#just wanted to write lore-friendly coke and mentos hehe

[bretongirlwrites]

‘The supposition is perfectly reasonable,’ said I: ‘there is no reason it should not work; save that, –’

‘Save that the Nirnroot,’ said Tara, ‘has evaded knowledge for a thousand years. That it glows whilst alive, means nothing, –’

‘That is the sort of attitude,’ said I, – quite undeterred, put the leaf in my mortar, – ‘that has ignored things for a thousand years.’ 

I detached the roots from it; shook it a bit; crushed it a bit; and wondered at last if there was anything which might be done to stop the damnable ringing, which Sinderion after all had warned me about. – ‘I shan’t be deterred by that,’ I had told him. – ‘Could you speak up?’ he had replied: ‘I cannot hear you over the tinnitus.’ – Leastways it would not stop: and to my left, a poor scholar gave up on his own work, and departed. I mashed the thing a little more; and invited Tara to prepare the milk-thistle.

‘There are much easier ways,’ said Tara, whose skirt-hems were still damp with lake-water, ‘to make a potion of light.’

‘Oh!’ said I: ‘I do not believe the Arcane University has ever done something easily, which might be done more interestingly.’ 

‘No,’ said Tara, – mashed the thistle with good-humoured resignation: ‘no, we haven’t.’

The materials prepared, I got a flask of water on the boil; set up our calcinator; and began to hum, a vain reattempt to drown out the ringing. – Absently nibbled a bit of milk thistle: was most startled when the whole room lit up. – All was in place: we had only to boil the thing, and then test it.

‘Anyway,’ said Tara at length: ‘if you and Sinderion keep pulling up nirnroots, we shall have none left by the end of the era.’

‘That is a long way off,’ said I, ‘we are hardly four hundred years into it. Oh! there’ll be droves of them somewhere we can’t get to them. – Is that nirnroot charred enough yet? It is still ringing.’

‘Only very faintly,’ said she: ‘it must be your ears;’ but she passed it over regardless; along with the thistle-pulp. I became most delighted by it even before we had finished: for the ingredients were perfectly prepared; and Sinderion and I being pioneers in nirnroot experimentation, we must take the utmost care over it. 

‘Well!’ said I: ‘you do the honour of the thistle; and then I shall, –’

The milk-thistle is so-named, because its pulp is white: and when put into a potion, it so resembles milk, that one is fooled until one tastes it, and gets all the sentiment of having consumed a liquified hedgerow. The water became cloudy, but had no bits in it: we had done well so far. 

‘The honour of the nirnroot,’ said Tara, ‘is all yours:’ and quite to my consternation, she took two steps back. 

‘You will want to watch this,’ said I: ‘whatever happens, it will be novel.’

‘That is one way,’ said Tara, ‘of describing all of your experiments.’

I dismissed the barb; drew myself up; and already imagining the quill in my hand, to write up my tribulations and victories, I collected up the nirnroot from the calcinator, and poured it into our funnel. At once the water became not dirtied, but a wonderful glowing sort of dark green, – began to fizz, – I took out the funnel, and waited in triumphant anticipation.

The mixture settled for a moment; but quite as if to spite me, when I had just leaned over, redoubled its fizzing, and without warning shot up from the flask, and in a bright pillar almost to the ceiling. Tara, who would later suggest the addition of buckets to the Lustratorium, rushed forwards by instinct, and caught enough of it on her robes, that she could see them a little in the dark for ever afterwards. There had not been very much water in the flask; yet infinities of it poured out, and faintly ringing all the while; and when it had done, I was left to look in dismay over a table quite drenched, and an afternoon of ingredients spent in disaster.

‘If you say: I told you so, –’ said I at last, – 

‘Well,’ said Tara, ‘I did say that I did not believe it would work. If you had meant to create a potion of levitation, perhaps, – but light, –’

‘Did you see that!’ I cried: ‘we illuminated the whole room!’

‘And so might we have done,’ said Tara wringing out her robes, ‘with a potted nirnroot on the corner of the desk.’

I opened my mouth to disagree; but could say only something about utilitarianism and novelty; and becoming glad that if there was one thing that might be done easily and without exciting novelty, it was cleaning, – went laughing for the towels.

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thanks to @druidx for the prompt ‘a magical experiment gone awry’ for julianne!