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THEY moved to an open-air café on a side street to avoid drawing attention. There were some curious people who followed them, but there was less foot traffic here and their followers were cautious, so Lushera wasn’t that concerned with them.
“My name is Joanna. I live here with my daughter.”
It was hard to tell how old Joanna was, in the worst possible way. Her struggles showed themselves in the deep creases of her face, white mixed in with the orange of her hair, despite the initial impression of her being on the younger side.
Lushera bought her a coffee, though she was hesitant to accept.
“I used to work as a maid, but I caused a problem at my former place of employment and they fired me,” Joanna explained. “I couldn’t find any work after that and…my husband left me, and I lost anyone else I could rely on.”
Joanna slowly told her story, which Lushera did have some questions about, but she didn’t prod.
Maids and other in-house workers received an introduction letter from their former employer when they left one household. This introduction letter would go over what the employer felt about their skill and conduct. It was the deciding factor for when they went to find new work. Any maid that caused a problem would of course receive an introduction letter with a poor review. Sometimes the potential new employer would contact the previous one to ask for more details.
Because of that system, one black mark could follow someone forever whether they wanted it to or not, and that was the sort of thing Lushera assumed Joanna was talking about.
The problem was it would have to be quite the big mistake to prevent her from ever finding any sort of employment. People knew there were some masters or mistresses of the house that hated a person and would write a worse review than was called for, and any average houseworker capable of doing their job well could find a place of employment even if their manners weren’t impeccable. Joanna didn’t seem like the kind of person to do something extreme enough to nullify that.
The other odd thing was that Joanna had been married. Most houseworkers weren’t paid enough to cover constant childcare while they were living and working in their master’s home. Low-ranking housework was generally seen as work for unmarried women. Hiring married women was regularly avoided.
Which meant that even though Joanna was a maid, she had enough status to have her marriage approved. Her skill was probably enough to justify that, and yet, she still couldn’t find another place of employment? That made her situation all the weirder.
Lushera thought she heard Viola whisper something along the lines of, “This is where you were,” to herself.
“I sometimes find work I can do here and there, but it’s far from enough to buy the medicine my daughter needs,” Joanna continued. “She’s been ill for so long…”
“Medicine… Do you mean life-support medicine?” asked Lushera.
“Yes…”
Life-support medicine… Lushera’s heart hurt every time it beat in her chest.
In general, modern humanoid society had the ability to use magic to heal most ailments of the mind and body. You could purchase magic elixirs or receive treatment at a temple, if you made sufficient contributions. But that mostly just eliminated symptoms. If the body was weak and afflicted by illness after illness, or if the body simply could no longer function, there was no effective medicine.
Those people needed to improve or recover their base vitality. And, until their body could heal like that, they needed life-support medicine.
Life-support medicine wasn’t just one type of drug. It was a category of magic medicines that supplemented a person’s life force and kept them alive.
It could be bought, but it was fairly rare and there was unlimited demand, so it was definitely not cheap. Aging nobles and the rich bought it to extend their life, at which point it turned into medicine for longevity. This increased the price, putting it out of the reach of anyone who was ill and poor.
At one time, Lushera had worked desperately to get life-support medicine. She was well aware of what that was like. The family of people with chronic illnesses could destroy themselves trying to buy that medicine. It wasn’t despair that killed people. It was hope.
Joanna’s story hit far too close to home for Lushera.
“I’m going to ask you a stupid question,” said Lushera, starting to talk before she even knew what she was going to say. “If… It’s just if… If there was a medicine that could save your daughter in…a place filled with monsters…and you couldn’t hire adventurers to get it for you…would you go get it yourself?”
“Lushera,” said Kaphal, sitting next to Lushera. She wrapped her arm around Lushera’s shoulders. “Lushera, why ask?”
“I…don’t know. But I want to…check. I guess. I want to know if I just made a foolish mistake, or if I just did what anyone would do. I don’t know if it’ll make what I did okay.”
There was always a doubt inside Lushera that her last decision as XXXX had been a mistake, even if doing differently wouldn’t have changed anything.
“Of course I’d go,” said Joanna. “I’d go even if there was only a tiny sliver of hope that it would save her.” She gave a small smile, at ease with her decision.
Lushera was relieved, a little. She let out a breath, like she was releasing something pent-up inside her, then pulled something brilliant and red from a pouch she could attach to her belt. “Please, take this.”
“What is it…?”
“It’s the scale of a red dragon. It can be used as a substitute for the life-support medicine, though that’s not its usual application. In fact, it’s even more potent.”
“What?!”
It was one of the scales that fell from Kaphal’s main body after the battle on the mountain. It contained a fragment of a dragon’s energy.
Rather than let the variants of the area eat it, Lushera took it with the intention of using it strategically to raise more variants. If a human ate it, they wouldn’t gain the same power as a variant or Lushera, but it should compensate for the lack of energy filling them.
“I, I… I have to thank you somehow!” Joanna covered her mouth with trembling hands, overcome by emotion.
“Would it be all right if I visited your home?” Lushera asked. “It has to be processed a little before your daughter can take it as medicine.”
“Of course! Please do!”
Joanna’s form, tears in her eyes, seemed distant to Lushera. She got this power too late. But…but that didn’t mean that her path from here on out had to be meaningless.
“I’m sorry, Lushera, something’s come up that I have to take care of,” said Viola. “Let’s meet back up later.”
“Hm? Oh, yeah.”
“Sorry from me too. I’m gonna have to stick with Viola,” said Timm.
“Sigh… All right. I’m fine though,” muttered Viola.
For some reason, the moment the conversation was finished, Viola took Timm and went off somewhere.