Herbalism and Omens

Woah hey, chapter three already? Thanks to everyone who followed and favorited; Four Letter Lie has been up only a week and we already have almost 200 views! I hate to be that guy but leave a review or PM me letting me know if you liked it, every review helps!

I have a bad habit of starting something and not finishing it, but I'm very excited about Four Letter Lie and I have big big plans for it, so bear with me through my writer's block moments and I promise I'll keep updating pretty regularly for ya'll!

The prison was oddly serene in the early morning hours, with only the small sounds of sleeping people breaking the quiet. Andy awoke by the faint beeping of her watch, the face telling her it was close to 6AM, almost an hour before she had to meet with Herschel in the courtyard. She carefully lifted the covers and slid out of bed, replacing the blankets over the sleeping bodies of her nieces before sitting down on the floor to do her morning stretches, feeling her spine pop in several different places as she twisted her body this way and that to relieve the stiffness from her joints and muscles.

Andy pulled on the black jeans with the rips in the knees (the only pants she owned, to be completely honest) and a hooded vest over a plain once dark black tee shirt that had faded into a sort of dark gray over the time Andy had been wearing it. She laced up her boots and grabbed the messenger bag she used on her hunts, making sure her knives, a bottle of water and a few protein bars were tossed inside before grabbing her bow and quiver.

She made it into the courtyard with enough time to do two quick laps around the field before Herschel stepped out of the prison, his own rucksack strapped across his chest. The veterinarian greeted Andy with a friendly smile and a wave of his hand, making his way over to where the woman stood at the awning. Andy felt a tingle of excitement in her belly, as if she had eaten a hive of bees for breakfast instead of one of the protein bars from her cell.

"Mornin'." She greeted, grasping the lower limb of her bow nervously, feeling the familiar pressure of the string across her chest.

"Good morning." Herschel returned, walking passed her and down the gravel path toward the main gate. Andy was surprised at how quickly he could walk despite his limp and had to jog to catch up with him.

"I have a few things I need you to help me with." He began, greeting Maggie with a hug when the pair reached the gate. Maggie and Carol lifted the ropes to the main gate just enough for Herschel and Andy to squeeze through, Maggie's call of 'Be careful!' and her wave the last thing they saw before they disappeared into the forest surrounding the Prison.

"I've got a little boy with a stomach ache, a teenager with a fever and swelling in his leg from a cut he got trying to hop a fence and one of the newer members has ringworm. I need something for each of these patients for their ailments. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of many modern medicines at the moment, so we'll have to use your knowledge of herbs instead." Herschel said, turning to Andy with an expectant look on his face. Andy racked her brain a moment, hundreds of remedies flicking passed her eyes in an instant.

"I know for a fact that Angelica can be made into a tonic for stomach aches, and the root can be powdered to create a poultice for swelling since it has anti-bacterial properties..." Andy continued to rack her brain for more herbs, grasping a small bundle of arrows and holding her bow at the ready as she walked deeper into the woods, her mind set on finding a water source where she knew Angelica grew.

"Why Angelica?" Herschel asked, matching Andy's quick pace easily. "Why not Aletris?" Andy stopped and listened, raising her nose to sniff the air before turning to her left a bit, following a fresh fox trail down a slight incline in the forest floor.

"Aletris is mostly used for women's menstrual cramps. You shouldn't give it to children because of it's similarities to a narcotic. It also has a property similar to estrogen, so it's better for females to use instead." Herschel nodded his head, seeming to approve of her well educated answer.

"If you're going to use Angelica for the swelling and the stomach ache, what would you use for the fever?"

"Willow bark contains salicin, which is used to reduce fevers." Andy stated, stopping abruptly and looking up. "And this is a black walnut tree; we can use the hulls of the walnuts to create a salve for the ringworm some of our guys have." Andy said, grinning broadly at Herschel. Andy fitted the bow over her head and across her chest, scaling the tree quickly to get to the still green walnuts near the top of the tree.

After filling her satchel with more than enough walnuts, Andy and Herschel kept down the path in search of Angelica and willow bark. Andy felt a prickling at the back of her neck and stopped Herschel, her ears straining to hear passed the bird song and wind rustling through the trees. She could smell the Dud before it came into view, its putrid, rotting stink permeating the air. An arrow lodged itself in its cranium before it even noticed the two, Andy already walking over to retrieve the arrow. Herschel commented on her aim, looking pleasantly surprised she had seen and shot it from where it was behind the tree as soon as it stepped into view.

