One More Step

They bought a few snacks and watched more performances and when their bags went empty the choose to stop.

They entered the medicine hall and healer Ling smiled at them. 'Tiered?"

The girls nodded. "It was fun, but tiring as there are so many people. How was your day?"

"Eventful..." She snickered mischievously as she saw their confused eyes.

''Well, I sort of sold all that oil you two gave me." She felt so exhilarated.

The girls were of course happy.

"Now let's recount everything. First your glass jars. I emptied them until the last drop and then made a solution if water and alcohol. A long time ago I found out it can prevent the smell to escape. So after I mixed it a bit in hard the solution smelled amazing."

Kyra nodded. "If you put that in sealed containers it can be used on the body like personal fragrance."

Healer Ling nodded. "Yes. When I was about to try different kinds of mixes young lady came in and was amazed by all those fragrances. I explained to her what I plan to do and she told me she will pay for that idea. She will produce and sell that and send me the percentage of the sale. I told her I will think about it. She bought all the flower essence and told me to let her know."

The girls were shocked. "We just produced the essence. The idea of body fragrance is yours. Do the selling idea should not be bad. You will earn quite a sum and not do much."

Anna laughed as she heard Kyra's words. This girl just pushed all if it on healer Ling.

But the woman was not fooled. She pinched Kyra's cheeks a bit. "You think I don't know your little head? Always trying to hide when there is something big? Don't worry, I will make it that everything goes over me. The percentage we can share. But the essences..."

Kyra rubbed her cheek a bit and chuckled while a little crafty smile appears on her face. "Wanna know?"

Anna poked her arm. "Stop being naughty."

Healer Ling smiled. " Yes, I do wish to know. Let's make a deal. You tell me how you do it and I will pay you half of what I earn of that."

The girls looked at each other and then turned towards the glass jars.

When they slowly explained everything to healer Ling she held her head and just chuckled.

"There is more. You don't need to use just those flowers. You can try anything that smells nice and see can you extract the essence out of that. Flowers, fruits, earth, stones, wood thongs you can find in nature. After infusing them with the power of the sun it can turn into such an amazing thing." Kyra started counting on her fingers and explaining everything.

"Everything can be tested... This is big. I can try unusual objects by myself but the flowers I can make." She tapped her chin while thinking about it.

Anna winked at Kyra. "Actually we think that fruit flowers smell amazing as well. Then there are many flowers around that could be used as well. It doesn't have to be a wildflower essence."

Healer Ling understood. A huge smile appeared on her face and she patted their heads. "Indeed. These two small heads really have so many ideas."

The girls giggled and made deal with her for the future.

On end it came out she sold the things for an amazing sum of fifty big silver coins. This is something they didn't expect.

They took the big coins and just held them in amazement. 'Why so much?"

Healer Ling smiled at them. "Such rate thing, you think I would sell for a few silver stones? I wanted more but thinking that this could be my constant costumer I choose to lower the price under her urging. Later there will be more to come."

The girls felt a little anxious and she could see it. "Don't worry about those things. I will not tell anyone about your involvement. if nothing else I will leak that the two of you just sell some wild herbs to me from time to time. Like that no one would wander too much."

They sighed in relief after hearing her words.

"Thank you, really.. ."

After that, they said their goodbyes and left the medicine hall while smiling brightly. This time Kyra had an idea to make small sash like a bag and let each of them carry it under the clothes on their waists. No one would take notice of such thing as they had their little bags with some copper coins around their neck.

They slowly walked through the crowd towards the restaurant and in relief could see Chen's carriage parked not far from it.

When they went in Chen already sat down to eat and just smiled at them when they arrived.

"Do you girls plan to buy some things?"

They thought about it while they ate.

Anna was the one that usually had the feeling that they didn't have enough in their pantries.

"To buy more flour, corn, wheat, then oils seasonings? Some dried meat? "

Kyra understood her meaning and nodded. "Its never too much. Now it's almost evening. We can buy some meat as well and put it in a cool room for later use. Like that we don't have to kill our chickens. Chen is there something we forgot?"

He ate and then nodded. "Salt, sugar, soy source, and stuff like that."

Kyra ate to fill and just drunk some eater on end. "Then let's do that. I asked them to prepare more of these foods so we can take them home. No time to prepare dinner."

Chen just nodded and stood up. "Then let's go. We need to arrive on time if we want to gather the greens."

"Soon we will stop. In a couple of days, they will stop being nutritious. " Kyra could taste the change in the greens.

Chen just nodded.

They explained it to the restaurant owners and told them that it is almost out of the season. As they got a big bag of money that Chen stuffed on his body they got pinched by the two elders.

"Don't dare to forget us and visit us when you are in the city. Understood?"

The girls felt the warmth spread through their hearts. "We definitely will. For a while, we won't be coming down. Maybe at the next festival. Now we have to take care of our land and..."

The two older people just patted their hands. "We understand. But in case, just in case the two of you ever need anything, please font be stubborn and come to us."

The girls just smiled and bowed to them.

The two shook their heads while looking at the carriage trying to get through the crowd and sighed. "They just don't take even that much because of their pride. What is that about?"

On the carriage, girls had another conversation with Chen. ''We soon plan to explore bit our woods. But we will need your assistance in our household matters."

"There are no dangerous animals but be careful of deep holes, caves and slopes while walking." He knew that there was no big danger there but walking trough unknown territory was something that not many people could handle.

"We know. We need to find more herbs as that us our next way of earning money. Finding it will take us some time. We will pay you to take care of watering plants and feeding animals."

They had a clear plan.

He nodded. "Soon I will be finished with my task. I can come to your home in the morning and evening. Anything else needs to be done?"

Girls were thinking about it. ''Not much actually.''

the girls bought this time almost full car of all kinds of ingredients. They looked at their full carriage and the horse and sighed.

''Uncle Chen. This time lets buy you two more horses. Find those that have a good attitude and are easy to handle. We can use them to pull such a heavy weight and later on when we go to forest we can take them with us. Its easier than your horse pulling all this stuff alone. We feel sorry for him.''

He patted his horse and just nodded. ''I will take you to horse dealer and get you a good price. Can you trust me with that?''

He got them to the butcher's place and took his horse to go and buy two more.

Because they knew that they won't come back for a while they bought the best parts of the meat he had. Beef, bones, nice lean pig meat, he even killed few chickens and cleaned them completely. He even had a huge turkey that they ask him to clean as well. They bought again a bunch of bacon, sausages and a big pot of pig lard. Even tho they bought few pots of oil, some things just taste better with lard.

As they waited for all the meat to be done Chen came back with two horses. the girls loved the horses from start on.

''Ahhhh. so cuteeeee.''

One was a red mare with a huge star on her forehead and the other was completely white with a long shiny mane.

Without hesitating each girl rushed to one of the horses. Anna chose the white horse while Kyra chose the red one.

Actually, when Chen bought horses he thought that Anna would like redone and Kyra white one, but as it seems it was another way around. He shrugged, at least they like them.

And it seems horses liked them as well. The red one got the name of course Red Star and the white one was called Snowball. Chen rolled his eyes.

He put the gear on the horses and let his horse follow behind. The reasons why he accepted that girls by horses are actually many.

One of main reasons are that girls, in case he is not around, have some kind of transportation. In case of emergency and way to escape and in case him not have time way to anywhere they want.

Lately, he is getting more tasks. So after they come back this time from forest, he will have to leave for a while. So he will ask his commander to give him a few days off to take care of the girls property when they are not around.

In case some stupid people get some dumb ideas...