They were processing the big bags of herbs they brought back for most of the night and the morning of the next day. Alice fell asleep with her face on a couple of hareroot leaves halfway into the night and was carried to a bed.

Unlike most other days, she woke up around noon. She was worn out from all the physical and emotional stress of the expedition and from trying to stay awake for longer than her circadian rhythm allowed. Alice rose from the bed and looked around. Finding her clothes she made herself presentable before stepping out of her bedroom.

The ratio of people to houses in Willow Hill was almost one to one. Back in Mirfield Alice heard some strange rumor about the Hero renovating and disintegrating houses to make empty lots, but in fact, he was teleporting the houses to build a village here in the dragon valley. It was mind-boggling for the girl how he could do all those things. She was pressing herself to shove all those absurdities into the 'because he's a Hero' drawer of her mind, but curiosity wouldn't let her.

Her right cheek was feeling funny since her awakening. She touched the cheek and found a wide strip of skin softer than the rest of her face or the other cheek. She opened the door and the familiar scent of herbs invaded her nose. Alvus was in the living room converted into a workshop wearing leather gloves dyed green from the herbal juices.

"Good morning, master." She greeted her mentor.

"Good afternoon, young lady." He turned on the stool he was sitting on and smiled at the girl. "Did you sleep well? Don't push yourself that much. You end up losing more than you gain if you overdo it."

"Thank you for your kind words, Master. I'll keep my limits in mind, but I'm afraid I was too excited yesterday to sleep. I mean, so many things happened!"

Alvus laughed and snorted a little. It had a fatherly tone that did not escape Alice's detection. She thanked her luck once more. Most of the town inhabitants are villagers and farmers, barely scraping enough to survive. Orphans usually don't fare well unless they are adopted by someone. While some strong orphan boys can find someone to trade their physical labor for a roof and some grub to eat, the fate of orphan girls usually is even less fortunate. The only places that take in orphan girls are way less reputable than a craftsman or farmer's household. Only very wealthy merchants or nobles can afford to have a maid or servants. And they have people with a better social standing than some dirty street urchin to pick from.

"But I am ready for work," She said unconsciously caressing her right cheek, "so tell me what I should be doing."

"Alice, is there something wrong with your cheek?"

"I don't think so, master. It is just unusually soft."

"Can I take a look?"

"Of course, master."

Another thing Alice was thankful for was the decency of her master. It was rare but not unheard of that a few male masters would solicit services from their female apprentices unrelated to their own trade and of a more physical nature. In these two seasons, she was under his care, Alvus never touched Alice without a very good professional reason. Although she missed the meager skinship her parents gave her, she got used to it.

She moved forward and presented her cheek for him. Alvus took off his work gloves and looked closely before poking, pinching and sliding a finger on her cheep.

"The other side, please."

Alice turned her head on the other side and presented the left cheek this time. After the same procedure, Alvus stood up, slid his glove back, and went to the desk she was working at last night.

"Is there something wrong, master?"

"Wrong is not the word I'd use. You slept with your face on the hareroot leaves." he picked up one of the ear-shaped leaves and measured the leaf width. "I think it was the leaf that caused that on your cheek. No, don't be scared, nothing bad will happen. In fact..."

He went to a shelf and took a ceramic mortar and pestle. He cut some hareroot leaves over the mortar and a thick, viscous transparent sap came out of the cut leaves. He put the leaf slices in the mortar with the sap and handed it over to the girl.

"Alice, crush these leaves, then strain them on a pot using a cloth. Wear gloves."

"Yes, master." The girl did as she was told. This was not a new procedure, in fact, it was one of the first tasks she learned. She crushed and strained the leaves, separating the sap and juices from the plant fibers. The liquid went into a metal pot and the fibers were laid over a tanned hide. Usually, they were discarded, but she was unsure of what to do.

The crushed hareroot had a faint but peculiar, sweet, herbal, and wooden scent.

After she processed thirty or so leaves, both pot and hide were full of hareroot. She let her master know her job was done and he came to inspect.

