Blackfoot Forest Step by Step

Andalusia lifted her head and eyed Sebastian. Her advice would do him little good if the Caldera couldn't wander without risk. But he had asked, and she couldn't keep quiet even if she tried. There was nothing becoming in spilling her past to others, but sharing her life on the open road was a point she revelled in.  "Everything I know, I learned on the road," she said, "When you travel alone as much as I do, you only have your knowledge to rely on. I don't know many seasonal plants, but I know a number of remedies available year round. The goldenrod was new to me."

She pulled herself from her sprawled position and shimmied until she sat on her haunches. "I had a few treatments I would've tried if you hadn't spoken up,"  she said, and her eyes glinted as she paused to consider the story to tell. "I came across an old pack once, rooted in traditional medicine," she began. "I was with them when one of their wolves came back with a strange wound on their leg. No one knew how it got there, but over a few days, the bacteria ate away at her muscles. Some thought there was nothing we could do."

"A healer from a neighbouring pack showed us to the plains nearby. The old healer ordered us to gather as much buffalo dung as we could find, and we did. The healer lathered the wound with the dung, spreading it over every inch. Then we waited, admittedly doubting dung, of all things, could save her. But when we woke the next morning, the infection had stopped. Somehow the dung had pulled the bacteria from her leg. We tended her with dung for a few more days before we switched to a mixture of herbs and honey, which I much preferred. It took some time for her leg to heal over, but she eventually recovered. She walks with a limp now, but she came away with her life." She flicked her tail again and let silence fall between them before, her face twisting with a glint of mischief. "I don't know how it worked, but if you didn't mention the goldenrod, I would have tried it again on you. Just be glad your wounds weren't that infected when we found you."

Disclaimer: don't try this at home. And fun fact: this apparently happened to my Grandma while she was living in Paraguay (though they used cow dung to treat her - I don't know if buffalo dung works the same way, but I imagine it's not too much of a stretch to pretend). They figure she had flesh eating disease.