Junna's movements were quick as she gathered the plants into a neat pile settled at her back, each stem placed carefully on a leaf broad enough to hold a bundle. She'd woken some time ago, grass and wisteria petals still clinging to the parts of her fur unwilling to part with sleep quite yet. Soft ramblings left her in murmurs, clarifications and classes, antidotes and salves. Anything to keep her from dwelling, dwelling, dwelling...

She'd been placed here. Plucked from the masses and placed here, for what? Her mother and father, oh, she could still see their weeping faces, hands outstretched until their touch disappeared from her own and everything was so, so dark.

You must be of worth. This is the only way. She must prove, but prove herself in what? How? Junna wasn't extraordinary; she wasn't even ordinary. She was a girl who loved plants and flowers, a girl who was capable of manipulating their beauty and their pieces to absolve people of their ailments. Be it a carefully chewed berry leaf, or even a meticulously placed flower behind one's ear. These things, she could do. These things, she was good at.

Anything else...anything unfamiliar. She was lost.

Softened blue eyes lifted to the canopies, soothing herself instead with the blurring rays of morn as they cut through purple petals and curling green vines.

A gentle draft of sea breeze blew over the island that morning, the sky still dimly lit while the sun shied away from an appearance. Neither Yoshi nor Kaguya had come back from their travels north, and had Yoshi’s new (and very blue) friend. She couldn’t help but feel a little anxious — while it was everyone’s duty to uphold the pack with orders carried out by her word, there was always a lingering chance that her judgment was lapsed. After all, their family was never built for the harshness of the north, and it had been quite some time since the Empress had visited the lands herself. Last time the crane had been there, she nearly froze to death.

For now, however, she did not worry nor fret. Knowing herself, if she did not put trust in her cousin to complete the task she’d given, she’d be obsessing about it until he came back. The woman had duties of her own to attend to after all — one of which was figuring out why the ocean breeze had brought a foreign scent towards the mainland of the Dynasty. The Empress’s muscles drew taut as she stretched her legs, standing up and heading out to investigate it at once. From how close they were, Izumi didn’t even have to go as far as the shores — yet how did a stranger manage to get past the patrols?

Her lilac gaze narrowed in suspicion as she closed in on what appeared to be a younger, brunette woman. She carried various plants upon her back — plants that belonged to this island…

I will have to ask you to cease.

The empress announced as she approached the woman. You are foraging resources on my Dynasty’s lands. Early within daybreak and past our borders. Her tone was absent of severity, but stern — as stern as she needed to be so that the woman had more awareness of the situation. Her gaze met their own, impassive and observant. Seeking what she could not see — yet.

What business do you have here?

The voice of another might not have startled her as much as it did had she truly been lost in the fluidity of her works. Flowers and herbs alike cascaded in a gentle fall across green grass as shoulders jutted inward and her head swept like a shot across her shoulder. She had not known she wasn't alone, had not known that any inhabited these lands, much less owned them. Least of all, talking animals. Nevertheless, Junna had a job to do.

In the midst of gathering them close again, not taking—not yet—but properly laying them so they didn't become a mess of crumpled petals and torn leaves, Junna regarded her with a careful gaze. Wary, cautious, and curious. Dynasty? She managed to murmur out, more to herself than the woman. Where had her parents sold her to? Who had they sold her to if these were not the lands which she was meant to be?

I am Junna Nagase. My duty as a forager and a herbalist has, it seems, extended to this land as much as it had my own. I seek to help, to tend to your wounded, to create tonics meant to heal. Her brows furrowed, but there was a kindness in her words, an understanding as she explained. I cannot seek these things with rotten leaves and carcasses. Surely, she must understand. That even if Junna did not, she was instructed to be here. There was no mistake.

None that Junna would admit, and neither her parents. More than that, there was no way to rectify what very well might be a horrible mistake. She was stuck here, determined with arms yet to be full of weeds and herbs alike. Are you not in need of this? Desperation leeched into her voice, shame and disappointment ravaging through her bones like something starved. To be sent away...what worth would she have then? The Nagase healers did not get rejected. They were sought out, sold like cattle to the highest bidder.

If not her own, what world had she fallen into?