[quote=@StormHeart]
"Do not let yourself lose everything in ignorance." Kiera barely heard. [i]Huh, must've been my imagination.[/i] she thought. She immediately forgot all about what she heard after she realized that they were about to start training. "Can we get started?" she asked excitedly. Not only was she couldn't wait to be a better healer, she couldn't wait to practice learn more about this special skill.

Yet there was a part of her that thought, [i]Are you even ready to learn anything like this? In fact, what if you mess up?[/i] Kiera decided to push that thought aside. She was ready to learn something more interesting than "What can of herbs can cure stomachache?" She couldn't wait for the adventure ahead of her. 
[/quote]

"Can we get started?" Kiera asked. At first, she shivered with excitement. A brief shadow of doubt darkened her expression, and then it was gone. "What herbs can cure a stomach ache?" she prodded.

Dessa covered her mouth to laugh. "You certainly are eager. If time permits, I shall teach you herbal remedies when we reach land. For now, we must cover the basics. The most fundamental aspect of healing is not the magical healing itself, but knowledge of the human body. Once you learn how this miraculous organic machine works, you can heal people even without magic. Come, I will demonstrate on my patients."

If they'd been in a professional setting with time on their hands, Dessa would have taught her all the relevant scientific jargon and nomenclature, but this was a crash course; there was no time for that. Instead, for the rest of the day, Dessa taught the functions of the human body. She would put select patients to sleep, open them up, show how their various body parts worked, and heal them up again. The sick patients served as demonstrations of what happened when the body didn't work so well. Not everyone took kindly to being used as a skeleton doll, so more than once they had to flee for their lives - with Dessa providing live commentary on human aerobic properties as they ran.

The next day was spent pranking people with diseases and healing them. Kiera, of course, still hadn't learned any new magic at this point, so Dessa would cause a deliberate bodily malfunction, instruct Kiera on how she did it (thereby showing how the body worked, and more precisely, how it did not), and then test her on it. Unsurprisingly, this made them mortal enemies of half the crew by nightfall - resulting in heart-pounding lessons on diseases of the muscles and respiratory systems.

The third day was spent on magic.

"You may be familiar with the booster spell," Dessa said as they were washing clothes that morning. "You place your hand on a wound, pour a little energy into the surrounding flesh, and watch it close in seconds. For minor flesh wounds, it is adequate, though it leaves large scars. A more useful spell, I find, is called a 'stitch.' There are several ways to do it. While most healing spells require a little telekinesis, the stitch is one of the few that does not, though it certainly helps. You must hold the wound closed, whether with your hands or otherwise, and use a booster to seal it."

To demonstrate, Dessa split open the skin on her own arm, pinched the flesh back together, and healed it. The skin looked slightly wrinkled, but otherwise whole. The skin was whiter where the wound had been. "Since this technique does not leave large scars, it is preferred by novice healers. However, scars form because healed tissue is of different composition from normal tissue, and often lacks feeling because the nerves are damaged. To restore it to original condition, you must re-develop it, as if it had grown naturally from birth. This requires using the person's bloodline as your 'blueprint.' Since it is one of the most complex things in the universe, using a person's bloodline as a template is not particularly simple. You will need to use linking spells and a little faith to create the one you want. So today, I will teach you two new spells: Copy and Memory."

Dessa got a handful of soap suds and drew a simple magic circle with them. "This is a simple energy circuit. It will heat the floor and turn our water into mist. We will copy and cast it. While you could copy it by simply imagining it, we will need to copy things invisible to the naked eye, so we must do this the right way. A copy, by definition, is to make a similar or identical version of a thing. Semantics are important here. What defines a 'thing?' In other words, what, exactly, are we copying? You must first identify and isolate the thing to be copied, and this is the most difficult step, because invisible things are not easily identified."

She smirked. "Let me show you a little trick. It is more like a cheat, but it does the job in most cases. Copying a person's whole bloodline into a spell is HARD. It is far simpler to copy a piece of the person's flesh. Let us practice on this magic circle. Imagine yourself washing over it like water over a rock. Drench it, soak it, permeate it with your spirit until it is so spiritual a priest could pray to it. Then imagine hardening as a wax cast. This is your copy."

Dessa placed one hand on the sud circle, then dropped her other hand in the wash bowl. A cloud of steam puffed out of the wash bowl.

She withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap. "A memory spell is a bit more complicated, since it requires actual fairy dust in order to cast. For reasons too obtuse to explain here, the universe responds to a six-pointed star inscribed in a circle. The short story is that it is related to summoning. Transport your spirit-copy into this shape, let it go, and the fairy dust will remember what you gave it. To cast the contained spell, re-convert all physical energy in the magic circle into mana, channel it to your desired output point (like your fingertips, for example), and convert it back physical energy."

Dessa first re-drew the heating circle. She put both hands in the circle, evaporating the suds into mist.
"That is what that magic circle does without any other modifications."
Then she drew the heating circle again, followed by a memory circle beside it. She put one hand in each circle. Both circles glowed slightly, but only the suds in the heating circle evaporated.
"The spell has transferred to the memory spell now."
Finally, she put both hands in the memory circle. All the suds evaporated.

"Now you try it. Transfer two heating spells into a memory spell and see what happens. It should make a little pop when activated."