Eva woke up feeling more energized than usual that morning. She had spent a few days lazing around without much to do and that day, Eva was in the mood to actually get something productive done. Throwing on an oversized white T shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans shorts, Eva pulled up a pair of thin gray socks before wearing her second favorite, white ankle boots. Eva spent a few minutes on her fair, twisting them up and creating a side ponytail. She wasn’t sure why she was feeling so preppy that day but she was completely satisfied with her looks that day when she went out the door.

Eva lingered around the center of Magnolia where the request board was for a while. She placed a finger on the papers as she skimmed through most of them until a familiar name suddenly popped up. Khalash was looking for people to help him with something again. Eva was well aware of the strange old man that had her looking after his shop in more than one occasion. She didn’t even ponder on it much when she ripped the paper off and walked down the directions he remembered his shop to be in.

Inside, Khalash was already prepping for the day. He started organizing everything and was crouched below the counter when the doorbell run to inform him of her arrival. “Good morning, Khalash san,” Eva greeted with a cheerful jump in her feet when he emerged from underneath the counter. His face immediately lit up when he noticed Eva. “Oh Eva, good morning. What brings you here?” he asked, straightening his pointed cap that was starting fall over his face. “This,” Eva answered before fishing inside her pocket for the folded request. She handed it over to him and let him read it for a moment. A look of gratitude and recognition crossed his face. “Oh thank God, you had picked it up. If no one was to show up, I was going to send a word for you,” he said and grabbed a dusty old book from one of the shelves before walking around the counter to face her.

He placed the book on the table with a cough. “These are the things that I need you to get for me,” he began by flipping through the book pages. Most of them had information on weird plants and ingredients that Eva hadn’t seen before. He started explaining to her about each of the item and where she might find them. Some, he reminded her again and again, were rare items that she wouldn’t be able to find if she didn’t spend a long time in searching. He suggested her to get them first before moving onto the items that can be bought from any local shop in Magnolia.

“Remember to look for blue lichen and red leafed vine first. They won’t be easy to find. Blue lichen can usually be found on old rotting logs and you’ll need to go to the forest for the other one”.

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Eva decided to take Khalash’s instructions very seriously as she set out to find the ingredients. She left the curly fern for last and went into the forest to find the red leafed vine. The forest wasn’t too thick and sunlight still made its way between the leaves and branches of the tall trees. She had to go up a trail for an hour before she made it to the tallest tree that she could find in the forest. Something told her she was right at the middle of the forest, too. Eva had to use her magic and levitate herself up to break off a fair portion of the red leaved vine. She cut them up into smaller pieces, placed it neatly in her bag, and went back.

It took her another hour to come out but the walk down the trail was much easier than the walk up there. She wandered around the town for a while until she spotted the curly fern in a shop. She went over what Khalash told her about how to determine the fresh ones before picking out the brightly colored ones. The man looked surprised when she picked out all the fresh ones he had out of the slightly rotting ones and almost looked a bit peeved when she took them with her after paying him.

The next and final ingredient was the trickiest to find. Khalash had already told her where she could find them but it was still difficult to track down rotting woods in a city like Magnolia. She walked around a lot, asked some people where she could find them and after hours of searching, found some behind an old abandoned building. She picked up as much as she could find before making it back to Khalash’s shop.

By the time she arrived, he was ready to close the shop off and invited Eva in before closing and locking the door behind her. He took her to the backdoor where, not so much to her surprise, she found a big cauldron with something pale blue bubbling inside it. He took the ingredients from Eva without a word, motioning her to not make much noise. She nodded and stood to a side as Khalash added each ingredient one by one along with a few other ingredients. While some of them made huge bubbles explode inside the cauldron, the last ingredient made it turn completely blue. He scooped a small amount on a cup and handed it over to Eva.

She gave him a questioning look but took a sip from it anyway. When it turned out that the taste wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be, she emptied the whole glass. She felt a lot more energized afterwards. “Ah, it works. This, dear, is a mana potion,” he finally informed the confused girl. ‘Oh,’ she thought, looked at the cauldron again, wondering if she should buy some but decided to do that some other time before leaving through the door at the back after taking her rewards.

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