Caius gave thanks, silently, that Idunnir was such a reasonable person. When he explained what he was trying to learn, she had agreed to help. That had led, eventually, to their current plan.
With a great deal of caution, Caius had made his way back to the tree for more flowers. He didn't want to take too many, there was a chance this was the only place they grew. But three more ought not to make too much of a difference.
He ate another flower and found that, as intended, his strange vision became even more detailed. And then realized he still couldn't see well enough to actually make the tea. Idunnir couldn't do it, apparently it wouldn't work if she so much as touched it.
That had been a second clue. The third was when Caius examined the herbs with the benefit of his new vision. All featured a dizzying array of colors in subtle shades, like multicolored television static. There were some differences in the overall color palette of the the herbs, but Caius' vision simply wasn't detailed enough to see more.
In the end, Idunnir had to sit behind Caius and help guide his hands. Awkward, but manageable.
The rainbow of color in the herbs was a mess, but something strange happened when he added them to the boiling water. Color seeped out of them in splotches, staining the water with streaks of pastel hues. With each addition, the colors mixed.
Two colors dominated. A pale sky blue and a white that somehow wasn't stained by all the other colors. Oddly, the white looked like it was evaporating? It was definitely misting out of the liquid in all directions.
Meanwhile the rainbow of non-blue colors were slowly merging into threads of pitch black, staining the sky blue to a darker shade. Just looking at that black made Caius feel an urge to wash his hands. But it was another clue, and he felt he already knew where the trail was leading him.
The only thing left to do was examine Idunnir, and what happened when she drank the tea, extremely carefully. And while Caius couldn't see either her or himself as more than general human shapes, it turned out that their clothing did reduce the detail he could see. He discovered that by studying the transition between his bare hand and sleeved arm.
Idunnir, bless her, was understanding about the whole thing. So she was sitting cross-legged and topless, facing away from Caius as he sat behind her and stared at his her back. It was a remarkable sight, if concerning.
Four colors dominated inside her. Red, sky blue and the unsettling black. And, of course, Caius' golden light. The black in particular was all over, darkening the overall color to the blue he had seen from a distance. Sky blue strands and the golden ones spread throughout her body, but even as Caius watched he could see them slowly move towards the center of her torso.
From that spot where the blue and gold converged came thin, almost invisible strands of red. The red moved outwards and made far more complex patterns than the other colors. The overall red structure reminded Caius uncomfortably of models he had seen, ones that depicted the human circulatory system.
Caius felt like a caveman staring at the diagrams in a textbook, in the sense that he barely knew what was going on and what he did know was probably incorrect.
"Alright. Eat the flowers, please." He asked Idunnir. She had been sitting as still as a statue for the whole time, quietly helpful. When she moved to pick up the flowers he had set down in her lap, she took care that her torso continued to stay perfectly still.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The flowers appeared as bright concentrations of orange in Caius' vision, and he could see them straight through Idunnir. It was kind of fascinating to see them deform as he heard her chew them, then slowly move down to her stomach. The orange quickly spread out in all directions, all the way to her extremities.
Caius leaned forward to see as closely as possible, to the point that he was pushing his forehead against her back. He really should have anticipated that and asked her beforehand. Still, it worked.
The orange started to twist in on itself, forming strands that grew until they reached the confluence where the other colors all met. The paths it took were meandering and slow as they detoured around masses of black. Slowly, the confluence seemed to spool up the orange into itself quickly and put out a significantly larger amount of red to spread throughout the body.
"And now the tea." Once again, Idunnir obliged. The tea, still spilling white in all directions, was much brighter than the flowers. All the colors except the blue and white had merged into a small amount of black.
Caius mentally predicted what was about to happen. If he was right, he would be somewhat confident in the assumptions he was making about all this.
Just as he predicted, the mass of color that was the tea practically detonated once it hit Idunnir's stomach. It rushed throughout her body, sending the delicate masses of color into disarray. Caius watched with bated breath as order slowly reasserted itself.
Actually, the red had seemed more or less unaffected. But without the confluence, there wasn't more red being formed at the moment. It thinned out slightly. Idunnir, so rock steady a moment before, slumped a bit. Fortunately, it wasn't enough to ruin the level of detail that had slowly built up in Caius' vision.
The first color to resume normalcy was, unfortunately, the black. It seemed more solid than the others, and Caius noticed there were some places in Idunnir's body where the black had accumulated so much that they hadn't been affected by the explosion the tea had caused. Those accumulations actually added detail to the vague human shape. Caius could identify her eyes, lips, tongue and teeth clearly.
He glanced down and saw her fingernails and other, more... private... parts of her anatomy were marked by black as well.
Then black clouds that reminded him of filter-feeding coral began to solidify throughout Idunnir's body. They were everywhere, but especially dense around where the confluence was starting to show.
Blue started to form into strands, threading its way slowly through the maze of black where it could. Here and there, where enough blue was concentrated, it seemed to force small openings. Finally it reached the confluence and red started to be produced again, Idunnir straightening up and resuming her perfectly solid pose from before.
Last of all the golden light followed blue's example. It seemed much less affected by the black, pushing through where necessary. As it joined the confluence, the levels of red rose back to what Caius had observed before the tea. Orange was gone, and there was much more blue all over her body.
At last, Caius thought he knew what was going on. The only question mark left was why the tea was so disruptive. So he asked: "Is this tea made with more herbs than when you first started drinking it?"
"Yes, much more. The first time I had it, they put a pinch of herbs in a teapot."
Caius settled back to think, and Idunnir put her clothes back on.
"Idunnir, can you please explain everything you know about the tea and your condition? You've told me some things, but I think I'm close to figuring this out."
She froze halfway through pulling her tunic over her head. When she unfroze, she finished and sat thinking for a very long time. "There's... something else I'll need to tell you first. I've never told anyone before... but I know for a fact I can trust you."
That had Caius raising his eyebrows. "You can, but how are you so confident? We haven't known each other a week."
Idunnir let out a sad chuckle. "Well, that's part of the secret. Just give me some time to... get all my sheep penned. I'll make dinner since you'll probably ruin it with your sight like that."
Caius identified that bit about sheep as an idiom meaning to get things organized. Similar to the phrase: "get my ducks in a row" He told her to take all the time she needed.