any air through the whole process, having either forgotten to do so or being too cautious to let something as trivial as breathing ruin it.

She grinned, bright and happy, when Mim said it looked right. Phew! Good. That meant they were one step closer to hopefully figuring this thing out and getting those poor trees some help.

Honestly he was shooting from the hip here.

What he really wanted to do was just nonchalantly get a vibe. It’s not like the two of them also walking with a dog none the less was going to throw this woman off. Plus Bones was just as locked in - he was always there when things got hairy.

“I think I need you to do that reagents thing.” Bram didn’t know how to explain it exactly. “Like pick up whatever it is that’s going on there. She’s got headphones on and it’s not like we are jumping her mid run. So she won’t hear you…”

Bram looked to Su hoping she understood what he was asking. “I want to see if I can hear it. Besides the white noise that it’s giving me right now is…”

Uhhh....huuuuu.....what?

Su didn't think she understood what he meant. Was he looking for the woman's reagents? Or...the ghost's? (Or whatever it was that was following her.)

She didn't know that she could get a reagent (or would it be considered an unagent? she never had really full grasped the difference) off a ghost, having never practiced something like that. It was possible, since there were several spells and potions that asked for things like the third knock from a ghost during the witching hour or a ghost's voice or what have you– but she had never needed them before. Her specialty, Wood, was mostly about life and creation, kindling those things to help grow.

Death was apart of that but it wasn't something she had particular skills for, nor did she want them since they were mostly associated with Necromancy and darker magic.

"Uh, okay!" she said, figuring she'd at least give it a try. Su breathed in deeply through her nose and concentrated, trying to narrow down her focus to her magic. Colors and sounds and Bram's emotions flared to tangible life but she ignored them in favor of looking at the woman– her reagents consisting of determination, tiredness, and focus. All consistent with someone who was trying to get through a work out.

She picked up her pace to catch up with the woman only to stop when she felt that same cold, slippery feeling brush against her senses. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it. The hairs on her arms stood up, skin breaking out into goosebumps. She reached out, trying to catch it, but only managed to swipe a small piece.

"I believe she was near the river--the--" and here, Gretchen blanked for a moment. What was the name of the bloody river? They had said it earlier during rounds, but Gretchen hadn't paid that much attention. There was only one river in Swynlake anyway.

"The river. What about this? The...funeral bell mushroom? Aptly named," she said, somewhat dryly, as she continued to flip through.

Su blinked at the slight aggression but, after a moment, chalked it up to it just being stress! Someone was ill. She worked in a hospital. Su shouldn't take it personally– a hard feat, given her nature, but she was trying to be better about it, trying to remember that it was arrogant to think people thought about her in such detail.

She didn't attempt to fill in the blank, figuring the other would get there in the end. Until she didn't...but, eeehh, the river worked just fine.

"Yeah, yeah, that's a good contender. They're very toxic," she nodded. "Um, I think it says that the symptoms start a few hours after they get eaten with abdominal pain and vomiting before they go away and then that leads to the...organ failure." Su swallowed down a grimace. "Does that sound...accurate?"