The small town of Waldburg, on the edge of civilization, sees a variety of people come to its sleepy hills and sun-dappled fields. A paltry half-dozen souls call it home, and you're one of them. You're a doctor, and you've lived in Waldburg your whole life. Your clinic, inherited from your mother, sits just on the outskirts of town where the forest meets the road.
Your mother had been the town doctor beforehand, a transplant from the big city who came to this quaint little village for... something. She never told you why, and you never asked. Your father was a local farmer, owned a small plot across the way from Mom's clinic. He passed when you were young, and Mom sold the place. Because of the memories, she had said.
Well, you grew up with just Mom, and learned at her side. Waldburg was too small for a proper school, and the nearest town too far away for you to commute. Yet, you were clever. And Mom had a bunch of her big city medical books to teach you with. So you followed in her footsteps. It was natural, really, and every day spent by her side made you both happy.
You grew up, you grew smart, you almost grew attached to the barkeep's daughter. But then Mom got sick. Five years ago she came down with something incurable. A little case of cancer, she said, nothing to worry about. She had seemed so vibrant, so bright, so unbeatable. Yet, over the course of the next year you watched her waste away. You were twenty-three when the pastor came, and twenty-four when they buried her. You stopped celebrating birthdays after that.
Two years ago you inherited the clinic, and you've kept it open since then. Your Mom had an oath: Refuse no soul treatment; and you lived that oath too. You've treated everyone and everything, from the elves and fairies of the Waldwood to the centaurs and werewolves of the Stone Hills. You're even a regular face in Waldburg, and have treated everything from toothaches to broken legs. Hell, you'd even delivered the barmaid's daughter. She had gotten married while your Mom was sick, though you didn't notice.
Today's a warm spring day, the tail end of the season bringing a shining sky and promising a warm summer. You find yourself doing what you normally do during days like this without any patients. You're wandering your garden, tending the medicinal herbs that grow in your backyard, when you hear a sound. A faint but hard thunk, as if someone were striking a rock against another somewhere close by. Naturally, you go to investigate.
You quickly discover the source of the sound: A young fairy, almost as tall as your hand, sits on a stone near your small poppy field. Two thin membranous butterfly-like wings, shimmering and purple-colored in the morning sun, adorn her back. A thick gash, long enough and jagged, runs through one of them. It's enough to ground her. The little thing is wearing a thin tattered dress made of flower petals and leaves. She's a fairy from Waldwood, though she doesn't recognize the clinic or else she would have came to you directly.
She's bent over, concentrating intently on a poppy seed laying on the ground. Her little lip curls inward where she's biting it, and her brows furrow in concentration. One hand clutches a tiny rock, as big as a hammer to the fairy, and keeps the poppy seed still against the ground with her other. She swings at the seed, and only hits the stone beneath her. She's plainly trying, and failing, to break open the seed for the poppy milk inside. Simple pain relief. So you step forward, gingerly, and make yourself known.
"Excuse me," you say, and the fairy jumps in surprise. She turns, her face twisted in fear, and the rock comes up as a makeshift axe-like weapon. By the look on her face you can get a gist of what happened. She's plainly scared of humans, and you know the teenagers in town play roughly with the fairies when they catch one.
"I won't hurt you," you say, and raise your hands to show you're not armed with a bottle. But she just stares at you, and doesn't lower her small stone.
"My name is ${name}," you say with a smile. "I'm the doctor here. Do you need help?" Several seconds pass as the fairy gives you a bemused look. She plainly doesn't know what to make of you, but her upbringing has her reply to your polite introduction.
"Ginger," the fairy says. "That's my name. Are you really a healer?"