Despite the recent topic, Mom doesn’t squeeze me too hard as Pop opens the door.

“Hello there, Mister Derran!” a croaking voice says almost as soon as the 

“Ah, Miss Daera! What brings you way out here this early?”

“Sorry to drop by unannounced, I was nearby when I found this wonderful patch of lampleaf blues and I thought I’d bring you some.”

I peek around Mom’s hug to see Pop accept a basket from an elderly-looking lady who appeared to be made entirely out of old wrinkled leather. Steel-gray braids wrap around her head and neck like a shawl, and a proper shawl in bright yellow holds it all in place. She spies me instantly, and the lines on her face all seem to echo the O-shape her eyes and mouth make.

“Oh my! Is your little one five already?” she gasps, prompting a flinch from Mom. Pop answers immediately, though, taking a half step sideways to draw the guest’s attention once more.

“She will be in the midmonth. Still a little shy for now, though.”

“Indeed, or else I'm sure I'd have seen her before,” Miss Daera says, then calls past Pop into the house. “Moell, you ought to bring your daughter into town. Everyone would love to meet the firstborn of our dear guard captain!”

“Certainly,” Mom replies, her voice still stiff. “Just as soon as she likes.”

“Of course, of course! Well, I’ll get back out of your hair now, the three of you have a wonderful day and, if I don’t see you before then I will at the Day of Beginnings.”

Pop sees the elderly woman off, then comes back inside with a bit of consternation twisting his face into a scowl.

“Derran,” Mom says, a warning tone in her voice. I don’t understand why, but I do see Pop give in and shift to a more neutral expression.

“She’s too nosy,” he says, and I gather this is a persistent complaint even if I haven’t heard it before.

“What’d she say this time?” The resigned sigh Mom heaves with her question makes me want to comfort her, so I try to hug her even tighter. She smiles and strokes my hair before lifting me into her lap and pulling my untouched breakfast within reach.

“Oh, just the usual, and she asked if Red’s hair is properly black. I assured her only the royal family has that honor, but she’s convinced herself a forgotten princess has appeared out of nowhere.”

They both chuckle derisively, and Pop sets the delivered basket on his work table. I watch him pull out great big fistfuls of leaves shaped like spades and the color of the night sky as Mom pushes a corner of mostly cold toast into my mouth.

“By what stars did she find all this…?” Pop says aloud, his voice trailing off as he continues to heap the fresh plants onto his workspace. Mom looks over and gasps in awe.

“Derran, surely that’s not all lampleaf?”

“I haven’t seen a blade that isn’t. This is utterly ridiculous though, it just doesn’t grow anywhere you can pick it on a casual morning stroll.” After shaking out the last few bits from the basket, Pop drops the woven grass and starts sorting the night-blue leaves into bundles. “And I saw Daera in town yesterday while delivering those potions to Len and Marc. I don’t imagine she’d spend the night hiking all over the ranges to find this much.”

“Mom?” I whisper into the conversation’s lull. “What’s lampleaf?”

“It’s what makes potions, potions. Ask your father about it, he’s been dying to teach you,” she whispers back before taking an enormous bite of her own toast with a wry grin.

“Pop?”

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“What’s lampleaf do?”

He freezes partway through tying a bundle of the leaves together and turns around all the way to stare directly at me. There’s dangerous energy behind his eyes, and I’m starting to wonder if Mom didn’t just throw me to the wolves here.

“You wanna learn about potions?” Pop asks quietly. I shrug, then nod, then take a normal bite of toast and give him my full attention.

A heartbeat later, Pop explodes into a torrent of action and words, practically tearing me from Mom’s lap and into a hug before holding the unbound bundle up to my face.

“You do! Oh wonderful, wonderful! Here, take a closer look, you see the purple striping along the center of the palm, how it follows the fingers to their edges while the stem reaches up the middle? The number of stripes indicates the age of the plant, sort of. Leaves found in areas less traveled tend to have more, so it’s assumed they have more time to grow. Anyways, the intensity of the blue increases with the number of stripes, so the youngest and oldest leaves can end up looking about the same until you get up close to see the details.

