Her first year passed almost before she knew it. She rose at the usual time when someone tapped on her door, uttering the usual, “Blessings, sister,” and she put her robe on and went to answer nature's call. That done, she fell into the comfortable routine of getting into her clothes, then going out the door to go run with the other Novices. No one said anything, they just saved their breath for the run, but it warmed them nicely, and they were quite comfortable when they went into the main courtyard to do the Empty Hand meditation with the rest of the clergy there. Alandra could sometimes almost feel her Mana growing within her as she swept an arm and turned and stamped a foot. It grew but it grew in a nice and stable manner, like plants under the summer Sun.

  Then she sang the Sun up with the others, and felt herself just as happy. Being in the Temple proper always made her feel happy! She chatted happily with the other Novices during breakfast, and was surprised when Vanla, at the head of the table stood up, said, “Please wait a moment,” and went out of the room. She came back with a basket of something steaming and smelling like the food of the Gods. She went to Alandra, and let her pick a honeycake out from the basket. There was a murmur of happiness.

  “May your year be sweet,” she said. How had she known she would be twelve winters at Sundark? Her smile as she said, “May your year be sweet,” was genuine, and Alandra smiled back as she took her honeycake. She gave honeycakes all round, then went back to her place and sat down. They all said, “May we all share in life's sweetness!” and took a nibble of their little cake.

  It looked like a regular honeycake to Alandra: golden brown around the edges, golden on top, and redolent of the honey that sweetened it. It was the size of her palm, but much thinner. The edges crunched a bit, but the middle was soft. She could have eaten it in four large bites, but honeycakes were a rare treat, and to be savored. Everyone nibbled and smiled. The flavor of honey lingered in her mouth like sunshine as she began to put things in order for the Healers.

  They didn't want her healing people on her own yet, but she was trusted to set up the cubicles in which the healers saw people who came in hurt. Or thought they were hurt. Or didn't think they were hurt but someone else insisted. People were funny. Some people cried and wept over small things, and other people stood there with bones sticking out as they shouldn't be, and were as calm as could be. She kept her eyes open and learned something new every day.

  The following fall they started her on knife work. Alandra knew how to cut up meat for cooking, but this was quite different, and the knife she was handed was the size of a small penknife, and sharp as could be along its single edge blade. There was a fresh half-hog on the table. Their teacher told them to gather round.

  "We are going to practice our knife techniques," said their teacher. "This will not be the only time."

  He took the small, very sharp knife from the roll, and showed them the grip for it, held very like a pen. Then, heshowed them how to cut.

  Alandra had to try several times before she found the right pressure. Then she practiced....just through the skin, or down through the heavy fat layer. By the time the session was over, her hand and arm ached.

  But she remembered this ache from learning handwriting properly... it was just that she was holding it too hard. This too would become second nature.

  When she was not cutting carefully through a pig's skin (they had a new pig every day) she was memorizing the shape of the interior of the body, and what did what, and what went where. Some of this was in meditation on herself. Some was sensing and meditation on others.

  They were asked to meditate on others who were different:a child, whose body has different needs than an adult. Early adolescence, as their male or female natures woke within them and began to make them adults. Adulthood. She was absolutely red-faced the first time she laid a hand on the stomach of a grown man and traced how his kidneys took urine out of his body, different than a woman's. But she remembered that she was destined to go adventuring, and more men than women adventured, and she needed to know this to heal a man wounded in the groin. And with experience, men were just men, women just women.

  When she was not practicing knife skills, she and the other young Healers were shadowing the full Healers still in the Healing Court. But now that they had the basics of the body and the herbs learned, the Healers started having them genuinely help, not just fetching and carrying.

  Alandra and Miros, one of the older Healers, looked up to see two men carrying another in on an improvised stretcher. They looked working class to her, and the man laying there was crying in pain, curled on his side.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “What happened?” asked Miros to all of them.

  “He was liftin' a keg and it went wrong on 'im,” one said. “And then he dropped to the floor, said his legs wouldn't hold him, and they was on fire, and so we got him here.”

  Miros glanced at Alandra. “Can you show these gentlemen over to our bed, and I'll get what we need.”

  Alandra led them over to the treatment bed in their area, and they helpfully decanted the man onto the table. He howled in pain as they did so, panting as he caught his breath.

