Claire, the Healer.

The elixir was cool against her palms; gooey as it clung to the gaps between her fingers. She dipped her hands into the copper pot once more, squishing the viscous material until it encompassed her hands as a thick paste. Mint speared through the air, demanding a clean entrance to her nose to invade her respiratory system, and, overall, open up her lungs, but the lid she rested on the pot's rim halted the pungent odour from escaping.

The concoction was comprised of finely powdered valerian root, aloe vera flesh, rosemary water and four subgenera of mint, all amalgamated to form the superior insomnia remedy. Her middle-aged patient was suffering direly from it since he was a young man – after returning from battle nearly twenty years previous, his psyche was gripped by an unrelentingly furious state of unrest. He'd travelled by horse from China along the Silk Road for seven months to reach her all the way in the Shetland Islands, as many people did who possessed incurable ailments. He crossed over Denmark, through Sweden, then Norway, whereupon he took a boat to step foot on the larger of the secluded chunks of land. Finally, he'd made it.

Claire's apothecary cottage was a quaint, hay-thatched, stone-walled structure with an expansive herbary which stretched across the entirety of her two acres of land. She grew and cared for every individual species of every kind of plant and fungi rather lovingly, and she utilised each of them for her medicinal treatments. Interiorly, her hut was lit and warmed by a fireplace towards the back corner, next to which was her pallet of straw and sheep's wool. Lush, flowering plants of white and blue were blossoming just about in every crevice of her home, crawling up the mitre of her walls and along the trimming of the a-frame ceiling. She had an oil lamp where she was working, and there was another burning steadily in a glass cage on the side table adjacent to the seat in which the man sat.

Her patient didn't speak Gaelic, nor did he speak the Norse-Gaelic hybrid she'd become accustomed to as the Healer of the British Isles and Scandinavia. She was a descendant of Celtic Vikings, and this was blaringly obvious to just about anybody who observed her: Claire sported long, ginger hair, and fair skin dotted in freckles with brownish hazel eyes. To the Celts who'd rendered her physical characteristics as their nation's average identity (after the Viking Age overtook their gene pool), Claire was a prized woman, held in high regard by her peers – they felt patriotism flush through them when they saw her in her field as they wandered about the village, or when they heard her singing the songs of their elders as she wore the tartan of her father's clan, her face painted beautifully in white and black clay. Sometimes, passersby would be so enchanted – so enthralled by her aura – that they'd join in her singing and dancing.

Through her, the culture of their ancestors lived unapologetically vibrant – and were therefore able to come in contact with many other people of varying origins, further preventing their traditions from sinking into the abyss of human history. The man noticed the bizarre patterns, and what he assumed to be lettering, written out on parchment and hanging on her wall, but he couldn't find it in him to stare for very long at the runes. A disturbing pang resonated in his brain, stabbing it soundly until he grunted from the pain, slamming his forehead into the heel of his palm. Claire turned around to analyse the situation, and her heart cramped out of pity when she saw him clutching his head, thrusting his calloused palms into his eye sockets. He was greying at the temples and wrinkling around his neck already, which was strange for a man at his age. Above the apples of his cheeks, beneath his dark eyes, were deep purple patches. Without communicating, she understood his cumber wholeheartedly, her mind scrolling through all of his possible symptoms. She then decided to add a sprinkle of curcumin to the paste and stirred it with a wooden spoon.

Perpetually weary, he was. It was the worst feeling.

As a result of not sleeping for more than four hours a night since he was twenty-two, the man suffered from intense headaches and difficulties seeing at a distance greater than a metre. He often didn't eat full meals, despite him being wealthy, and had absolutely no energy for basic things, like reading and walking around. Claire's apothecary was a safe haven for him; it was his very last beam of hope. If she could not cure his personal hell, then he wasn't sure what he would do with himself. He had been languishing over his poignant burden for decades and craved nothing more than to revive his spirit.

Claire found herself humming a ditty her mother taught her as she picked up the pot and placed it in front of the man, where she knelt. He sat up straighter, avoiding eye contact with her out of respect. She rolled up her sleeves and dunked her hand in the pot, having removed the lid and placed it behind her. There was just over two litres of paste, and every drop of it needed to be used for the results to last.

Her intricate knowledge of botany and the use of medicinal herbs was something she'd always had. For one, she wasn't particularly certain where she had gained the masses of information, because, well, nobody on Earth was as knowledgeable as her; it was a blessing bestowed upon her.

Claire, with her free hand, grasped the man's shoulder gently to tip him downwards. Then, she dropped the mixture on his greying hair. He startled a tad, as the gesture was unorthodox from where he came from; the head was a sacred part of the body, and it was mightily offensive for anybody to touch another's. But, she was foreign to him – unaware of his customs – and she was his Healer, so he submitted to her.

She pushed another big gloop through his hair before she used both hands to massage it on his scalp, working her way down to behind his ears, over his nape and shoulders. Swiftly, his entire body went languid with relief, and a bit of drool was pooling in his palate, which he quickly swallowed as his eyes began closing. She had done this exact process in the past, and she found that direct application worked better in this instance – although her subconscious understood why, her mind was just as clueless as the next person's. Claire continued her ministrations with the rest of the batch, rubbing it expertly from his shoulders up, kneading into his taut muscles until they were soft at her touch. After letting it sit for ten minutes, she wiped the paste off him with a towel. Succeeding another five or so minutes, the elixir had fully been employed… and he was healed.

Comfort overcame him, and at the glorious release of pain, the man fell to his bony knees before her as she dried her hands. He folded his torso over his knees so that his forehead was against the floor, and touched her socked feet with his fingers, sobbing in his dialect what Claire guessed were shouts of gratitude. He remained like that for a moment before he sat on his heels, wiping his eyes. Claire knelt parallel to him, finding her own eyes watery. The urge to hug him swamped her, so she gave in and wrapped her arms around him, and he, to her surprise, hugged her back, digging his fingertips into the flesh of her back. From the bottomless chasm of his exhausted heart, he cried.

Eventually, they parted. Claire gestured for him to lay down on the couch at an angle to the single seat. He laid on it without hesitation, and like an angel, Claire was like a light from a safe place, sent by God, as she draped a thick blanket over him, added a log of timber to the fire and diminished the oil candles.

Once plagued by restless nights and sleep's elusive embrace, the man found solace in the gentle whispers of the moonlit hour. Dreams, once distant echoes, now bloomed like tranquil lilies in his mind's garden. Sleep, a tender companion, cradled him in its embrace, mending his weary soul.

Claire, the Healer.