RiverClan Medicine Cat's Den

[CheetahPelt]

@Dipper @BILL.


Her tail twitched nervously. Otterstone had stumbled in her work again. This was a mess. "She-she was treated wi-with coltsfoot." She tried to recollect what she had done with Sugarapple. The tortoiseshell shuffled her paws, breathing fast. "I... I mean, it's been, a plan. To check the kits." She spoke quickly. Eyes averted from the two cats in front of her.

This was very bad.

Otterstone shrunk into herself, wanting to disappear.

I....I can't even fix this.

The thought bounced around her head as she shook in her fur. "I can oversee the building of the quarantine den." She meowed quietly, her mew small. Why would either of them trust her with even that?

[CheetahPelt]

Originally Posted by Slushie

[ @CheetahPelt ]

Goosefury
------------

His ears twitched uncomfortably at the mention of his scars, but not even a second later he blurted out a surprised, "OH!" He'd completely forgotten about the purpose of his original trip here in the first place! An apologetic grin plastered on his muzzle, he swung back around to face her. "I totally forgot about my original request. I was actually in here to get some poppy seeds because they were aching earlier, but then I offered to gather some because you didn't have any." He let out a soft chuckle at his own forgetfulness. "So, if you don't mind, do you think I could have one or two?"

"Oh! One hundred percent." She meowed, pawed a few poppy seeds free and slid them over to the tom. "It was my fault as well for forgetting." She nodded to him. "Those should do the job."

[CheetahPelt]

Originally Posted by Dipper

Oh, good. A learning moment now that Otterstone had conned a patrol into doing her job, and she was finished using the herbs that he'd collected. He couldn't remember the last time she'd actually come back with anything, but he could list off on one paw the amount of times she profited off of his work.

Needless to say, Fawnsqueak wasn't thrilled. Particularly because he wasn't sure what she could possibly teach him about the herbs that came in.

"Teaching moment," he echoed as he peered at her, expectant. "That's marigold and dandelion. A cobweb. A poppy. Blackberries." They were counted off with nonchalance since he was familiar with these, had used and collected most of them in the past. Looking a little closer, his eyebrows knitted at the... the purple flower that the patrol brought? Fawnsqueak was pretty sure Coyotesnarl hadn't shown him anything like that, and it was written off as just a nice flower because it didn't match any herb he was knowledgable about.

"Blackberry leaves." She corrected, poking at the bristly leaves. Obviously they weren't the actual berries, but she thought she would make sure it stuck in his head. With a sideways glance she smiled as he knitted his brows together. "I knew you didn't know everything yet." She said, truimphantly. "These are borage flowers. They induce milk making in expectant or dry queens."

[Fawn]

Originally Posted by CheetahPelt

"Blackberry leaves." She corrected, poking at the bristly leaves. Obviously they weren't the actual berries, but she thought she would make sure it stuck in his head. With a sideways glance she smiled as he knitted his brows together. "I knew you didn't know everything yet." She said, truimphantly. "These are borage flowers. They induce milk making in expectant or dry queens."

Fawnsqueak didn't waver, pointing out, "Yeah.. but those are blackberries. The patrol literally brought back blackberries." What those were for.. he didn't know, a snack? But her correction was kind of laughable to think he wouldn't know a blackberry when he saw it; granted, he didn't know with total faith that the leaf belonged to them, but he wasn't fast to make those judgments with herbs after seeing "intuition" end in awful disaster.

He frowned at her.. teaching. "Borage... flowers," he repeated to ensure he'd heard that correctly. Those were definitely flowers, placed before them. But he was hesitant to agree they were borage flowers considering the patrol had given them purple flowers. Fawnsqueak knew enough to spot the discrepancy there. So he rolled with it, not hiding the skepticism, "Sureee... borage flowers. You'd give this to a patient?" It was a genuine question, light on the snippiness since he was curious.

[Fawn]

Originally Posted by CheetahPelt

"Oh! One hundred percent." She meowed, pawed a few poppy seeds free and slid them over to the tom. "It was my fault as well for forgetting." She nodded to him. "Those should do the job."

It was when Otterstone began handing out his herbs -- wait, his herbs? That was new. Fawnsqueak could've face-pawed at how protective he was being over some stupid plants that, although he did collect, didn't exactly belong to him. They were here for the purpose of healing, no matter who was doing it.

But that didn't mean he was about to allow Otterstone's habit of over-using diminish his hardwork. He scuttled forward to paw back two of the three poppy seeds, peering apologetically at Goosefury. "Uh, sorry-- about that. I'm guessing the extra were stuck to her paw or something when she got the other one out." His wound wasn't producing severe pain - Coyotesnarl said one poppy seed for pain, two for severe, three for overdosing a patient. With a tip of his head toward the last seed, he said, "You can definitely still have that one, though."


@Slushie

[dino.]

[ @CheetahPelt @Dipper ]

Goosefury
-----------------

Goosefury reached for the seeds, but a paw shot out and swiped two of them away before he could scoop them up. He glanced up, puzzled, at Fawnsqueak, then decided to just shrug it off. No big deal, it was just a few seeds, right? He pressed the remaining seed onto his pad and then onto his tongue. "Thanks, both of you." With a nod to Fawnsqueak and a smile at Otterstone he slipped out of the medicine den.

[Fawn]

Originally Posted by x ghostie

Wormbite raised an brow, blinking in confusion. He was not under the impression medicine cats had schedules. It sounded as if it was quite inconvenient! Pause. "That.. was sarcasm.. wasn't it?" He pointed out -- mainly to himself. He let out a small sigh.

