Dear My Precious Friend,

Dad left this morning. I trust he’s back on the island now. He gave me a big hug and asked me to call Ma often. He wished me luck with the basil and gave assurance that I’d do well, but I wish I could share his optimism.

There was nothing more I wanted to do than to solve the enigma of this basil guardianship, but alas, our lessons took precedent.

To be certain the basil isn’t a decoy for a different kind of test, I’ve painstakingly recorded every detail of the lessons.

For our first lesson he wanted us to create a Potion of Sweet Dreams. It is one of the first hundred potions to be learned in the first year of apprenticeship. He went out to the garden and examined the leaves of lemon balm. He held each leaf up, turned it this way and that, passed the sunlight through them, and only then did he pluck the leaf and put it in his basket.

When he was picking the passion flower’s wriggly corona tendrils, he stroked each strand with his fingers from top to bottom before taking them into his ingredient basket. Same with the white chamomile flowers; he brushed them with the back of his hands and I’m sure the flowers leaned into his touch.

We then took our ingredients to the potion room, where the wind picked up the sweet and bitter smell of the drying herbs, garlic, and flowers hanging from the ceiling. Master allowed me to check the ingredients with the books from the bookshelves and you would be proud to know I was the epitome of delicacy; my fingers weaved through the bottles of potions and empty flasks without making a sound.

We both used the same sized stone mortar, pestle and pot to make our potions.

While we waited for them to boil, he told me that it was very important to interact with the plants that were going to be used in the potion.

“Even if a noma followed the exact method of our potion, it won’t produce the same effect. Two potion masters can produce different potencies as well.”

(Oh, Snu, I’m unsure if you could tell the difference between us potion masters and noma. I can’t tell to be honest–but we call humans without magical abilities ‘noma’.)

“How does one make a potent potion?” I asked.

“There are many factors, but I would say it has to do with how you care for and treat your plants. Show them respect and allow them to absorb your scent, your energy, before they are harvested. Then of course, it all depends on your faithfulness to the recipes.”

My previous master, Master Seo, also said plants were more powerful if they were carried around the body of a potion master. Now I understood why.

“We emit a source of energy?”

“Something like that. It’s all in your blood, but I hear children can emit a lot more of these energies than adults.”

I received two bottles of the Potion of Sweet Dreams and was told to try them, to see how different they would be.

I noted nothing out of place during the lesson or the rest of the day. I combed the study notes and the homework but it yielded no clue as to what he wished for in an apprentice. He didn’t even take a drop of my potion for evaluation. I’m beginning to think maybe the basil really is the centrepiece to this mystery.

Your Faithful Friend