They found a willow tree at the edge of a shallow irrigation ditch with the Angelica they were also looking for growing in abundance at the base. Andy carefully used her knife to pull up squares of bark while Herschel dug up the Angelica, harvesting its leaves and roots and wrapping the willow bark around the small bundles to keep them from getting crushed or lost.

It was nearing ten o'clock when they came back to the Prison and it was already alive with people walking back and forth either changing shifts or doing their assigned chores. The children were back in the courtyard, three of the girls standing at the fence line and waving to several of the Duds near there. Andy was glad to see Nina and Izzy playing with Brego in the center of the courtyard, waving around their little dolls and playing some sort of game to keep themselves occupied.

Andy followed Herschel to his office, where they laid the roots on the window sill between rags to dry and crushed the hulls of the walnuts and created a fair amount of a salve to coat the ringworm one of the other newbies had. Herschel watched as Andy brewed a tonic out of the Angelica leaves and administered it to the little boy complaining of the stomach ache, Andy brushing his hair out of his eyes with her fingers and telling him a story of how the Milky Way was created. By the end of the day, Andy felt very accomplished, having gotten rid of a sore belly and cleaned up a cut that was very quickly turning infected.

She ended the day with Nina and Izzy climbing all over the bed, excitedly telling their aunt of all the shenanigans they had gotten into while Andy was working. Andy drifted off to sleep listening to Brego huffing at the end of the bed and feeling the heart beats of her nieces, feeling very content and safe for the first time in a very long time.

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It took several weeks, but Andy soon found herself getting used to the fact that it was quiet inside of her new home at night. Of course, there was often the low murmuring of the people living in the cells around hers, and the general shuffle and rustle of people moving around and getting comfortable at night, but for the first time in a very long time, Andy wasn't hearing cicadas buzz or the ever hungry snarl of Duds as they passed by their camp at night. Andy still slept with her gun and knife under her pillow and often shut her cell door at night as a precaution, but she didn't have to worry about falling out of a tree only to be eaten by the undead in the middle of the night.

The best thing about the Prison was the fact that Nina and Izzy were around other kids and could play outside without having to worry about getting lost or mauled.

Carol had approached Andy on her second week as the woman was sitting with her nieces eating breakfast, watching as they carefully copied their letters into a notebook she had Sasha and her group bring back on one of their most recent supply runs, as Andy wasn't quite ready to go on them yet. Andy looked up at the woman, taking in her short salt-and-pepper hair and kind smile. She shifted in her seat a bit and resisted the urge to get up and walk away.

"Mornin'." Andy greeted, lifting her hand to shield the bright morning light from her eyes.

"Good morning." Carol returned. "Do you mind if I sit?"

Andy shook her head and waved her arm invitingly.

"Not at all, go ahead." Carol, still smiling, dipped her head and sat down across from Andy at the very edge of the bench.

"I was just wondering if it would be alright with you if Nina and Izzy joined Story Time later today?" she asked. Andy blinked a few times.

"What's that?"

"Oh! I'm sorry, I thought you knew about it. Story Time is from twelve to three every day in the library. We read a few chapters from a book that the children picked out, and we teach them survival skills as well as reading, writing and math. It's like school, but we find that calling it Story Time gets the kids more involved."

Andy considered the offer a moment. It would be nice if they could get more involved, and hanging out with the other kids at the Prison would be beneficial to their growth and development.

"What kind of survival skills?" Andy asked carefully, giving Carol a look that plainly stated that she didn't want to be told a lie or a partial truth.

"Well," She began, rubbing her hands together. "I teach them how to hold knives, about gun safety. How important it is to be on guard at all times, even within the walls."

Andy nodded her head, mulling over the idea inside of her mind and debating all of the pros and cons of the situation. The con would be the fact that Nina and Izzy would he handling weapons at their extremely young age, but the pro would be that they would be able to handle themselves at an even earlier age should the need ever come. Andy herself had learned to hunt and use a bow at a very early age as well, knowing how to take town and properly gut deer and elk by the time she was ten.

"Well, it would be great if they could learn how to handle themselves in a controlled environment..." she said, thinking out loud. "Yeah, I think we can do that."

Carol smiled excitedly, as if she were expecting Andy to immediately refuse.

"Excellent! Do you want to sit in with us today?" She suggested. Andy looked to her nieces, who were now doodling in the margins of their notebooks instead of writing their letters.

"No, I trust you."

Those words alone meant more to Andy than Carol would ever know, so Andy soon found herself with an afternoon to her own devices.

After Andy's first week, Rick had initially put her on gate duty (when she wasn't helping out Herschel or Doctor S) where she and several other survivors used long canes and crowbars that had been sharpened at one end to help manage all of the Duds (Walkers, the people here called them.) that always managed to swarm at the fences.