"Put the still lid on the pot and set it on the oil separator kettle right by the stove. And then put a glass bottle to collect both the plant waters and the oil."

She skipped a breath. It was the first time she was using that equipment, but she had seen her master do it several times. The oil separator kettle was a strange kettle with two beaks and one neck at the center, one long and tall coming out of the bottom and another short and straight coming out of the top. The neck had a funnel where the beak of the copper still lid would drip down the boiled sap.

"Yes, master, I'll do it, but it is my first time. Can you check everything after I assemble to see if it was done right?"

"Of course. But calm down. Fiddling with precision equipment requires steady hands. Maybe I'll ask Marcy to teach you a little archery so you learn to control them. And remember, it is okay to mess up if you have someone overseeing you. If you make a mistake doing what I told you it will be my fault. Now go and do your best."

Again that fatherly smile. Alice smiled back, bowed and went to assemble the still for the essential oil extraction. She placed the pot with the sap on the stove, checked the firewood underneath, placed the still lid on the pot before it got too hot to handle, turned the lid until it was right above the funnel of the kettle and placed two clean ceramic bottles under both beaks of the kettle. now all she had to do was watch the sap drip from the copper beak.

"Alice, you should fill the kettle with clean spring water before assembling everything," Alvus lightly scolded her. "This is the reason we turn the lid beak until it is over the kettle because the kettle is already filled with water. Hurry!"

The girl trembled and remembered that indeed when Alvus used the kettle, it was full of water. She went to the pantry and returned with a ceramic jug labeled 'pure spring water'. It was no mere spring water but water harvested from magic-rich springs by adventurers. Each jug of water costs one silver coin, the price paid to adventurers as a bounty to collect these waters far from the town.

She looked at the still assembly and wondered how should she pour the water. The lid's beak was covering the funnel. And the jug was too heavy for her girly arms. It was at times like this that she wished she was born a boy. This world was unfair to girls, she cursed in her heart.

"Master, what should I do?"

"Set the jug on the floor out of the way, then turn the copper lid away from the beak, take the ceramic bottles away from the kettle, pour the water slowly until some water drips from the tall beak. Then you set the jug away again and put everything back in place. And Alice,"

"What, master?" She was about to break in cold sweat already.

"Do it slowly. Breathe. Don't burn yourself on the stove because you rushed things." She picked up the jug and Alvus mumbled, "And I should commission the goblins to craft me smaller jugs fit for Alice's arm strength."

Alice did as her master told her, and he kept watching her. After she finished doing everything, Alvus gave his approval.

"It will take some time for the sap to boil. Get another pot and prepare another batch of hareroot leaves."

"Yes, master." She returned to the workstation to cut more leaves. "Thank you, master," she whispered to herself.

Halfway through the process, Helen showed up to see what was going on, and both girls talked a lot about herbs. Alice found out that Helen really loved plants and even had a special magic to make plants grow faster.

"We can press the plant fibers for more sap and oils using earth magic," the mage told Alice. "If you want, I can teach you. Now that you learned healing magic, it is not hard to learn elemental magic."

Alice's eyes shone for a brief moment, but then her mood wilted, "I'm sorry, miss Helen. I am already an apprentice to Alvus, I cannot take another master."

Helen laughed and smiled at the girl. "No, no. Just join me on my daily practice session later today. Just a couple hours. I'll teach you some chants and motions, you try them like you were playing pretend."

She searched for her master and found him right by his own workstation. Alvus was watching the exchange in silence with a poker face. She looked at him with puppy eyes and the apothecary just smiled and nodded.

"Yes, yes. It will be my honor to join miss Helen in her training. Thank you! But... doesn't it take years to learn magic?"

"Not when you are in Grendel's party. I bet you will unlock the apprentice magician job today, or even learn some elemental school."

