She was so certain she'd had a reasonable amount of berries. In hindsight, that was probably her first mistake. The odd taste would have been the first sign of trouble...if this had been a berry she'd been familiar with. This new continent had too many of those to reasonably keep track, some sweeter, some more tart, and some just oddly bitter. These ones looked like ordinary raspberries, but had seemed to stay unripened so long that she'd simply lost patience.
Maybe that had been her first mistake. Impatience. Or failing to recognize the nature of the specific berry in front of her. Next time she came across someone familiar with the berries of this land, she'd ask about the yellow caneberries that had gone so wrong for her.
Parvati tried to focus her sapphire eyes on the stream. Waaaiiit. Weren't there supposed to be golden raspberries on the upper slopes of her homeland? Yesss...they ripened a saffron yellow, never red, used in fruit wines and for indigestion, roots for stomach aches and headaches, bark as an antidiuretic...
Ooops. The unicorn wobbled as the realization slowly slapped her in the face, like a dead fish. She'd waited until the end of the season for overripe golden raspberries, and then she'd consumed half a basket's worth in one sitting.
At least she didn't feel ill. Well, not very, anyway. But the world was spinning, and falling over was feeling like an attractive option. On the one hoof, she was registering medical facts just fine; on the other, the fact that she was doing so in a formulaic manner suggested that rote memorization was doing the work for her brain; on yet another, maybe she should have remembered these facts considerably earlier than she had; on a fourth...on a fourth...
Oooh. There was the headache. Parvati blinked as the sun reflecting off the surface of the stream sent stabs of pain through her eyes and straight into her brain, which was already pounding dully.
Shame unicorns couldn't heal themselves from certain...thingies. That was why she was supposed to have memorized medical techniques and herbal remedies. To make it easy...easy...easier to do the hard magic, and so you didn't have to mess yourself up...right???
She stared woozily as her thoughts tried to line up in a wobbly line. Water...water sounded like a good idea right now...
The unicorn lowered her head, and managed to take a long drink of water before falling sideways onto the streambank, managing to miss the raspberry thicket from whence she'd partaken of the overripe raspberries.
Wasn't she supposed to meet Gan...Ganesh...her son right around now...? Ooops...
Ganesha trotted along the path toward the stream. He was supposed to have met with his mother for some socialization and maybe more education about medicine, certainly a nice, quiet meditation session...only for his mother to be absent from all of her preferred meditation locations. Odd. His mother rarely missed an appointment of any sort, particularly with the only child she'd personally raised.
Parvati hadn't really talked about it, but Gane had a suspicion that Parvati had regrets about sometimes being so divorced from the world around her when he'd been a colt, and had attempted to make up for it by always making time for her son whenever he was interested in popping by for an afternoon, providing she didn't have other business, which she usually brought up promptly.
So it was distinctly out of character for her to be absent when he came for a planned visit. If this were an unplanned visit, he might understand, but not a planned one.
Given his mother's beliefs about the sacred nature of pure flowing water, the mountain stream he was headed toward seemed a likely candidate. From what he hazily remembered being described to him about her homeland, this stream bank probably looked a great deal like home.
Which was of course when he spotted his mother's leonine tail snaking out along the ground from the stream bank.
The unicorn stallion frowned, picking up his pace into a trot. Parvati was very consistent with personal schedule, didn't tend to nap in the middle of the day, less frequently in random locations, so this didn't bode well.
However, as he approached, an odd fragrance caught his attention.
Raspberries. Golden ones. Overripe golden raspberries. Scattered on the ground, as though dropped. Oh, nooo...
"Mother, I think you chose the wrong time for those raspberries," he muttered softly as he slowed and lowered his head to investigate his mother's fallen form.