  “First, sir, this will mute the pain,” said Miros, handing the man a small cup. “I know it tastes vile.”

  “If it helps,” he said, making a face as he swallowed. Alandra offered him a cup with some water to rinse his mouth out. Gradually the poppy took hold and he relaxed, eyelids sagging.

  “So, what do you think is wrong?”

  “I think it's his back,” she said. “And something with the big nerves in the legs. I would look at it and see with Healing to see what wasn't right.”

  “Well, why don't you do that now?” said Miros.

  She looked at the man and said, “Sir, I need to move your clothes enough to look at your back. Can you loosen your trews for me? And I'll move your tunic.”

  She looked at the situation while the man loosened his belt and the tie that held his lower garments up, and then stepped to the side table for a pair of shears.

  “I dont want him to move more than he has to,” she said, and Miros nodded.

  “That's right, back injuries can get much worse when moved.”

  “So I'm going to cut his tunic and shirt to give access.”She grinned. “And since I have a moment to do it, I'm going to cut on the seam so that his wife can fix it, and not call down curses on me.”

  Miros laughed and nodded. “Not everyone thinks of that, but not everyone can just afford to go get a new shirt. That's smart of you.”

  So she cut up the center back seam on the tunic, and laid it open, and then cut the right side underarm seam on his shirt, and up round the sleeve where it joined the body. That, along with pulling down his trews and undertrews slightly, laid clear his lower back to the cleft.

  “Good work, Alandra,” said Miros. He laid a hand gently on the man's back, and moved his fingertips down the spine delicately.

  “Mmm,” he said. “Now you look, Alandra, and tell me what you see.”

  She mimicked him, looking inside, at the nerves and the spine, all fine until....ooh.

  “Right there,” she said. “The cushion ruptured, and the filling's pressing on the nerves,”

  “Yes,” he said, and smiled at her. “Do you know how we fix this?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, watch me and you'll see.”

  She watched with great interest as the very tiniest thread of Pull and soothing nudged the filling away from the nerve, then carefully pushed it back into its place and sewed up the rupture with a thread of healing. He had to do that on both sides, and said, “I want him to stay here overnight, not stressing it, so I'll keep him potioned.”

  “So he doesn't head right home and pick up a keg again,” Alandra said, nodding. “We have to consider that when we heal too, right? Like Moms are gonna have to be Moms when they go home, regardless of what the Healer says.”

  “Quite right. Otherwise they'll mess themselves up again, sometimes worse, and that's more work for us to do. I think we have enough, don't you?”

  “Enough and to spare!” Alandra said, wide eyed. “I want to get to where I can help more.”

  They summoned two porters with a stretcher, got the man on it, and sent him over to the area where people stayed overnight. Milos went with him to tell the Healers there about him, and Alandra knew that her job was to put the treatment cubicle back to rights. First she took off her apron and sleeve guards, and put them into the soiled linen bin. The sheet covering the bed was removed to the bin as well, and she fetched another from the stack on the shelf. She looked at the bed, and saw the straw mattress was unstained, so she didn't have to change that out too. They used straw because it would absorb fluids and could be easily emptied out, the straw sent to the compost pile and the casing boil-washed. Indeed, the Healing Court had its own laundry area, where all the aprons, sleeves, sheets, towels, and bandages could be boiled clean and ironed with a hot iron to free them of any miasmas or soil from the last patient.

  Having put a clean sheet on, she gathered up medication cups and put them in a bin for washing, and made sure that everything was ready for a new patient. She would wait until Miros got back, though, because she wasn't ready to treat anyone by herself yet.

  “Very good, Alandra,” he said, returning and casting an experienced eye over the treatment cubicle. “We're all ready for the next one. Do you need the privy? Now's the time.”

  She nodded. “We might not have time later, I know.”

  When she returned, she washed her hands with the spirits of wine, and held them up to dry. She had washed with soap and water, of course, but Healers who touched people needed further assurance. No miasmas could stand up to spirits of wine.

  Milos nodded, and reached out and put up a flag on the doorway, where the person at the front could see it. They were free for the next patient.

  This one was walking on his own, holding a cloth stained with blood to his head, and looking very sheepish.

  “Hit m'self in t'head with hammer on the backswing,” he said with great embarassment.

  Neither Healer laughed at him, but they permitted themselves a smile and a shake of the head when he was gone. People hurt themselves in ways you couldn't even think of!