Herbological Codex X: The Doctrine of Joy and Common Root

By Merrin Applevale, Halfling Philosopher of the Hearthgrove Collective

“The world heals best when it laughs.”
— Merrin Applevale, The Doctrine of Joy and Common Root

I. The Garden as a Circle

Merrin Applevale was a halfling of small stature and immeasurable warmth, born in the rolling meadows of Greenfield Vale. She taught that joy itself is medicine—a nutrient that the body and soil both crave.

Her philosophy of Communal Herbology grew from one truth: that no plant thrives alone. She compared society to a shared garden, where “each root takes and gives in equal measure.”

“If sorrow is a weed,” she said, “then laughter is the sunlight that drives it back.”

She believed every community should maintain a living herb circle—a garden tended collectively, where the act of cultivation was itself a form of healing.

II. The Doctrine of the Common Root

Merrin categorized herbs not by element or potency, but by companionship:

The Gatherers — herbs that draw others near, like thyme and clover.
The Sharers — plants that thrive when touching others, such as mint and basil.
The Listeners — those that grow best near human voices, like chamomile and sage.

She believed plants and people mirrored each other: each needed company, care, and conversation to flourish. In her journals, she wrote:

“The lonely plant curls inward. The lonely heart wilts the same.”

III. The Hearthgrove Collective

Her community, the Hearthgrove Collective, was built around a central garden ringed with benches, kitchens, and song platforms. Here, medicine was brewed in laughter and distributed freely. The rule of the grove was simple: no one eats alone.

Visitors described it as a place of perpetual festival—a living pharmacy of song and scent. Healing teas were served from clay pots as stories were traded. Merrin taught that humor, warmth, and food were not comforts after medicine—they were medicine.

She often joked, “I’ve never seen a fever survive good company.”

IV. The Medicine of Joy

Merrin’s herbal craft focused on mood and morale. Her tonics blended mild euphoriants—sunleaf, golden balm, heartrose—with grounding herbs like sage and nutseed. These mixtures were meant to remind the body what happiness felt like when grief made it forget.

Her most famous concoction, Applevale’s Smilebrew, became a symbol of her philosophy. The drink caused warmth to bloom in the chest and laughter to rise unbidden. Even the most dour travelers left the Hearthgrove with lighter hearts.

“It’s not about pretending you’re happy,” she said, “it’s about remembering you can be.”

V. The Ethics of Celebration

To Merrin, joy was sacred labor. She warned against mistaking it for indulgence. “Pleasure taken alone fades,” she said, “but joy shared becomes culture.”

Festivals in the Hearthgrove were timed not to harvests, but to grief—whenever tragedy struck, they gathered to feast, sing, and honor the pain by transforming it into gratitude. “If the world breaks your heart,” she said, “bake it into a pie and share the crumbs.”

VI. The Bloom of Belonging

Merrin taught that herbs, like people, gain potency through connection. She recorded experiments where communal gardens produced stronger remedies than those grown in solitude. The soil, enriched by laughter and song, yielded flowers brighter in hue and richer in scent.

She named this phenomenon The Bloom of Belonging, claiming the plants absorbed the emotional tone of their caretakers. Modern herbalists have noted similar effects in crops tended by tight-knit communities.

“You can’t heal in isolation,” Merrin wrote. “You need a circle.”

VII. The Last Feast

When Merrin Applevale felt her time nearing, she hosted a final celebration—the Feast of Full Hearts. She invited every soul she’d ever healed. The party lasted seven days. On the eighth morning, her chair sat empty, a wreath of thyme and daisies resting where she had slept.

Her followers discovered that she’d buried herself beneath the garden’s center, so her laughter might rise through the roots.

To this day, halfling settlements plant a Hearthgrove Patch—a circle of herbs mixed with thyme, sage, and chamomile—to honor her.

When the wind stirs through those gardens, the leaves rustle softly, almost as if chuckling.

“Joy is not denial,” reads her epitaph. “It’s defiance.”