OOC: Sorry for letting this sit so long. Had a slew of problems over the last several weeks. Hoping to get back into full swing here! 
WC 789
It suddenly dawned on Orin that it was quite miraculous, to her, that Alaine knew so much about herbs and healing but had, as she professed, never utilized a book to her advantage. Her face scrunched in thought for a moment, “So. . . You learned everything you know without the use of a book to study from?” She questioned, wondering who Alaine’s mentor had been, or if she had some other means to her education which Orin could not puzzle out.
“You just keep all your knowledge in your head?” She cocked her head in thought, but as she contemplated it she realized that she, too, had pretty incredible powers of retention, and it was not unbelievable that Alaine was as intelligent as well. But somehow, the thought of not having journals to log thoughts in felt unnerving. There were so many things she contemplated on the fly and wrote down for later research. What could one forget about if they didn’t write it all down every night? Then again, it’s not as though Orin went back to every entry she had ever made. There were probably a lot of journal pages left unturned and unseen after she logged her entry. . . but the thought still made her feel. . . naked. Alaine didn’t feel that way without books or journals. . . she wondered if someone who didn’t know about books felt displaced, or just completely normal?
She was distracting herself, so she returned to the question Alaine had posed. “Yes, that’s exactly it. We. . . humans did it a lot, and now a lot of Luperci know how. . . can write with symbols that represent language, and draw our thoughts in books as well. That way you can pass your knowledge down to someone else who you might not be able to teach in person. We can draw on knowledge and histories from well before we even existed. I. . . have this theory. . .” - for a moment she was apprehensive, as though there was something to be embarrassed in how deeply she had thought it out - “That humans didn’t have ancestral memory. I don’t even think they had instincts. So if they weren’t around in the flesh to teach the next generation how to survive, they would have died out. . . Well. . . I mean. . . way sooner than they did, anyway.” She waved a hand, dismissing the thought. “Anyway, with a personal journal, you can log the things you did and learned that day, or anything you want to learn in the future, so you don’t let your thoughts or knowledge get away from you in the bustle of life. And I know for a fact that there are books out there, printed both by humans or our kind, that would have a lot of information on herbs and flowers and botany. The hardest part is just finding it.”
A friendly, encouraging smile crossed her muzzle and she giggled at a stray thought. “I could send Niro out to find you one.” It was only half in jest; she really would pester her brother until he was forced to at least make an effort, if Alaine wanted her to. Then she realized something more; if she didn’t know what books were, the likelihood of Alaine knowing how to read very well was slim. “I could teach you to read and write! . . . if you needed. I know short-hand too, so you can write thoughts down a lot faster that way.”
As she babbled on endlessly, she watched Alaine pluck the flower from the plant and finally hushed as she recited her ritualistic thanks to Mother Earth. Her mouth dropped into an O and her eyebrows arched, but Alaine was answering her question before she had the chance to ask. A little smile played on her muzzle, and she glanced back and forth from Alaine to the flowers in thought. She had never been taught any spirituality, nor how to respect the earth beyond the simple beauties and pleasures it offered. “Wow. . . I never thought of it that way. So. . . kind of like, everything has a soul?”
She contemplated as Alaine explained the process, in short, to her. The scientific edge she had thanks to a chemistry book she had read (that her brother groaned at every time she pulled out) taking effect. “They don’t lose their potency when you do that? Hmm. . .” Then it must be a chemical in the plants, and not the plants themselves, which made it seem less magical to her. . . but that was about as far as her brain could puzzle.