Brisa was weary in soul and body, battered and shaken, but she did not rest for quite some time after the battle.  Instead she worked with the boar man, whose name she had learned was Jaim.  Silent as a shadow she followed him around, and extra pair of hands.  She asked no questions, only did as he directed her to do, fetching what he said.  It was only after it seemed he had nothing further for her that she sat down, weary and quiet, next to Argurios who was still out.  

The rain hadn’t stopped, the silence was still heavy, and everything seemed surreal.  If it weren’t for the fact she hurt so gods cursed much she would have thought this was all some sort of strange dream.  But then they started collecting the stuff Jatan had left behind, Aiden taking the pack from the vanished boy and packing it so they didn’t leave behind anything that might help them later, it was then that Brisa felt the real seriousness of their situation.  

She remained quiet, content to let the others talk while she waited beside Argurios for him to wake up.  She studied when she could, though the rain and the pitiful light made it almost impossible.  She had originally intended to talk to the others, learn what she could about the environs, figure out what their next steps were, but she just didn’t have the energy.  She had intended to re-learn her spell so she could change Aiden back to his normal color, instead she decided that until he mentioned it she would leave it alone.  They weren’t out of the woods yet, figuratively anyway, literally the woods along the shore were rather thin, and his sort-of camouflage might come in handy again.  The rain sure didn’t seem like it was going to be moving on anytime soon. 

She didn’t realize that this time of year rain would be the norm, sunny days were to be revered and utilized, and rainy days were to be pushed through like any other disagreeable task.  She felt in her satchel for her little bundle of sticks sighing when she realized there were only a few left.  Each was about 6 inches long and an inch around; but they were from some plant she didn’t know nor had she seen again.  She and Argurios had discovered it early on in their journey as they had had almost started a forest fire using a handful of branches from an odd smelling bush.  Whatever the wood was it burned incredibly hot and intensely and Argurios had quickly latched on to the importance of this, creating a bundle of starter kindling for future use.  It was how they had managed to have a fire even in the rain; they used the strange wood as a starter, building pile of wet wood around it.  By the time the starter was burned out, the flame it had caused was so hot and intense it had dried the surrounding wood enabling the fire to catch properly.  Soon though they would be out of the starter sticks, then what? It hadn’t been her magic but nature that had given them fire even with the wettest wood.  When that trick was gone she wasn’t sure what they would do.  

She had taken to studying as much as she could.  Though she was quiet her scattered thoughts were racing, focus was growing, thinking on how magic and nature intertwined.  In the shadows of the early night, when others were resting, she finally stood up and walked to the water’s edge, now much higher than it had been when they originally stopped.  She had seen some huge leafed plants over there, and she painstakingly gathered several of the big leaves.  Then she made her way to the site of most of the fight, she was looking for something in particular and she found it.  Several small “hunks” of the frog men, flesh, blood, and gore, scattered in the grass.  This was by far one of the most disgusting things she had ever done but she had had an idea, and for the first time she had started thinking like a real mage, seeing how things could be used, changed, and studied to further magical strength.  It was only the glimmerings of an idea, begun when she began to think of how nature and magic tied together.  But it was a start.  

She carefully wrapped a piece of frog-man flesh up in the leaves, preserving it as best she could.  She would need to turn it into ash so she could work with it, but until the cursed rain stopped that would be difficult.  She just did the best she could.  She couldn’t stomach cutting into a dead body, not yet, but scouring the remains from a battle was a little less repulsive. The remainder of the time, until her friend woke anyway, she spent sitting silently by his side unless directed to do otherwise.  She studied her spells and the strange language, prepared food and tea when it was needed, and slept. She began to wonder if she wasn't studying even in her sleep because occasionally when she woke, and she woke often for she was sleeping lightly after all the excitement, when she woke the words in the strange language seemed clear to her, the translation plain as the smell of damp earth that permeated the area.  Yet when she tried to grasp them, to write it down, it was gone.  If only she could remember....