#healerstouch

He remembered those dreams as he tossed fitfully on what would likely be his funeral bed. Their souls whispered in the dark and when he emerged, he had dreamt only of her, the cool hand on his forehead calling him back to life. They were destined for one another; he’d been a king, and she his queen. Together they had been stars in the indigo fleecy night. Their bodies might have been young but oh, they had lived for centuries together. “Dad even dug a grave. He had blisters on his hands from the shovel. Just waiting to dump me down."

Rowan came from a long line of miners. His mother, his father, their parents before them. Violet Everdeen was adamant that her son finish his education. "Rowan, you listen to me. We’re Everdeens. We survive. It’s just what we do. You learn, you fight. You’re water, boy, and you carve a path through the mountains and find your sunshine on the other side."

How could he have known that his sunlight was in the crown of yellow hair on a merchant girl’s head? He had not been water. He had carved his way through the mountains with the bite of a pickaxe. Grief flooded him when Violet breathed her last in her sleep. Black lung; they all died from it eventually. He was the one to lower her into the cold February earth. But they survived. They had to.

It was from his parents that he found ways to live: to forage for edible plants, to hunt, to set snares. He knew that mint healed sore bellies, and chewing on a yellowroot helped sores in the mouth. Foxglove for the heart, chewed up plantain for insect stings. He brought medicinals to the little Appalachian dauphine at the apothecary by the bagful: Indian tobacco and witch hazel. And he got better, day by day, under her tender hand. Because that’s what Everdeens did. They survived.