Today, however, Andy helped in another way.

She heard the roar of Daryl's motorcycle and a rumble of car engines before she saw then rush up to the gates. Even from a courtyard away Andy could see the stricken look on Daryl's face as he yelled at Maggie and Glenn to open the gates.

"Get Herschel!" he shouted, parking his bike at the second gate leading into the courtyard and ripping it open. A green Hyundai pulled up behind him so quickly it skidded over the gravel driveway and almost slammed into the back of Daryl's bike. A short moment later, the driver got out and tossed open the back door and with the help of Daryl, pulled out a young man from the back seat. He was screaming in agony as the pair helped him inside of the fence, someone rushing inside of the Prison to get Herschel but Andy was already halfway there, streaking across the field in a long legged stride.

She dropped to her knees next to the boy, seeing a long arrow protruding from his shoulder.

"What happened?" she asked, tugging off the boy's jacket and pulling her knife from its sheathe, beginning to cut off his shirt to better see the wound.

"Got attacked by another group of survivors out there. They shot at us and one of them stabbed him with their arrow on our way out." Sasha explained quickly. Andy hushed the boy (Whom she remembered being called Nathan,) and looked at the arrow, seeing that it was embedded where his shoulder met his collar bone, but hadn't gone all the way through to the other side yet.

"It hasn't come out the other side yet, and I don't know what kind of tip it has. We have to push it through first so I can get it out." Nathan's eyes snapped to Andy, his face going even paler than it already was.

"Are you crazy? Just take it out!" he shrilled.

"If the arrow has a serrated tip, or if it's a broadhead, it's going to seriously fuck up your arm." she stated, grabbing a bundle of clean rags from someone that thrust them at her.

"What do you mean?" Nathan's voice was weak and shaky, scared more than anything by what Andy was implying.

"If I just rip it out, it'll rip out your muscle and tendons too. If that happens, you'll either lose the use of your arm or you'll start bleeding and I won't be able to stop it. We have to push it through." Andy turned to the person standing nearest to her.

"Help me get him to the tables. I need more towels, a lighter, bolt or wire cutters, water, salt, and something to use to stitch his wounds closed when we get this thing out of him."

With the help of Daryl, Andy was able to lift Nathan from the ground and get him seated on the table, sitting him up straight and shoving a folded piece of rang in his mouth, directing him to bite down on it.

"Nathan, I need you to listen to me." Andy said calmly. "I'm going to push the arrow through your shoulder on the count of three. On 'one' you're going to breathe in, and on 'three' you're going to breathe out as hard and as fast as you can, okay? Can you do that for me?" Nathan nodded his head weakly, sweat already beading across his face and upper lip, making his hair stick to his forehead.

"Okay, Nathan, you ready?" Nathan nodded his head, shallowly breathing in and out.

"One,"

Nathan sucked in a large lungful of air and held it.

"Two," Nathan exhaled a bit but remained somewhat calm, his head facing away from Andy's intense gaze.

"Three!"

Just as Andy instructed, Nathan let out his breath of hair quickly, expelling it in a violent woosh as Andy threw her entire upper body against the arrow, feeling it push further through his shoulder and exit the other side with a sickening pop. While Nathan did his best not to scream, it didn't stop his body from falling forward and his head to loll as he almost passed out from pain.

"You're doing great, Nathan, you're being so good." Andy cooed, brushing Nathan's hair from his eyes. She then took a pair of bolt cutters from Maggie's hands and clipped the end of the arrow off just below the fletching, grunting in annoyance when the fiberglass shaft splintered at that end. She used the lighter to melt the end back together, pinching it so that the edge wouldn't splinter and break of in Nathan's shoulder when she pulled it the rest of the way through.

When the arrow was removed from Nathan's shoulder, she made a saline solution and gently poured it over the wound to clean it before she began stitching it back up, applying a salve she made out of the Angelica root to keep away infection, bandaging it up and allowing Daryl and Tyreese to take him back to his cell to rest.

Andy sat down heavily on the bench, feeling her arms shake with the adrenaline rush. Her hands were coated in Nathan's blood, and she could already feel it begin to pull and stick from where it was beginning to dry on her skin. If she didn't wash it off soon, her hands would no doubt be stained a pinkish-red for the rest of the week. Andy hated to admit it, but if felt good to help someone with a large wound like that again. Even in the midst of an apocalypse, she didn't actually get to use her medical knowledge very often, especially since she had been mostly alone for a large part of it.

As she watched the blood dry on her hands, she couldn't help but to think that Nathan was just an omen of things to come.