In Alice's mind, a revolution happened. The 'because he's a Hero' drawer opened and sucked everything inside, leaving the girl's mind blank. She laughed and cried at the same time as everything that she experienced in the last few days were processed and archived in that drawer. The intensity of these experiences was overshadowing the bland and repetitive days of her previous life as a poor farmer's daughter. It felt like a dream that she was about to wake up from but at the same time she wished for it to last forever.

Helen hugged Alice and buried the girl's face on her chest. "Cry everything out. Empty your chest, and don't worry. Last summer I was exactly where you are now. I also cried a lot at the insanity of the things I experienced. I was out camping in the beginner forest with my friends, a B-rank monster crashed the camp out of nowhere, I was ditched by everyone. The monster not only did not hurt me but also saved me from starving wolves that came to check on the commotion. We were hunted, he almost died, I was imprisoned, he fled into the deep woods and when I stopped crying everything out I realized I was in love with him. It has been like a mountain avalanche since then. It is so good to have you here, Alice. And you have a really soft cheek, did anyone told you that already?"

After a few minutes and several pinches on her right cheek, Alice stopped and gently pushed Helen's hand aside.

"It is the hareroot. We suspect it can soften the skin."

Helen was about to say something but Alvus spoke first.

"I am sorry to interrupt you girls but Alice, it is time to check on the still again."

Alice jerked herself out of Helen's embrace and dashed for the still with her customary "Yes, master."

"Don't run!" Alvus' shout made the excited girl halt before she crashed into the stove.

Helen showed her how to squeeze the plant fibers with earth magic. Shape a large rock into a bowl over one of the still pans and make a pinhole at the bottom. Place the fibers inside the bowl and then shape the rock to close up above making something egg-shaped. Then focus on the rock and gradually squeeze the fibers inside without shutting the pinhole. After a while, more and thicker sap flowed down from the pinhole into the pan. Helen kept focusing and squeezing the rock from the top until it became like a thick lid over the pan. Then she would pick up the rock and open it again using magic to dump the fibers on a bucket. The plant fibers were as dry as if they spent two days under the sun and the pan was full of sap.

"Amazing!" Was everything Alice could say.

A couple of hours later Alice was staring at a half-pint of hareroot essential oil and a ten-gallon barrel of hareroot waters.

"Alice, please pinch and poke my cheeks. Don't ask why just do it." The mage made a weird request all of a sudden.

The girl did as she was asked and then another nonsensical request.

"Alice, can you please get me a towel?" Helen asked her. Alice went to her room and brought her own towel. "Hold it for me, please."

And then after casting a couple spells on the hareroot water, the mage just dunked her hands on the barrel and washed her head and her long blonde hairs with the hareroot water. Alice was aghast. Helen reached out for the towel and wrapped her hair with it, using her own handkerchief for the face and neck.

"Feels so good! Wanna try it too, Alice?"

"Ma-maybe later. Is it safe?"

"I don't know," Helen confessed and after a while, facepalmed herself. "I'm acting just like him, aww. I'm beyond helpless already. Alice, it is better if you wait until tomorrow. I am strong and I have a lot of resistance. I checked, the water is not poisonous, but who knows if it won't trigger some reaction."

"Why did you do that?" Was all Alice could think of.

The mage laughed before continuing, "Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up with my head bloated like a balloon. Or bald after this thing makes all my hair fall."

The balloon is a floating monster very common in the southwestern jungles.

"Don't joke like that, miss Helen. You are so pretty, to do such a reckless thing!" Alice chided her.

"I think it will be fine." She replied while wringing her hair.

After the towel was entirely damp she used a spell to remove the excess moisture from both the hair and then a more powerful version to dry the towel entirely. Helen folded the towel carefully and handed it over to Alice. The towel had the same faint and nice scent of hareroot and was awfully soft. She had touched silk only once in her entire life, but the linen towel right now was fluffy and soft like silk.

"The towel is so soft..." Alice mused out loud, absorbed with the texture.

"Alice, you are going to be rich." Helen was also musing out loud.

"Why do you say so?" The little girl was dreading the answer.

"Pinch my cheeks again."