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Valya raised her hand to her face and touched the scar with her fingers. Ira noted to herself that this was not the first time in recent times. The Oracle smiled sadly, looking into the fire and lost in her own thoughts.

The evening filled the cave with summer, night coolness. A restless wind blew all day, creating a feeling of anxiety. Ira sat by the fireplace and read one of Valya's few books. Thin pages, yellowed with time, told the girl about the properties of medicinal herbs, their varieties and places of flowering. Ira did not so much try to remember what she read as understand that what the pages revealed to her was already known to her somewhere deep inside. But the girl could not remember how she knew this. So all that remained was to be content with the pleasant feeling of something familiar.

The Oracle silently entered the cave. She laid out a new batch of herbs on the table and began to look for linen thread on the shelves so that she could tie the stems into bundles and h