Listening to Fawnsqueak, he gave a small nod. Trying to keep his words to an minimum, "Yes. I have in fact learned that it is more harmful then good. I do wish I did not have to learn the hard way.." Wormbite replied, his last statement quieter than the previous. He was frowning softly. No. No, he did not in fact recommend learning the hard way. : (

Rising back to his paws, "No swimming. Understood, is that all then?" He tilted his head slightly.

"A little, yeah," he conceded with a lopsided smile. Despite how long the infection had gone untreated and the severity of it now, Wormbite was turning out to be one of Fawnsqueak's more enjoyable patients, perhaps because they had sort of a history, or perhaps because he was just a good sport about the whole thing. It helped that he was a fast learner.

Sympathy tugged at him, though diluted when it was an untreated infection that'd dragged the dude here. Fawnsqueak could safely say he agreed in wishing Wormbite didn't have to discover this the hard way. Trying to be comforting (but not exactly achieving anything on that front), he offered, "Hey, man. It's not the worst thing. It should be good to go again in a couple sunrises, just kind of keep an eye on it."

The confirmation was a nod. "No swimming, no.. anything that might take off the poultice."

[Fawn]

(so @BILL. told me to skip him in the post order for this one to keep the plot moving)

Fawnsqueak was visibly surprised, peeking to the herb storage to Otterstone, then back again because coltsfoot? That was confounding. "Okay," he murmured as he leaned in, meow hushed, "this is kind... of awkward, but we didn't have.. coltsfoot in the storage." Fawnsqueak pretty much wanted to die. This interrogation was bringing a lot of shady practices to light and it was basically the worst conversation he'd ever been a part of.

Otterstone could claim checking the kits had been a plan, but in reality it'd been a half-moon. And stars above, he was going to vomit from the stress of this. The entire nursery could be infected with coughs, and they wouldn't have enough catmint in the forest to heal everyone.

In a sudden prickliness, Fawnsqueak's ears flattened to his head at Otterstone's attempt of fixing things, bitterly thinking it was perhaps her first one (not empty promise, those were in excess, but an actual offer to help.) Even in that, it fell short since she was asking to supervise the process -- which made sense, sitting back and doing nothing was her specialty. "Teaching moment," Fawnsqueak echoed in her classic phrase, more venomous than he'd intended, "If you can't oversee a single patient, you are seriously not qualified to oversee the den-building process."

Ugh, it was an airing of their dirty laundry, and he.. he did feel bad, sort of. But his resentment wasn't completely at Otterstone, it was toward himself for making such a monumental mistake in his duty, an oversight that needed to be corrected immediately. And he was going to. "Lionstar, I--" he swallowed, then straightened up. "I'm ready to start. On the den, on getting the apprentices organized, and I thought--maybe--we should start collecting some catmint, and Firehawk can check on the queens and kits-- he lives in the nursery, right?" It was a stream-of-consciousness ramble as he mentally sorted everything.

@BILL. @CheetahPelt

[BEAR.]

[ in advance i apologize for this post ;o; he's just angry ]

No reason for not being quarantined, no.. nothing, it felt like.

Apologies wouldn't fix this. Only action could. And Lionstar's faith in that.. being done was dwindling every time he dealt with the "Medicine Cat Issue." He had been hoping Fawnsqueak would help be a stable way to clean this.. mess up but that didn't seem to be happening.

So he'd take charge for now. "Fawnsqueak, I am going to assign two warriors to you to make an expansion to part of this den. It will be accessible only from in here, and I DO NOT want to find out that you've let any patient who isn't sick in there. You can grab whatever apprentice you want.. to clean this dungshow up." Honestly, Lionstar wanted to face paw. He'd given Otterstone a chance and this is what she did with it?

"Maybe you should rename it Weedsfoot since it's not whatever that colt thing is." Lionstar couldn't help but be irked by this entire situation, tail lashing. "What do you have in storage? Do I need to organize herb patrols to do your job for you?" This was less at Fawnsqueak and more at Otterstone. "You're the medicine cat, why the hell haven't you been keeping up with at least the herb supply we have? This is why I can't trust you with my Clan-mates, Otterstone. You killed an elder with your negligence, you've left a sick cat free to contaminate others, and you don't even have herbs to treat half the damn patients you receive. You told me you'd do better, but how is THIS any better? A cat's DEAD because you didn't even treat her and half our Clan could be sick and die because you didn't separate the one cat you KNEW was sick from everyone else."

Lionstar couldn't hide how furious he was. A part of him wanted to rip Otterstone's throat open for her incompetence. "You never checked on the kits. You PLANNED on it, but Stars forbid you ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING TO PREVENT WORSE THINGS FROM HAPPENING!" Yeah, he wasn't going to let her NEAR the expanded den. "No, I think you've done enough, Otterfall." She could join Frostfall in the ranks of disappointments.

Turning back to Fawnsqueak, his voice was a growl. "Get things moving. Splashfury [ @Elementals]! Creekleap [ @~Lucid Dreams~]!" Lionstar raised his voice loudly, booming so it could be heard outside. "Come in here and do whatever the hell Fawnsqueak tells you to do.

"Since it's very clear we don't have squat for herbs, I'm going to send out patrols for it MYSELF. Otterfall--" he whirled on her with a hiss filled with venom. "Make yourself useful and stay out of our way. Enough damage has been done by you this moon."

With those words, Lionstar stalked out of the den to organize the first round of herb collections.

[ @Dipper, @CheetahPelt ]

[Elementals]

@BILL. @Dipper @CheetahPelt

Looking startled at Lionstar's voice while she was thinking about resting a bit after having to deal with a border patrol. Dipping her head silently to comply with the leader's order and stepped into the den. "Uhm, do you medicine cats need my service?" she meowed in confusion as she stepped into the messy den.