Herbalists' Cache das lied von der erde

Life had been full of adventures for the matron of the Blackthorn clan. Love, affairs, dramas and romances, thrillers and action - you just had to name a genre and Nanny Apple would come up with a story from her past that had - believe it or not - happened to her. And maybe because during her first six years in this world she had rushed like a turbulent mountain river, now to a person, who might not know her, she would seem twice as old as she really was. Four mates and fourteen children had something to do too with the white hairs interspersed in a coat that once had been in a rich gold color and the very experienced and slightly tired look in her eyes.

And while she had not had a single remote plan to exit this world just yet, after the fourteenth puppy (a son) she had looked at him and said - Now, I am done with this. When the time had been right, she had left him and his siblings in the capable paws of her older children and with parting words of you be good and I will know, when you won't be" she left them to enjoy the world and freedom it offered. It is difficult to say, who was more relieved or happy - the matron, who after years of being a wife and a mother in a perpetual circle of life wanted something different, or the already grown-up kids and their significant others, who were released from the amiable, lovely, demanding and capricious tyrant. Maybe the feelings were mutual and both sides were happy not to see each other again. As long as it lasted.

Anyway - this is the short prequel of, why Nanny Apple was, where she was now, and met a handsome dark stranger in her path. Never been the shy one, she approached him in the whimsical elegance her slightly rotund shape and old age allowed, and greeted him in a cheerful manner: "Hello, lovely fellow! What clouds are burdening your handsome complexion?"