As the sun began to set the drizzle grew more insistent, and seeking to get out of the weather for the night Mara Mara found a likely tree to scuttle up. Safely nestled in the branches she placed herself against the trunk and looked over her travel notes. Researching a new ritual she had come to realise she needed living water, and searching the college from top to bottom (or at least as well as could be done) she had come to realise that none was available.
Help had come, as it often does, from an unusual place. While the book containing the descriptions and steps for the ritual had provided no clue as to where it could be found, and the most helpful book on the subject of magical reagents had simply outlined its properties and profundities, it had been an altogether less scholarly work that had finally put her on the trail; volume four of an eight-volume work on magical creatures and how their lusts and greeds could be put to use for a mage willing to do what it took to gather rarer reagents.