Following Basil’s unexpected demise, Aspen was far too busy with his own duties to check up on his one remaining student. After a week of tireless investigation, Aspen returned to the grange a few hours before sunrise.

The bioluminescent interior was sparsely populated; in hard times, druids often preferred the tranquil comfort of nature over the gloom and ghoulish faces of their dour colleagues.

The winter chill slowly crept in alongside the seasonal rise in ozone - a consequence of past elven interference. The sweet, slightly metallic odour got stronger every night this time of year.
In civilisation the fires burnt bluer, hotter, and more readily.

The brown leaves yellowed as each molecule of oxidiser turned out to be three oxygens in a trench coat, ready to pelt the pigment with vacuous orbital strikes.

Of course - to Aspen - all that the gas meant was more fires, more decay, and more work.

“Aspen!” Heather shouted across the henge and speedily marched towards the elf before he could ask what she wanted. “You’ve been gone for days!”

“That is not unusual,” Aspen answered stoically. “Did something happen?”

Finding no grip points on Aspen’s surgically smooth disposition, the woman’s anger sublimated.

“Clover’s gone missing…!” she revealed, pacing in a circle.

“She’s not-” he started but was cut off.

“Missing!” Heather stressed, “Remember - after her friend died?”

Aspen let out a quiet sigh. “How long has she been gone?”

“A week,” Heather answered sharply, almost accusingly.

The elf actually paused momentarily.
“You didn’t go look for her?”

“You think I didn’t try?!”

“If you looked for her and she didn’t show up, then nature-” he began again.

“Then as a druid – I hereby extend this crystal-clear message, Aspen,” she gritted her teeth.
“Go find the one fucking pupil you have left.”

Aspen’s eyes drifted to the trodden dirt beneath him. There he saw a wayward beetle confusedly tumbling a lump of rock towards the exit.

With a sigh, the elf nodded.
“I’m on it…” He took the stone and left.

Outside, he discarded the rock and disappeared into the wall of briars surrounding the grange.

Clover sat on a stone by a larger gouged boulder forming a well that she filled with decomposing fruit until she was left with a makeshift bowl of vinegar.
With just a couple dead twigs and some friction, the oxygen-rich atmosphere let her produce all the alkaline ash she could need.

In the desiccated cap of a woody mushroom, Clover dissolved the ash in water into a basic solution.

As soon as the two mixed, they began to bubble slightly.
Clover watched the tame reaction therapeutically.

When the bubbles stopped, Clover used a clump of moss as an osmotic bridge, letting the fresh water on one side slowly collect her potassium acetate.

By the time Aspen rustled out from betwixt a cluster of bare shrubs, he saw Clover stirring a small pile of impure white powder with her finger.

To his private chagrin, she tasted some before spitting it out.
To the elf’s immediate confusion, the woman had another identical taste, and then another.

By the fourth, Aspen felt compelled to intervene.
“Are you hoping to develop a taste for it?” he asked with a calm smile.

Clover jumped at the sudden sound of his voice but somehow managed to snatch her salt before dropping it.
“Ah!” She panicked and spun around to face her mentor.

“Oh – um – I just used stuff I found in the forest…!” she explained, guiltily setting her benign product aside.

Aspen nodded in blanket understanding.

Clover hung her head and looked down to the grimy earth below.
“I wasn’t here to do alchemy… I’m here to… be here…”
“The alchemy just kind of happened…”

Aspen nodded wordlessly, and when he was close enough, he cautiously took a pinch of Clover’s salt and examined it between his fingers.
“Sand…?”

“It’s potassium acetate… It's like salt but with a different metal… and a different anion…” She sighed heavily. “I’m sorry…”

When she looked up, her eyes went wide like saucers as she watched the elf curiously try some of the substance.

He nodded along to the flavour’s introduction, negotiating its stay with his tongue until he had to spit it out.
“It tastes disgusting...”

Clover nodded dumbfoundedly.

“But with a… little tail… a curl…”

“A buttery note?” Clover suggested.

“Maybe…?” Aspen answered quietly. Having not had butter in a long time.

Even as Clover found her voice, she couldn’t scrounge up a single word for it to express.

Sensing the spotlight singe his hat, Aspen breathed the most discrete breath he could before speaking up.
“How are you feeling?”

After a moment, Clover gave an uncertain little nod.
“I’m alright.”

Another moment passed.
“After your friend died?”

Silence. Twofold.

“It wasn’t right…” Clover’s voice appeared, thinner and shakier.
“Nothing was supposed to be able to… hurt druids…!” she grimaced, biting back the anguish griping the back of her throat.

Aspen opened his mouth to reassure Clover with sentiments in and around the topic of nature’s omniscient scheme.

Clover exhaled shakily before looking Aspen in the eyes with a desperate sheen.
“Did nature cash Basil in to perpetuate itself?” She asked, “Was he ‘accounted for’ from the start?”

“Am I here to get mauled to galvanise some druid into checking on a neglected anthill?”

Aspen took a deep breath.
“That’s how it appears to be…”

Clover stared at him numbly for a long time before she let her gaze return to her pile of salt.
In comparison, the pile of white granules looked almost like an ode to her individualism.

“Would you like to hear the story of the last druid to be killed?” he asked.

Her head shot up at the offer. Elves didn’t tell many stories.

“Why…?”

At first it seemed like Aspen wasn’t going to grace her with a response, but eventually he did.
“Because I don’t understand either…”

His eyes momentarily darted to the salt.
“Maybe you don’t have to get mauled?” He offered with a tentative smile.

She nodded.
“Yes, please… I’m curious…” She wiped the particularly saline sweat from her eyes and cleared her throat.