Ralph and the Pixie

The Healers travelling with them were not from Mirrindale. Rather, they were rural people who had trained under itinerant educators based in the fortress city. As Healers they had their own training and methods, suited mainly to the hazards and realities of rural life. Like the military surgeons, they were self-reliant when it came to collecting and dispensing their pharmacopoeia, and had a wide knowledge of medicinal herbs, plants, fungi, animal and mineral products and byproducts, and because of their taxonomic knowledge could identity relatives of these that were possessed of similar properties when travel removed them from their familiar fare.

In fact, their knowledge of pharmacopoeia was considerably greater than either military surgeon or Healer in Mirrindale, simply because such rural folk ranged far and wide, and travelled with greater freedom that did the soldiers; and those Healers in Mirrindale had little chance of learning the skills of gathering pharmacopoeia as they spent most of their time confined within its walls. Instead, their stocks, other than what they could grow for themselves, came directly from the rural Healers, who were often paid in part with scrolls of medical information.

The refugees’ destination was to be a great forest, one that was said to exist outside the Kingdom. Legend had it that Faerie creatures had lived in that almost forgotten wood long before the creation of the Elf Kingdom. Many thought it likely that their Faerie kindred who had already left the Kingdom would most likely seek such a place.