Chapter 36: Emotional Support

Camped in the Offen Mountain Range, the party oversleeps, and Stark returns to find both Frieren and Fern still down. A closer look reveals Fern has run a fever. Rousing the elf, he watches her diagnose the girl with magic guided by Sein's herb notes, using an old book as her makeshift scripture, and conclude it is merely a cold. The pair carry Fern to a mountain cabin whose lone occupant tells Frieren the village she remembers vanished decades ago.

Inside, Frieren keeps clasping Fern's hand, explaining it once soothed her when she was small, until an embarrassed Fern pulls away and asks not to be treated like a child. Leaving her to rest, the elf and Stark set off for a winter-blooming Icicle Cherry Blossom tree, whose root mushrooms are the medicine's key ingredient.

On the trail, Stark asks why she held Fern's hand, noting she had never coddled the girl so openly before. Frieren replies that it was simply the only comfort she knew to offer, then asks what he would have done. Drawing on his master's teaching, Stark answers that one should follow the heart, since everyone needs emotional support and no one resents receiving it.

His words stir a memory of Frieren waking from a nightmare to find Himmel holding her hand, just as his own mother once calmed him, insisting that adults need reassurance no less than children do. Moved, Frieren thanks Stark and resolves to act as her heart tells her.

The towering mushrooms harvested at the tree's base go into a cauldron that Stark says makes Frieren look like a witch. She doses Fern with the brew while again taking her hand, and though the girl protests that she is no child, the elf simply acknowledges it and keeps holding on.

Frieren names the Icicle Cherry Blossom her favorite among the winter-flowering trees and wishes to show it to Fern someday. Once the patient recovers, the group sets out once more, with Äußerst as its next destination.