The gate swung shut behind her and disappeared as the spelled latch fell into place, leaving nothing but the shadows gathering around the cairn and under the spindly shrubs to either side. She was out now, a journey begun, an invocation to !Xu on her lips.
From the small pouch at her waist she pulled a stone, rounded and smooth from the riverbed, and laid it reverently atop the cairn. Luck in a journey, she thought, this will be needed. She had cast off her brightly patterned wrap in favor of a dark hide robe the same color as her skin, to better mask her passing through the places the foreigners lived. Although she did not fear them, it would not do to be hindered. She closed her eyes briefly, taking in the sounds of the twilight hour, and asked another blessing on her errand.
Opening her eyes again, she surveyed the path. It would be a steep scramble down some of this hill, and the city of the foreigners was most of a day's walk from here. In the deepening dusk she spotted a cluster of bright red flowers, long tubes sprouting on a long shoot from amid the brush. Her mouth widened into a smile, a glimmering crescent in the dark. Luck was already with her.
A few sure-footed paces down to the place, a quick snap of her wrist, and she had her prize: a thick, fleshy stalk of heal-leaf, half again as long as her hand. Carefully, she covered the broken end with a scrap of hide, and tucked the bundle safely in her pouch. Standing straight and tall, she squared her shoulders against the night and the long miles ahead, and made her way towards the place the foreigners called Kaapstad.
A/N: This may eventually be expanded. It was what came out of my mind with 'aloe', specifically Aloe succotrina or Fynbos aloe, which is native to the Fynbos biome, a small yet highly diverse area surrounding the Cape in South Africa. It occurred to me that the magical community in that region might not have been secretive about its existence until the intrusions of European peoples, and might have succeeded in protecting some of its people from the various depredations of the colonial era. There is much more to be had here, and I'm not entirely certain when it would be best set, although my first impulse was either in between or immediately before the Boer Wars (late 19th - early 20th c.).