Nikola. Was. OUT.

The sights and sounds of the world around her were gone, replaced with a sea of blackness that stretched on forever.

As an NPC, she remembered having slept before, but never in any detail. It was a monotonous chore, uninspiring and plain in every way. But this time, the sleep had crept up on her, consuming her even though she wasn't ready for it.

Every single time before this time and the time in her own basement, sleep had been a practiced event, happening at the same time each night. She would finish cleaning her kitchen of the soot and wheat from bread making, head to the living room where she and her father would mull over which book to read, and then they would read it. Then, they would part ways and she would go to sleep in her room. She was too old to be tucked in now, but that had been a component in their nights long ago.

This time, the sleep felt familiar, but the semi-consciousness was new. Every once in a while, the chariot would rock from side to side too heartily and her mind would flicker to life. But after a quick check that no monsters were upon them, sleep reached out and pulled her back in.

Her body was clearly in need of it, so she allowed it - as if she had a choice in the first place.

. . .

By the time she woke up, the sun was just settling down for its own sleep. The sky was painted with neon oranges and pinks, and the blue-eyed girl's eyelids fluttered open, some of the orange-tinted warmth shining in her face.

She had been asleep for hours, if the position of the sun had anything to say about it. Nikola scanned the carriage groggily, readjusting herself in her seat and rubbing her eyeballs of the dryness they had accumulated.

The red-haired girl was still in the position she'd left her in, completely unmoved except for maybe some shifting from the bumps in the road. She always looked like she was either asleep or on the way there, and at the moment it was more of a fully asleep situation.

Luke, however, had an array of peculiar items strewn about the carriage floor, and some of them were even on her. Had he reduced her to some mere storage solution in her sleep? "What are you doing?"

Luke started at the sound of her voice, whatever was in his hands tumbling from them and thudding to the floor.

"Nikola! Fuck, you scared me." He leaned down and picked up what he had dropped.

Luke breathed a deep breath in and gestured towards the thing in his hands. It was a beaker-like container of fluid with a cork in it. The fluid was red and watery, with a faint glow to it. "I thought you might be waking up soon, so I got you a potion."

He held it out to her.

She reached out and hesitantly plucked it from his fingers with her own, turning it around in her hands. "A potion. These are for the ruling class, are they not?"

"Well, yes, I guess - the ruling class and adventurers, which you are now that you've gone through character creation."

One of the people in her village - Miss Tarnibou - worked painstakingly to brew the potions that were then shipped off in carriages to the more central cities in her area. They required many, many armfuls of local herbs that she would bend down and pick with her own two hands, only to get a pitiful amount of product when she boiled them down. She prided herself on the potency of her brews, boasting that she never watered hers down or added any filler. As Nikola turned the potion in her hands, it didn't have the syrupy quality that Miss Tarnibou's did when they sloshed within their containers. This one was watered down.

Even this diluted version was considered a controlled substance in her area, and not even the potion maker herself was allowed to distribute it; she had the license to create, but not to sell. How had Luke gotten his hands on one, when they were only commercially available for several silvers each?

"Drink some," he urged, his eyes traveling down to her knee.

"You drink some first," she returned, holding the bottle back out towards him.

"What, do you think I'm trying to assassinate you? Nikola, you just spent hours unconscious next to me. I'm not poisoning you, I'm trying to help you."

Still, he took the beaker-like container and popped the top off, taking a swig of the berry-coloured drink.

Nikola took it back and lidded it, waiting for the potential poison to sink in. Poison had never really been her thing, though... she had always preferred the more direct method of shanking peeps. After a minute, she became impatient and drank the potion anyway. For something that was considered too good for the people of her village, it tasted awful on the way down. It had the flavour of leaves that had been cooked too long, and a medicinal herbiness even in this version that seemed to be mostly water.

But the pain in her leg drained away instantly, perhaps even sooner than the brew hit her stomach. Miraculously and magically, her wounds glowed the same pinkish red that the potion did and her flesh knitted itself together. She gasped aloud and the beaker fell from her fingertips, rolling into Luke, as she poked the newly healed area with an abundance of caution. What the actual heck? What even was this sorcery?

Nikola had known for her entire life that she was living in a mundane world while those who used magic and went on adventures were mere cities away. But they had had access to this all along? She had never considered that they had access to this fluid that could make pain optional.

She had mixed up her own smaller, less effective poultices that healed her injuries overnight before, but the potion she held in her hands was downright magical.

"This... this is what magic tastes like?"

Luke chuckled and stuffed the empty beaker away in his pack. "No, that's what a Minor Health Potion tastes like."

"A Minor Health Potion," she repeated, baffled, "does that mean there are other kinds of potions?"

"Of course. Medium Health Potions, Major Health Potions, Minor Mana Potions, Medium Mana Potions, Major Mana Potions, status effect potions..."

"And why are these controlled? I can think of a great many uses for these for my people as well," she decided bitterly.

Luke blinked a couple times and raised a hand up to stroke his chin. "Uhhh... I assume it's because your village isn't considered a central one, and because you're all mostly human. I know your father kept you pretty sheltered, but humans aren't looked upon so fondly in this world."

Nikola reached up and touched the shell of her ear, thumbing it. "Why not?"

"That's a very long story, and I'm not sure we have the time for idle chatter right now," he delivered with a cheeky grin.

"We have time for idle chatter," Nikola decided. "We are in a carriage with nowhere else to go. I would deem this exactly the right time for idle chatter."

"Alright," Luke responded. He shuffled a few of his things back into his backpack; it appeared that he had been sorting it while she was snoozing. He sheepishly plucked the couple things he had put on Nikola's lap away from her.

"Then tell me why she's here."

Luke pointed to the girl taking up the entire other side of the carriage.