When Kell picked up alchemy, it was for no particular reason. Just something he had never paid attention to as a field of study before. While he started learning, it was mainly for the new, experimental stuff. The things Mildred in her teahouse will come up with. But he learned to make healing potions of all kinds. They weren't easiest for him to pick up. He actually had to make effort to do it correctly every time. Screw up there and you can make someone worse, not better. The easiest ones were always the painkillers, you hardly can botch those. Even when you are tired, unfocused and sleep-deprived. Or dizzy from blood loss - he can heal people with his blood magic, it just costs him. Sometimes it costs a bit too much.

He's been a lot of those things lately, tired, sleep-deprived and dizzy, and he's been making a lot of painkillers. It seems as if his life has shrunk to a dark corner of a former inn with a burner, a few bottles and vials he needs for his work, jars of ingredients. Always too little of those.

Still, Kell hasn't come even close to the levels of exhaustion Rhy is going through. So when he doesn't show up to eat that day, Kell packs what counts as their meals those days, bread, cheese, some local fruit, tea, and goes looking for him.
He finds Rhy at the back, sitting on an overturned crate, looking as if he were to collapse any moment. Kell puts his package down - eating will need to wait - drags himself another crate to sit next to Rhy and put an arm around his shoulders. It's only after a while that he speaks.

"Rhy, you need to eat"