I'm back! This chapter marks the third time I've struggled through writing a complete chapter, just to have a better idea as soon as I finish it. Hopefully, the wait was worth it for all my faithful readers! Rosethorn is certainly a lot more fun to write than some of the other teachers.

Thanks go out in this chapter to BookFreak976 for their wonderful comment. The continued reviews and favorites I've received fill me with warm, glowy feelings. Over 230 hits guys! Wow!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything more than the works on my flash drive.

Timeline: This takes place about midway through Daja's Book, when the smoke from the grassfires is affecting Tris.

Rosethorn-Tris Cough Drop

'Lark and Rosethorn were good friends, and Briar loved his teacher, but Tris couldn't begin to guess why. Was this the face of Rosethorn that Lark and Briar saw, when no one else was looking?' –Tris, Tris's Book

Lark had always wanted children, the Green Man alone knew why, but she liked them. Rosethorn was glad their situation prevented having any. She was no good for kids; that much was obvious.

So when Tris trailed Rosethorn up to her room at Gold Ridge, dragged by the wrist, neither of them was happy with it. The sounds of coughing pursued the girl, echoing in the stairwell. "I'm fine!" she insisted between coughs, red-faced with embarrassment.

"Of course," she said dryly, "You're so fine you've nearly lost your voice."

Her face got, if possible, redder. Tris tried unsuccessfully to tug her hand out of Rosethorn's grip. "I don't need your help!"

Rosethorn stopped walking then and looked her in the eye. The girl swallowed and looked away first. Her free hand played with the gauze scarf Lark had given her to fight the smoke. Mila, Rosethorn wasn't cut out for this.

Tris looked at her feet as Rosethorn searched through the stock of medicines she'd brought from Winding Circle. Rosethorn let the girl stew as she thought. As a rule the dedicate avoided Tris. It had nothing to do with her magic. Tris was Rosethorn, without a Lark to soften her words. Even Rosethorn acknowledged that two of her was too many. Rosethorn had chosen her name with care; it was a warning. She went around pricking people too easily to be in charge of a house of children.

Besides, if her home life had been sufficiently bad that Niko saw fit to warn her to be gentle, then Rosethorn figured she should talk to the girl as little as possible.

Lark had told her that Tris had finally unpacked her suitcases shortly after the pirate attack, after stalling through introductions and lessons and earthquakes. Rosethorn was glad; no one should have to live as a guest in Discipline Cottage.

As Rosethorn found the right tonic the girl's bird sailed through the window and settled on her shoulder. Tris yelped as he pecked her and tried to fend off his beak. "Drink this." Tris didn't fight the cup that was thrust into her hand.

She also didn't drink it. Instead, the child looked at her tonic as if it might bite her.

"I didn't make it to sit in your hand." Rosethorn said testily. The grassfires on the plains were itching her magic. It made her already short temper fray all the more.

Tris squinted up at her, the same way she had watched months ago when Rosethorn had explained bird care to her. Her hair was cropped nearly to her ears. Cut short as it was, she might have been mistaken for Rosethorn's daughter.

Rosethorn didn't know what to think about that. "I don't see you drinking," she prodded instead. That was all a rose thorn could do, prod and poke and prick, until she pushed everyone away.

Shockingly Tris put it to her lips and drank, then promptly screwed up her face. Rosethorn smiled crookedly and poured her a cup of water to wash away the taste. She fiddled with the cup then, not meeting her eyes. "What is it girl? I don't have all day."

"I saw some medicine like that at a marketplace once," she said quietly, "It was worth a silver astrel."

Ah. The Chandlers' coin-pinching habits. Lark was turning positively tetchy on the subject of Tris's family, and Tris's old place in it. Lark got territorial about her charges. But Tris was looking at the vial like it was proof of something. Money talked to merchant families. Rosethorn had a good idea of what it was saying to Trisana Chandler.

"I'm sure it was overpriced." Rosethorn said gruffly. "Besides that, I made it. It didn't cost me anything."

Tris swallowed again. "Right."

Rosethorn busied herself with her mage-kit, not looking at the girl in her ill-fitting dresses, awkwardly bereft without her magic. "There's no need for you to be sick. I brew medicines, for Green Man's sake. If your cough doesn't go away by tomorrow you'll come back up here and I'll give you another dose. Is that understood?"

The girl nodded, still blank. Rosethorn shooed her out then, before either of them said something completely maudlin. But later, when Rosethorn caught Tris looking at her and blushing as she cut aloe leaves, she thought she might have won something.

She would leave it at that then, until the next time Tris needed her. In the meantime, she had a boy to torment.

Maybe, just maybe, this child-rearing thing wasn't so hard as she'd thought.

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