The Hakhmir men welcomed the afternoon with a light lunch served directly in the workshop's sitting area. It was par for the course for Koriss. The older man rarely took any meal, other than dinner, outside his beloved workplace.

  The two rabbits had left shortly after the food had arrived—and was kept away from them. They were both obviously bored when the conversation veered from Myrkas' advancement to theoretical alchemy principles. Neither small beasts were fond of such a subject of discussion. The two rabbits much preferred to run around the gardens and pester Serni for plant trimmings and tasty flowers. With young Martine as their de facto accomplice, the two bunny sisters ended up with bursting bellies more often than not. Even stern Marta could not resist the rambunctious trio.

  Myrkas at last freed from his brushing duties, the boy enthusiastically followed his uncle to a familiar workstation. It was where Myrkas usually spent his time in the laboratory. The boy almost dared to say it was now his very own workstation. Almost.

  He would have felt more confident about it if his uncle had explicitly stated so, but a shadow of doubt still lingered in Myrkas' mind every time he came to prepare ingredients. A tremor of unease sprouting from uncertainty. A tremor the boy did not experience this day, as he was so readily welcomed by Koriss.

  The older man had agreed to let him try his hand at brewing, finally. Right after Myrkas processed a bit more Piercing Jade Grass, to the surprise of no one. The man wanted to assess his nephew's technique after nonats of practice. As surmised, Myrkas' improving quality of prepared reagents was not enough to convince Koriss of his dutiful process. The man needed to see for himself.

  With some trepidation, Myrkas prepared his station as he routinely did. He verified his knives’ blades and the state of his mortar and pestle. His glassware was perfectly clean, just as he had left it. His burner stood prepared, with coal ready to burn in its rudimentary enchanted cavity. As his uncle had taught him, proper preparation was key. Nothing risked a successful brew like missing an instrument or an ingredient at a crucial point. Better to verify twice and thrice than to mindlessly lose a batch.

  Under Koriss' watchful eyes, Myrkas gathered the last component: heavy handfuls of Piercing Jade Grass. Using well-practiced motions, the boy took hold of the devilish herb from the ample reserves. He carried the bundles back to his station, completely immersed in his routine. So immersed in fact, he once again missed his uncle's change of expression.

  "Myrkas! What are you doing boy? Have you gone mad?" exclaimed Koriss at once.

  The boy in question froze in his step, with half a bundle of spiky grass hanging precariously from his arms. Before the stalks fell, he grabbed them with his bare hands, earning a few more scratches for his efforts.

  Myrkas did not understand what he had just done that was so wrong. Wrong enough to render his uncle red in the face, his pupils dilated in panic. The boy was doing as usual, the same steps he had been doing for months now. Had he really been messing up this bad all this time?

  "Where are your gloves, Kassa? Where are your leather apron, your protection glasses? You can't touch this with your naked skin. The Qi will wreck you!"

  Oh! Oooooohhhhh!

  "The gloves are right there, in this drawer. Aprons right next to them. You saw me put them on when I demonstrated the steps, Kassa. What were you thinking?"

  "Well," Myrkas answered, somewhat bashfully. "There were none my size. Everything is too big. So I thought it wasn't really important. Otherwise, you would have given me a pair that first day. I didn't want to bother you with such a silly thing."

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  Koriss looked baffled. It was his turn to mimic a goldfish trying to remember where he last swam. In front of the plastic treasure chest or behind it? Such a hard question for a small fish.

  After a few seconds of opening and closing his mouth, Koriss regained the ability to talk and, hence, to question his wayward nephew.

  "Kassa, boy, are you telling me you have been handling everything bare-handed for months now? Without any sort of protection? Mountains of Piercing Jade Grass straight on your skin, getting poked and juiced on?"

  Taken aback, Myrkas could only nod in agreement. In retrospect, it had been odd how sick his alchemy sessions had made him at first. Maybe his gastric issues and skin irritation had not been as much of a purposeful feature as the boy had thought. Maybe his suffering had not been as necessary a sacrifice for his apprenticeship as he had assumed. This did change a bit his perspective.

  But not that much. Myrkas had mixed feelings about his inadvertent lack of protective wear. The bad side-effects of the Piercing Jade Grass had tapered out with time—especially post Bloody Bath—and the boy was convinced that touching the alchemical ingredients directly helped him understand them better, to feel their Qi and properties in a way that gloves would prevent.

  Maybe this explained his rapid progress? No need to talk about said bloody bath with his uncle. He was not planning on repeating the full experience yet anyway. He remained a little wary of the whole experience, still. He only wanted to continue as he had been, slowly increasing the amount of Jade Grass oil he added to his "self-improved" medicinal baths.

  "I guess so," the boy answered a moment later. "I mean, you showed me how to process the Jade Grass and then sent me to practice. When I saw there weren't any gloves my size, I assumed it wasn't that important. And I only did a few stalks that day. Then I only got a little bit of redness and, hum, bowel issues. I did not think it was related. And the next lecture we had was on 'pure water': what differentiates it from regular water, how to obtain it, and its fifty-one primordial qualities. Nothing on the Piercing Jade Grass or anything else that could be dangerous. I took it as proof that the ingredients I handled could not be so bad."

  A look of unadulterated dismay fell on his uncle's face. The gruff man stood frozen and speechless. His right hand was shaking a tad on the armrest. The two sat there staring at each other for long minutes, the older man shocked still and his nephew squirming in place.

  At last, Koriss broke the silence with a heavy sigh.

  "Well, that explains that, I guess."

  The man ran his hand over his face and stood up. His stance was less confident than it used to be, as if a heavy weight had settled at once on his shoulders.

  Guilt rose in Myrkas. He truly had not thought his lack of protective equipment was such a big deal. He did not want his uncle to be disappointed by his carelessness. His anger at the Piercing Jade Grass' side effects had abated somewhat with time. Not to be mistaken, the boy still hated the plant with raging passion. He took pleasure in his newfound resistance to its Qi, converting it into his own with spiteful joy at any opportunity. He would tame that herb, he vowed. Make it his bitch and teach it to sit, give paw, and play dead on command. It was only right considering everything that damned plant had made him go through.

  At the reminder, anger bubbled anew in the boy's belly. A sudden rage spread through his being, tinting his vision in red. The wave gave birth to fantasies of destruction in Myrkas' mind. Of trashing the workshop and setting fire to a specific green field. Images of rebelling against his uncle, hitting and screaming with righteous anger at the man's lack of attentiveness and messed up priorities flashed through his brain.

  That first water lesson could have been summarised entirely by saying that if one wanted really pure water, one should distill his own, period. They had spent hours discussing such a simple thing. All that, instead of going over the oh-so-obvious safety measures in an alchemy lab.

  It enraged Myrkas further, the emotion growing faster than ever. His previous magnanimity at his uncle's mistake was completely forgotten. Any thoughts of a silver lining erased by the dark red eruption of his inner fury. The youth's fists clenched. His upper lip curled up in a silent snarl. The boy neared the edge of violence. The red tint grew in his vision, marking the halt of his reason. Surreptitiously, Myrkas began to crouch, preparing to leap into frenzy.