Healer Tera's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Tera knelt in the dirt and planted her first seedling, knowing a beast would eat it by morning. She was a healer. Her bark-brown hands knew every herb in Feralhollow, and she dreamed of a garden where all of them grew together, with a safe home beside it for the wounded animals she saved. But her plot was open wild land. Last night, a boar had flattened the row she planted the day before. Hoofprints still marked the mud. She had seedlings and skill, but no cleared, warded ground to keep anything alive. She was pulling the crushed sprout free when a voice cut across the field. "You're planting into a stampede," the woman said. "Those tracks are two days old. There'll be fresh ones tonight." Tera stood. A short, broad-shouldered human crossed the grass toward her, a tool belt slung low on her hips. Axes, blades, and rolled cord filled every loop. A forest harvester, the kind who cleared land for a living. The stranger studied the churned soil, then Tera's muddy hands, and her mouth tugged into a half-smile. "You're the healer," she said. "Folks say you fix things. Looks like you need something cleared instead." "I can't stop the animals," Tera admitted. "Every plant I put down, they trample." "Then don't fight them. Move them." The harvester unhooked a short axe and pressed the handle into Tera's palm. "I'll cut your border and ward it. You give the beasts somewhere better to be." They worked until dark. The harvester swung with practiced ease, and she showed Tera how to grip the blade, where to strike, how to drive a warding stake so the magic held. Tera's arms burned. By dusk, a clean square of earth lay open, ringed with stakes that hummed faint and blue. Nothing wild would cross that line now. "Keep the tools a while," the harvester said, wiping her brow. "Return them when your garden's grown." Then she shouldered her belt and walked back into the trees. Tera did not stop. She raised a greenhouse at the cleared edge, its glass panes catching the last light, ivy already waiting to climb. She carried her surviving seedlings inside, where no hoof could reach them. Then she built the second structure, a tall warded hall with many small rooms, each one meant for a different creature. A place to collect the beasts instead of chasing them off. At dawn she found the problem had already arrived. A cluster of her bright mushrooms lay half-eaten near the greenhouse. A butterfly the size of her hand perched on a torn cap, pink and gold wings shaped like a dragon's. It chewed without fear. Tera crept close and closed her cupped hands around it. The creature thrashed, then went still. Her menagerie had its first resident, and her garden its first thief. She carried it inside, wondering what else her colorful mushrooms would draw out of the woods.