Family Ties - Another Back Story - This time for a halfling artificer (alchemist)

Great-aunt Thessalie taught me a lot. Like so much, you have no idea. She said she saw a spark in me, and that's why she asked the Temple to hire me to be her "companion" when she got too old to run the hospital wing anymore. Let me tell you, just because she started having trouble walking quickly and her hands didn't have the grip to use a mortar and pestle anymore didn't mean there was anything wrong with her mind. The magic of Mishakal was too strong in her for her mind to ever get weak. At least, that's what I think.

Before I ever came to run her errands and help her get dressed and be her hands, she'd already had Adventures and been a diplomat and a trader and an advisor and healer to the King of Rhoanor and ran the entire hospital wing of the largest Temple to Mishakal in all the human lands. She told the best stories. She told me that she saved my grandfather Eldon, her older brother, from the possession (she never would say exactly from what) and destruction (he apparently died for a while) and he may have had a hand in the annihilation of Hedrimond-that-was, but Great-aunt Thessalie said it wasn't his fault and to be wary of magical artifacts. She also said not to spread that story around so it wouldn't hurt business at Pop's store since Grandfather Eldon founded the place after his Troubles (that's what she called them), so maybe don't mention that part.

I was still learning from her until about six months ago when she got a letter from her old traveling companion Sharai, who's now some sort of teacher at a wizard school in the Niannan Free Lands where the elves live. Great-aunt Thessalie said she would read that response herself which was odd because:

1. I read all of Great-aunt Thessalie's correspondence to her so that she could "save her eyes" to examine the special-case patients she still looked in on even though she was retired. "Mishakal doesn't grant magic to just anyone, Theophania. I must do my part to ease suffering in the world until she gathers me home."
2. I wrote all of Great-aunt Thessalie's correspondence for her since a quill left painful-looking ridges in the fragile skin of her hands and fingers when she tried to write anything longer than a script to be sent to the apothecary, and I had taken to writing those for her too when her hands started shaking. I had not written a letter to this Sharai-person for her to respond to.
3. When I asked Great-aunt Thessalie about it the next day because the letter wasn't with the other letters to be filed in the Archives as a former Head of the Temple, she told me in her usual chipper voice that she "had an errand to run" and Sharai had agreed to help her with it. At my confused look because I ran all her errands, she held my hand and said that this was a job for an old lady because if anything went wrong "she didn't want to risk someone who has her whole life ahead of her." Then she patted my cheek and asked for tea from the kitchen.

The next day, Great-aunt Thessalie was gone.

Even weirder, there was no uproar over her disappearance as she'd also written a note to the Temple's current heads, Rowan Amblecrown, Marta Calabra, and Birel Liadon, telling them she had a task that she needed to complete herself, and her traveling companions from before the fall of Hedrimond would help her. I know because I asked each of them in turn that morning.

Head-Priestess Marta asked if I would stay on in the apothecary while we waited for Great-aunt Thessalie to return, which sounded like something Auntie would approve of, so I agreed even though I desperately wanted to search for her. Sharai hadn't been around in years, not since I was born, and yeah she's a super-powerful elven wizard or whatever, but she hardly knows Great-aunt Thessalie any more. Osiris agreed with me, but Head-Priestess Birel, her boss over in the Rites Wing where they perform rites for the dead and do cremations and stuff, convinced her to leave it to Auntie as well.

Osiris has been Great-aunt Thessalie's best friend for decades, since my dad was a kid at least, and while she usually tolerates my endless questions pretty well though grudgingly, we were completely united in our worry over Auntie's sudden disappearance.