"Mostly."
She sets the jar down carefully. "What does it do?"
"Helps them heal." I stir the pot. "Some of them come in with wounds that aren't closing right. Infected, maybe, or just stuck. The paste helps."
"Helps how?"
"I don't know. It just does." I tap the spoon against the pot's edge. "I figured it out by accident years ago. One of the wolves was dying—wound gone all gray and wrong—and I tried everything I had. The moonbright worked."
"And you never wondered why?"
"I wondered enough to keep making it. That's all I need."
Kestria laughs. "You're so practical it's almost annoying."
"Almost?"
"You're saved by being likeable."
"High praise."
"Don't let it go to your head."
She helps me bundle dried herbs for the rest of the afternoon—yarrow, chamomile, the last of the calendula—and we sort through my stores, tossing what's gone stale and noting what needs replacing. The work goes faster with two people, and Kestria fills the time with stories from the road, jumping from one tangent to another.
"Oh, and my brother's been absolutelyunbearablelately."
"Unbearable how?"
"The usual. Where are you going, when will you be back, why do you need to leave again." She rolls her eyes so hard her whole head moves. "He acts like I'm twelve. I'm twenty-one years old and he still wants to know my exact plans for every single day."
"Maybe he worries."
"He doesn't worry. He manages. There's a difference." She snaps a dried stem in half. "Last time I left, he made me tell him which roads I was taking. Roads, Mel. As if I'm going to get lost on a path I've walked fifty times."
"To be fair, you did get lost that one time."
"That wasonce. And it was dark. And the trail was washed out." She points the broken stem at me. "Don't take his side."
"I'm not taking sides. I'm stating facts."
"Same thing." She tosses the stem into the discard pile. "He's just—he thinks if he controls everything, nothing bad will happen. And I get it, I do, our parents died when we were young and he basically raised me, so he's got this whole protective thing that won't turn off. But at some point you have to let people live."
"Have you told him that?"
"About a thousand times! He grunts and then does exactly whatever he was already going to do." She ties off another bundle, yanking the string tight. "You'd hate him. He's very quiet and very bossy and he has opinions about everything but only shares them in three words or less."
"He sounds delightful."
"He's impossible." She pauses. "I love him. But he's impossible."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
"No. They really aren't."
I strip the leaves off a dried calendula stem. "So is he at least good-looking? This impossible brother of yours?"
Kestria chokes on nothing. "What?"
