She led me to a set of deep shelves carved straight into the rock. Crates sat in uneven rows, some labeled in English, some in Mesaarkan script, and some not labeled at all.
“We’ve been using whatever we can salvage,” Mara said, gesturing at the chaos. “Military packs, old clinic stock, field kits. I know where most things are, but I’m the only one who does, and that’s not a good plan for any of us.”
“I’ve seen worse,” I said honestly. “Convoy med wagons make this look like a tidy pantry.”
“Flatterer.”
She left me there with a stack of blank tags, a marker, and one general directive: “Make it make sense, but don’t move the gel packs near the heat vent unless you want to see me cry.”
I started with the obvious—bandages in one place, sterilizers in another, and painkillers somewhere easy to reach. The Mesaarkan notation took a minute to decode. I only knew a few words from Rygnar’s explanations: burn salve, fever, and nerve block. I copied the symbols where I recognized them and added human script alongside, trying not to butcher either.
Halfway through the second crate, I realized I’d reversed two glyphs on a set of tags—one for sedative, one for stimulant.
That would have been bad.
Heat prickled at the back of my neck. No one was watching, but that didn’t matter. Mistakes out here weren’t theoretical. They wore faces and left bodies.
I plucked the miswritten tags off the vials, ripped them cleanly, and rewrote them more slowly this time.
Sedative: Curl first, then the hook. Stimulant: hook, then the split. Say it twice, write it once.
Mara returned as I was finishing the row, a tray of instruments in her hands. She stopped short, taking in the reorganized shelves.
“You’ve been busy.”
“Just trying to make sure no one gets a nap when they need a wake-up call,” I said. “Or the other way around.”
Her gaze snapped to the correctly relabeled vials. Understanding flashed, then something like respect. “Good catch.”
“I almost didn’t,” I admitted. “But almost doesn’t matter if you fix it before anyone gets hurt.”
“Spoken like someone who’s worked triage lines,” Mara said quietly.
“I’ve delivered enough emergency packets to know what happens when labels lie.”
She set the tray down and put her hands on her hips, studying the shelves again. “This… is better. People can actually find what they need.”
“Maybe you could assign someone to shadow you for a few days,” I said. “Teach them the rest of the system. Spread the knowledge out a little.”
Her brow furrowed. “You volunteering?”
“I was actually thinking someone who’s staying long-term,” I said, then caught myself. “But I can start it. Make a basic map. You can fill in the parts I get wrong.”
Mara’s gaze lingered on me, sharp and assessing. “You don’t sound sure you’re staying.”
“I don’t sound sure because I’m not,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t leave things better than I found them.”
She nodded slowly, as if she understood more than I’d said. “Fair enough. I’ll see if one of the older apprentices can be trusted not to mix up sedative and stimulant.”
She gave me a dry look.
“Unlike some of us.”
“I told you,” I said, deadpan. “I fixed it before you saw.”
“And that,” she said, “is why I’m not throwing you out.”
Later, with the shelves in rough order and my ankle throbbing, I limped toward the hydro gardens.
