Chatting with Myrrh proved fairly enlightening. As soon as she asked why he didn't particularly like being left to his own devices, he began almost ranting at her. To hear him tell it, back home he was the assistant of a local pharmacist.
The process used to produce the various medicines, pills and elixirs they sold had some surface similarities with Eorzean Alchemy. Meaning that unlike her, he'd been deemed as already competent– enough that he was given a rank, an alembic, a curt explanation of the Guild's functions and exactly no onboarding whatsoever.
“And I cannot even offer my services to other alchemists! The Guild only saw my experience, while they only see my lack of it!” He'd grumbled as Muur flipped through her own research material.
“It should blow over after a while, everyone’s extra skeptical of us newbies because of the lowered requirements to join and how a bunch have already screwed something up and poisoned the well.” Muur sighed sadly, “It ain’t fair or pleasant, but at least it’ll go away once they realize we aren’t dropping out or getting kicked out within the month.”
Not much of an encouragement, but it seemed to be just what the man needed. That little boost of morale was enough for him to give a jaunty wave as Muur left the library. Now with research notes and recipes under her tail, the lizard alchemist quickly made her way to the lab she’d been given.
With her equipment setup, she looked over her notes once again. As befit a book quoted by almost every other one she’d seen, “Beasts of the Fields and Farms, and how to treat them” had been a real treasure trove. A regularly updated one at that! This edition seemed to be only a few years old, meaning that for the most part the information was up to date. Putting aside the fascinating ecology of the Eorzean livestock animals, the main crux of its guide to handling a wounded chocobo was simple: Don’t.
Unless you were one of the bird’s regular handlers, it was far easier to feed it various supplements to aid them along the road to recovery. Putting hands on the animal was only to be done under the most dire of circumstances unless it had been thoroughly desensitivised. Considering that her big red was very much not, that left Muur with the recommended option: supplements.
The pages held a veritable cornucopia of various powders and pastes that would, supposedly, guide her oversized canary along the road to recovery. Almost all of them were food additives of some form, which would make feeding them to him something of a challenge, but the author of the book had already foreseen this kind of problem and had listed various methods to induce hunger or thirst into a reluctant chocobo.
It went without saying that she’d copied down every single one of them. With any luck, the easiest one (having other chocobos eat in full view of the bird) would be all she’d need. But failing that, she would move on to more involved methods.
In any case, the first thing she worked on was a powder meant to help with her bird’s self-plucking problem. Not so much by stopping it, but by promoting clotting agents in the blood and feather growth. Making it was quite the arduous process, less due to the complexity of the recipe and more thanks to the endless amount of grinding it entailed. Almost every ingredient had to be dried or calcified, then painstakingly turned into a fine, flour-like powder.
For a regularly sized animal, it would already be something of an undertaking. But for one of big red’s size? She had to double or triple every single measure for a single dose. By the time she’d made enough for a whole week of feedings, her wrist was absolutely killing her. But hey! The next recipe was mostly about boiling things, so surely it wouldn’t be too hard on it.
Right?
Yeah, she wasn’t holding her breath for this. At least it was a less heart-pounding workout than the dive into the wasp nest.
___________________________________________________________
In the end, Muur’s wrist turned out to be spared. Her patience, on the other hand? Not so much. Almost all of the other recipes that she had to follow weren’t taxing by any means, unfortunately the process of preparing enough of a batch for close to a week was extremely time consuming.
“Good evenin’,” So much so that the sky had already been coloured in deep hues of orange and red by the time she’d left the Alchemist’s Guild. Back in her homeworld, it probably would have been something of an issue, but by the virtues of fast-travel (and a bit of help with directions) getting to the Order’s stables had barely taken ten minutes of walking, “Here to check on your rescue?”
As soon as she’d crossed the threshold of the barns an helpful Roegadyn stablehand had called out to her. Massive even for her race, the amazonian chocobo-carer had only one arm with which to carry the oversized bucket of feed resting on her shoulder.
The web of scars crisscrossing her body and missing arm made for a memorable sight, and Muur immediately recognised her as the same stablehand that had helped her with moving her chocobo out of the shelter and into his new semi-permanent home.
“Aye, finally got done brewing up all the supplements.” Muur said with a small sigh. Absolute pain in the ass, but worth it.
“Just in time,” The woman told her as she motioned the Alchemist to follow her with a slight jerk of her head, “It’s about feedin’ time for our own ruddy bastards. Hopefully the sight of fellow birds eatin’ and the scent of some fresh gysahls’ll get him to eat somethin’.”
Moving deeper into the stables, the pungent odor of animals and their manure creeped into Muur’s senses until the only thing she could smell was Chocobo shit. On the way to her own bird’s pen, the woman dropped off quite a bit of feed and each and every time, she was welcomed by a happy ‘wark!’ or ‘qweeh!’ as the penned chocobos voraciously devoured the mixture of leafy and root vegetables that were their dinner, “Since you asked last time. We don’ feed them meat often,” she told Muur as she tossed a gysahl green to a particularly excited bird that snapped it out of the air, “Once or twice a week. Never much o’ it neither. I’ll ask ‘round the district, might be a butcher or two willin’ to sell you offcuts and bones on the cheap.”
“If push comes to shove I’m sure there’s a few who’d like an adventurer to go hunt some stuff on the cheap in exchange for a literal cut of the proceeds.” Muur mused with a small shrug. There were always people on the market for ‘blow this up, please and thank you’.
The small comment earned Muur a commiserating nod as the pair reached her bird's pen, “‘tis the world we live in, aye. Which is more than I can say for your lill’ friend.” The friend in question was none other than Orliane herself. The teenager wore her usual robes, as well as a makeshift sort of gasmask made from a rag and fragrant herbs if what Muur saw peeking from it was any indication, “Brat's bummed a stool off of us and has been sittin' here all day. Didn't even help, just ‘doin’ her studies’..” The stablehand sighed.
Naturally, it was Muur’s solemn duty to ruffle the teen’s hair.
“Wh- Hey!” And really, Orliane made it too easy~! The Elezen was so absorbed in going over the wall of words she called notes that she failed to even notice her encroaching doom. Before she knew it, the great hand of fate had been laid upon her scalp and tousled her hair, “Stop that!”
Funniest shit was that when Muur promptly did, Orliane looked disappointed for a split second. Was this how sharks felt when they sensed blood?
Unfortunately, for all of the amusement and joy this brought her. An annoyed wark reminded Muur of why she was here in the first place. Turning to look at the sound, she saw him in all of his faded glory. The animal she'd seen before was still there, a ball of fluffed up anger and red feathers that glared at everything in sight.
But in the short time since she'd seen it, he'd been oh so diminished.
Where only a handful of feathers had been missing, now large swathes of his regal bicoloured plumage were missing. In fact, his entire left wing was plucked clean, exposing angry red splotches on pink skin and a multitude of self-inflicted scabbing wounds.
Upon noticing Muur's attention, the red and white menace bristled and puffed himself up, trying all he could to appear larger and more intimidating all the while he slowly backed away from the three humanoids as best he could.
At least until he could no longer back away.
Once his behind hit the wall of the pen, he kicked in annoyance and frustration before swinging his head around and pecking at the offending brickwork. It didn't last long. Only three pecks, but it was enough for all of them to see him flinch in slight pain each time.
Had it been human, or any of the spoken races, Muur could have guessed that he would have sighed in resignation. But as it was a chocobo, it only let out another, weaker, warble before settling down on the hay-covered floor.
“Alright, big guy, let’s get you on the mend.” Muur sighed softly. She didn’t mind wrecking her wrists on the weekly if it meant this warbeast would no longer be such a shadow of his former self