“Of course, that mostly doesn’t matter, since you usually make the same number of cuts per finger. As far as my potions go, they might keep a bit longer or work a bit faster, but it’s filling a hand-deep hole with a leg-long pole either way. Sometimes the nobles can make use of the difference, but for the rest of us, it’s not worth paying too much attention to. The only thing keeping it so valuable is how rare it is. Usually, this only grows on the warmest nights, up at the edge of the snows on the mountainsides. One or two healthy plants’ worth of leaves can supply potions for months on end, but it can sometimes take weeks to find a single sprout.

“Now, as for what it does,” Pop sets me on the table, right next to Mom’s plate, and whirls on his heel to collect a number of things from his cabinet. Every time he opens its doors, a fragrant air wafts through the house and fills it with the smell of a few dozen different dried plants. Two stone bowls, a metal one, a pair of wooden sticks with flat and rounded bottoms, small wooden tongs, a fork, and a small preserves jar are delivered to the table next to me, and Pop returns to fuss over the herbs stored in jars and pouches. I glance at Mom, who shrugs and munches on the last of her breakfast and return to eating my own until Pop brings his project to the table.

“Right, then,” he says, setting the last of the little jars down and setting to work adding them to one of the stone bowls with his tongs. “So, making your basic potion takes three fingers each of allusim, stone pepper, and sanam root, which you want to make as fine as possible so they mix well.” He takes the rounded stick and grinds the ingredients into the bowl.

“Oh, mortar and pestle,” I say to myself, which prompts an odd look from Pop. He raises an eyebrow at me but continues with his explanation.

“Once those are made into a good powder, you get your lampleaf that’s been cut and dried and put two flakes into your other bowl. With the edge of your flat masher, give them a little cut right across their length, and now we reach the part that separates medicine from potions.”

Pop sets the pestle – sorry, masher – aside and covers the bowl with his hands.

“Not everyone is capable of this part, you know. Your mother, for example, simply can’t, and many of the most powerful mages aren’t able to move so little they don’t burn the leaves off.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, and I wait for something to happen.

And wait.

After a short while, during which I finish my toast and get a full-face wipedown from Mom, Pop takes his hands from the bowl to reveal the small flakes writhing in a deep blue liquid that’s seeped up out of nowhere. He quickly pours it into the metal bowl and starts vigorously stirring in the dry ingredients with the fork. When nothing else falls out of the first stone bowl, he puffs air through it to push out any remaining dust and sets it aside to continue stirring.

“Oh damn it, Moell could you grab the honey and water for me?”

Mom doesn’t reply, but promptly stands and fetches both items. Pop puts an enormous dollop of honey into the mix, never slowing his stir. His free hand moves to the pitcher of water, and after steam starts rising from it he adds it slowly until the whole soup becomes extra fluid. As it cools in the bowl, the metal starts to darken from yellow copper to grayish-brown where the potion washes over it. Once the discoloration reaches the edge of the bowl, Pop carefully pours all of it into the empty jar, shaking out the last drops before retrieving wax paper and twine to close it. Light shines from the potion in a deep blue, and I realize there are no leaf bits left in it.

Pop holds up the tarnished bowl to show me the inside, where what looks like a glossy coating is holding all of the plant material to it.

“The honey soaks most of the flavor out and sticks all of the bits that’ll get stuck between your teeth to the bowl. Usually water and honey mix, but I use the extra lampleaf flake to make the honey’s stickiness transfer to the plants instead. Makes the bowl a bit harder to clean, but my buyers appreciate not having to break out the toothpicks along with their cold medicine.”

I giggle at that, then tilt my head.

“But what’s this potion do?”

“Hm? Oh, this is for fatigue and muscle strain. Good to sip before you do a lot of heavy lifting, or after if you’re willing to take the whole thing in one go. Despite the honey, this one’s flavor is always a little…”

“It tastes fine, Derran,” Mom interrupts, smirking.

“Oh is that so? I distinctly remember you telling me just the other day I ought to work on my recipes,” he teases back.

Before I can interject, they’re off to the races again with the flirting and snark, but I’m glad the mood is back to normal.