Rivers of Reverie

7. Without Looking Back

Liryl and Sanya found Rheya still by the entrance.

"Ah, have you found what you ..." she was about to ask, only to stop when she saw Thesyl, fainted in their arms. The priestess softly murmured a curse.

"Bring her this way," she said, firmly.

The two girls did not waste time and followed Rheya into a small room nearby. A bed lay on a small stone altar in the middle of the room, a few feet above the ground. All around it, the walls were filled with entire shelves of herbs, bulbs of liquid and other mixtures. Even if every priestess of water had some experience with herbs and drugs, Rheya's collection included many which Liryl had never seen before.

After she had laid Thesyl on the bed, her priestess friend picked some of the bulbs and poured their contents in a vial, mixing the doses with upmost care. Then, once she had accurately mixed the liquid with a stick, she brought the vial to Thesyl's face and, with her fingers, gently opened one of the unconscious nymph's lids. Then, under Liryl and Sanya's silent gazes, she poured a few drops into the glassy and bloodshot eye, before repeating the same operation with the other.

"Could you pass me one of those urns?" Rheya asked the two girls. "No, not that one over there ... yes, that one, that's right."

Sanya gave the small container to the priestess, who drew a few leaves and started pressing them in a mortar, pouring little quantities of a transparent resin at regular intervals until she obtained a viscous green paste. After having diluted it with water, she brought the bowl to Thesyl's lips and, raising gently the latter's head with her hand, she tilted the bowl until the senseless nymph had drunk the paste.

"There we go," Rheya said at last, leaving the head of her unconscious friend on the bed. "She should wake up shortly."

"Is she fine, now?" Liryl asked, her voice full of concern.

Rheya nodded. "She will need a couple days of rest, but she'll get better."

"What happened to her, exactly?" Sanya asked, with a perplexed look.

"Communing with the Pools of Memory is a stressful endeavor for the mind," explained Rheya. "And you can get hurt seriously if you don't pay due attention. The most common symptoms are burning eyes, headache, dizziness, but in the most severe cases you can risk even longer-lasting consequences, such as amnesia or motor impairment."

The two girls followed her description with dismayed expressions.

"Half an hour of continued contact can be dangerous, for a fledgling priestess," Rheya added. "And even the most learned ones rarely go beyond one hour of prolonged effort. I don't know how much time you have spent communing with the pools, since you went down there, but you have been away for over six hours."

Liryl and Sanya exchanged a scared glance. Since they entered the hall, Thesyl had been staying in trance without any break.

"We're sorry," Liryl apologized, distraught. "It's all our fault. Thesyl was trying to find something to help us ... or rather, to help me," she corrected, crippled with guilt. Sanya murmured the name of her friend and wrapped her arm around Liryl's shoulders.

On the contrary, Rheya smiled. "Don't blame yourself. It's far from the first time that Thesyl ends up like this. No matter how many times I tell her to be careful, she's too stubborn to listen."

The priestess caressed affectionately her friend's forehead, running her fingers through the nymph's green hair.

"I've never seen any other priestess as gifted and skilled as her, but even if she could spend two hours or longer in the pools without batting an eyelid, she's too careless to give herself a limit." Rheya laughed. "Ever since she came here in Fys Espyr, fifteen years ago, I must have healed her at least once a month. Sometimes I get angry, because she always does what she wants. But, after all, that's how we became friends."