[Omari]

Drizzlecloud
Thunderclan
She/her

As she listened to her apprentice’s explanation, her chest grew heavy with a guilt that often hung heavily over her shoulders. She couldn’t imagine just how painful it was for her to speak, let alone speak in such long, extensive sentences. The fact that she had even bothered to ask made her feel awful! So, with a frown carved into her muzzle, she brushed her tail over Springpaw’s back, her tail-tip tracing a circle over her shoulder as if to soothe her. “Thank you for telling me, Springpaw. I’ll be sure to remember all of it.”

Springpaw’s voice and the daily pain that came from speaking was a daily reminder to Drizzlecloud–and everyone else, she could only assume–of what had happened to her. It filled her with a deep, boiling hot rage that she had rarely ever experienced in her life. She didn’t have very many people to be upset over in the first place–Springpaw, other than her own mother, was one of the first cats that she had bonded so closely with. Due to their line of work, of course, and them being assigned together as mentor and apprentice… But nonetheless, Springpaw was held in very high regard by Drizzlecloud. If it were within her power, she’d give anything to go back to that day and pummel that sorry excuse for a warrior into the ground. No amount of wishing on stars would ever fix the damage dealt that day.

Blinking away those thoughts upon hearing her apprentice’s voice, she gave a nod and a flick of her tail, signaling that she was free to explore as she saw fit. She followed quietly behind her, giving her some space to toddle about the area as much as she wished to, but never straying too far behind. “Ah, other techniques and herbs? Well… Certainly, yes.”

 

The last technique that she had to tell her was probably the grossest. Leave that for after. It was much nicer to speak of herbs instead. “Alright, let’s talk herbs first. Beginning with stinging nettle. I’ve only ever used the seeds themselves–spiny and green. You’ll easily find them just wandering about the forest. They grow in clusters, they’ve got leaves that have these barbs on them… That’s where they get their name from, stinging nettles. I find that if you soak the leaves, then they won’t sting you anymore. Again, though, not that I really know much else about the leaves, only the seeds. If they get chewed up, whoever is ingesting them will get sick and–er, spit up whatever they ate last. Good to get rid of anything poisonous that they might have eaten.”

Drizzlecloud went quiet for a moment, allowing Springpaw to take in the knowledge before she proceeded onto the next herb that she had in mind to teach her about. “Next is yarrow. It’s a flower–lots and lots of flowers, usually they come in white or yellow. Little clusters of them. Their leaves are kind of jagged, yet soft, and they smell… Ehm, sharp!” Drizzlecloud was never amazing with explanations, but she certainly gave it her best shot. “I like to use yarrow to help soften cracked pads. Chew it up into a paste and slather some on. Similarly to what you told me, it’ll work better the longer the paste is left on the paw pads.”

“And, I’ll tell you about parsley too. It tastes kind of… How do I explain it–cold? Cold and crisp, I suppose. It’s a leafy plant with no flowers, just crinkly leaves.” Drizzlecloud narrowed her eyes as she peered around the area, wondering if she would be able to find the aforementioned herb. Ah, to no avail, unfortunately. “Well, anyways, we give parsley to queens who produce too much milk–or if she just doesn’t need to produce milk anymore, such as when her kits have been weaned or… More unfortunate circumstances.”

 

Moving on swiftly from those topics and onto one that was–honestly, not that much better, being straight up gross. “Alright, let me know if this gets too disgusting for you and I’ll stop. Coldamber taught me how to deal with ear infections, and it isn’t pretty. Stars above am I glad that we haven’t had to deal with any of it yet.” With a deep breath and a sheepish, nearly anxious smile, she proceeded. “So, we get some marigold, a twig that is really, really thin, and a whole lot of moss. We have our patient lay down, affected ear pointed upwards–towards us, and then we split our moss into two piles. We want one to be spread out, covering some of the ground while the other pile will be picked apart and used as we treat the infection. First we’ll need to take a pawful of moss from that pile, and we’ll set it to the side.” Drizzlecloud recalled the very words that Coldamber used when explaining this very lesson to her… And it was still very, very disgusting. Oh goodness. “So, using the stick, we want to try to get as much puss and earwax out of the infected ear. I know the explanation is gross, but apparently the smell itself is even worse, so I guess we have that to look forward to. During the process we’ll want our patient to be talking to us, telling us how they’re feeling. We’ll do this until we feel comfortable with what we’ve managed to remove, and with that, we place the stick–and any other ones we may have used–onto the big pile of moss covering the ground. From here, we can ask the cat to sit up a bit, tilt their head downwards over the same moss pile in hopes of getting anything else out of their ear. They can give their head a little shake, too, if they’re comfortable doing that. From here we make a poultice with the marigold. Chew it up as best as we can, and we can mix it with some water to make it as liquified as possible. We want to pour that mixture into the patient’s ear, using a leaf or maybe even some moss to soak it up and squeeze it out with… From there, we let the mixture sit in our patient’s ear and we snag another ball of moss, squeeze it into a little ball, really tight, and we place it near the cat’s ear so that when they turn their head, it will all hopefully trickle out onto that moss. We can use that moss to clean up what’s left in their ear, gently squishing it and placing it into their ear before removing it. We shouldn’t be using too much force here, though. From there, we can dispose of everything that we used so it doesn’t stink up the place.”

Drizzlecloud let out a long, probably exaggerated for dramatic effect, sigh. “If they’re in pain, we can give them some poppy seeds to help reduce it. From there, we tell them to keep their ear dry, when to visit us next so we can check on the healing process, and that they should take things slowly until we tell them that they can return to their normal duties.”

[ @eris this is an exceptionally poor post but i just wanted to get it up hahaha ]