Date Stamp
It was a little before sundown when she finally escaped work. Meaning if she wanted to get things started tonight she'd probably be working late into the night. Not preferable, but what else was she really going to do? She needed to get this done quickly before any of her ingredients started to go bad. She was already starting to worry that a day longer and the Sugar Grass would start to lose potency, so she needed to work fast.
The problem with that, and it was such a small problem, was that Alyssum didn't really have anything to... work with. She'd so foolishly managed to lose her toolkit and she wouldn't have the money to buy a new one until next season at the earliest. Not if she wanted to be saving up as much as she could. Spending money was a luxury she didn't have if she eventually wanted to reach her end goal. And boy, was it an expensive end goal. With that said, it was a goal that she held near and dear to her heart. it was the reason she worked so hard, the reason she needed to work harder! If she kept going at this pace then she might actually be able to achieve it in two or three years. Oh, how sweet it would be for her dream to finally come true.
To do that though, money was a problem. And if she had no alchemy gear then she had no way to make money aside from working for someone with alchemy gear. She hated the alchemist here with a passion, so that wasn't really an option at this point. She could buy a new kit, but again, what was she going to do without any money? She needed the money to buy the gear and the gear to make money. So she was left with the third option. Work with a really crappy set of items for the time being until she could actually work out the money to buy a new potion set.
All she really needed was two things right now. A pot to cook the potion in and some bottle to put it in. Everything else would take a bit more effort but she could do without the proper tools. The bugs and the Sugar Grass she could crush up with rocks, and the Bark didn't actually need to be broken up. It was a bit like oregano in a pasta sauce. It kind of sat there while the potion boiled and at the end, you strained it out... make that four things actually. A funnel and a strainer for the actual bottling portion.
That was what led to Alyssum doing something that perhaps she'd gotten worryingly good at within the last season or so. Dumpster diving. She was currently halfway down a garbage can, her tail wiggling around outside of it in an attempt to keep herself balanced. She decided her best bet was probably checking outside the restaurants first, so that's what she was doing. She didn't find any of the materials she needed in the first can, unfortunately. What she did manage to find was a lot of wasted food, but she wasn't going to risk touching that since it looked like something nasty had been poured all over it. She wasn't sure if it was to keep the animals or the homeless population from eating it, but either way, it was a little bit messed up.
She pulled herself out of the can, moving on to the next on. She stopped when her foot hit cast iron. Glancing down was a perfectly good cast iron cooking pot. Who in their right mind would throw it away? The thing was obviously being thrown away since it was right next to a garbage can in a back alley she doubted was for storage. Maybe the owner had just gotten a new one or something? Oh, but this looked perfectly fine! And it was just the right size too. What a score!
She decided to check the trashcans anyway and sure enough, there was a funnel and a strainer right on top, alongside some other cooking supplies which were actually broken like a larger wooden spoon. She put both the strainer and the funnel into the pot and picked it up by the handle, swinging it alongside her. Whatever the reason for her good fortune, she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Now the last thing she needed was bottles. She actually knew where to get these. There was a brewery in the lower end of town which was pretty careless with things like empty bottles that hadn't been labeled yet. Just plain brown bottles, corks and all. The place didn't even have any guards at night and they just kept the bottle outside. Right out in the open. Admittedly it was next to the door. But here was the thing about that. If you looked like you knew what you were supposed to be doing, no one ever questioned you. Especially not in the slums. Which, let's be honest, the brewery was in the slums no matter what kind of fancy name Kalzasi wanted to give it.
Considering how shady the place had looked when she was scoping things out, it was probably in the slums because it wasn't legal. If she had the time or the energy she might look into it, but it really wasn't her job so she turned her cloak inside out, put the hood up, and took one the pallets of bottles. She just outright walked away with it. While the outside of her cloak was the bright red of her arcana group, the inside of the cloak was padded with a thick black colored cotton. She'd picked it for the very fact she could turn it inside out and pull off things like this. As well as use it as her disguise when she was pretending to be Hemlock.
The theft of the bottles was premediated, something she'd handled the night before. Now she just had to make the treck out to her hiding spot and start the process. The sun had finally finished setting but it was early enough into the night that she wasn't bothered. Spreading her wings she took off in the direction she'd hid the bottles. It was a relatively quick flight, she'd just chosen a river little ways outside of town. She landed when she recognized the spot, having an easier time of it than she might have thanks to her third eyelid. These were the moments she was actually grateful for being born a rathari.
Upon landing, she cleared off a spot on the ground and laid down a couple of rocks for a makeshift firepit. It was hard to find dry wood at this time of the season, but she was able to track down a hollowed-out log which she rested on top of a couple of other logs. She stuffed the hollow log with some tinder and set it on fire using the tinderbox she usually kept on her. She arranged it to make sure it burned longer.
As for the pot, it looked clean so she could get right to work inscribing glyphs onto it.
She'd found that glyphs usually lasted longer when she used blood so she pressed one of her fangs against her forefinger, pressing until she felt the sharp pinch and a slight metallic tang. Picking up one of the rocks she allowed it to bleed onto it for a moment before picking up a piece of charcoal for a fire she'd made earlier. She allowed her finger to bleed as long as it wanted to before the small wound clotted up and then she used another rock to start smashing up the charcoal. She added a little water as needed until she'd made a fine liquidy paste, at which point she plucked one of her more unnecessary feathers from her wings with a wince.
She dipped the tip of the feather into the mixture and picked up the pot, carefully pressing the tip of the feather into the side of it. Slowly but surely, she dragged the feather across the pot to make a line. She didn't need to pull out her book. The glyph necessary to cause an alchemical reaction was one seared into her mind. Well, the series of glyphs. Depending on the desired reaction it required more or fewer of the glyphs to be present. She would be shooting for about three considering the reaction she was trying to achieve. So far she managed a line. That was... progress, but it was going to take a while before she was done. Luckily she had all the time in the world. At least, hopefully, she did.
It would take some serious dedication, but she'd get there even if she was read eyed by morning.
