[Prp] Where the truth grows. (King & Grigori)

[Of The Epidemic]

It had been an entirely all encompassing obsession since she had first heard tale of it. Things had only gotten marginally worse when she had seen her first images of it. Beautiful had been the first thought to cross her mind followed closely by what sort of properties it held. Who thought a flower could be so alive as to have eyes or little tiny mouths. She couldn’t keep herself contained, were the carnivorous? Did the tiny mouthed flowers make any noises, little charming squeaks when they achieved munchies from the nearing insects? Could the flowers with eyes actually see? Were they actually eyes, were they alive, in the sense that they could fully understand what was going on around them? She had so many questions and not nearly enough answers.

Thankfully her rather nocturnal and solitary nature made it simple for her to spend an inordinate amount of time questing this plant. At some point it had become an all consuming desire and she had admittedly shirked some of her other duties because of it.

For the longest time King hadn’t even been sure it was a real plant. She still wasn’t completely positive it truly existed in this realm. The lunatic babblings of an old stallion far too gone to see what truly subsisted in this world had been her first clues. From there the half sketched drawing in the library of an old mare that collected things had been a defining clue.

King shifted as she glanced at the intensely dense forest before her. It pained her to think this might be yet one more dead end, another false flight of fancy. Yet she could not deny the curiosity to at least see. Whispers had led her here, to a place that she personally had never entered before. The leaves hung heavy and green, the trees so close together it would be a task to fit between them. Below the cover of the sturdy branches was teeming underbrush, much denser than her forest. Things snared in her tail easily, causing silver strands to form a sort of trail behind her.

Her passage between the trees took some time, more than she had been expecting, or perhaps it was just so dense here that she couldn’t rightly see the sun that well. She had just wiggled herself between two rather large oaks when she had come face to face with an almost wall of briar bushes. Deciding that perhaps it would be too painful to try and force her way through she walked along its edge for awhile. Eventually after some persistence she found a spot that was easy enough for her to glide over, wide enough for her to extend her wings without knocking the end feathers against something.

King landed lightly on the other side, her passage almost unnoticeable except for the few strands of silver she left hanging from the tops of the briar plants. The mare snorted softly, she was leaving bits of herself all over this forest without meaning too.

What lay on the other side of the wall was truly inspiring and for a moment she only stood there looking. Plants grew about in abundance, some she hadn’t seen before, other’s she knew well. It was a rather strange sight to see, if only because she was sure some of these didn’t grow here naturally. King strode carefully between the large batches of plants, careful to stick towards the almost formed game paths. It was as if this was someone’s garden, a bit like her own really, only much, bigger.

She had just rounded a rather large flowering bush when a sight she truly thought she might never see broke forth. It was a tree, a twisted tree, with her flowers on it. The squeak of absolute joy that passed her lips wasn’t well contained as she picked up the pace, skittering forward a bit faster than she really intended.

“You are precious, even more so than I thought…” Her voice trailed off, eyes going wide, and wings falling against her side as she came nose to nose with a rather large stallion. Of course everyone was rather large to the petite mare, and it didn’t help that there was a tree growing on said stallion. This only made him appear even larger than he ordinarily would have.

“Amazing.” She whispered as she took a few steps back to allow the other his space, her eyes trailing over the tree before going down to look at where it connected to his body. King followed the plants roots around his sides and down his back before eventually letting her eyes trail back towards the stallion himself.

“Ah, my apologies, I just didn’t expect the little dears to be… err… attached to someone.” King spoke, her natural tones returning as she gave Grigori a small smile, tucking her wings close to her body to appear as unassuming as possible. “My name’s King. What’s yours?”  

[Lady_Ourania]

Dusk-colored tresses pooled along the ground as Grigori consulted his newest patch of perennials, heavy steps falling carefully between sprays of green. The stallion murmured soft encouragement to the tender shoots, speaking of the glory to be had in growth. He offered a glimpse of what they would look like in full bloom, how the bright orange and yellow of them would spread like a wildfire. Belief mattered, he knew, and it would transfer to the plant-kin in his care if spoken often enough and with the requisite amount of conviction. It had been difficult, in the beginning, to know what would promote the most growth. Trial and error had led him to discover that amaryllis and gardenias required flattery to appease their vanity, the heads of carnations swelled with praise. Foxglove and nightshade preferred to hear of dangerous exploits, stories he'd heard secondhand recounted to feed their potency. The wild strawberries grew sweetest when he heaped open affection on them, bright and red as jewels. Chestnut trees that had existed long before his arrival usually avoided pelting him with their spiny cupules if he offered reminiscences about their youth. Every species had a preference, a quirk, and time had taught him to suss them out with ease.

Less temperamental were the plants of his own devising, carefully bred and reared to ensure survival. These he spoke to of anything and everything, letting his thoughts spool out in front of them to be sorted. They were his progeny, the culmination of his adulthood and his self-taught passion. Ghostly white petals tipped in powder blue were layered tight and round as mandalas, their stems alive with thorns. Anything that ventured a nibble invited paralysis borrowed from their hemlock cousins, and death in larger doses. Beautiful, lethal, and all his own. Even now, seeing one of the flowers nodding gently at him made a bolt of warmth rush down his spine. They were perfect in every way, and comprised the next stage of his defenses. Not many with any sense would risk life and limb just to sneak a peek at his homestead.

Satisfied at the thought, Grigori used his nose to correct a stalk that had begun to tilt sideways, and a fresh streak of dirt joined its brethren marks on the pure ivory of his muzzle. As the day wound down, he often found himself more earth than flesh. That was usually the signal to retreat to the river that he'd diverted to flow through his gardens, and clean the evidence of the day's work from his coat. His hair was perhaps less groomed than it ought to have been, but he saw little point in arranging it. The company he held did not mind, or at least never mentioned it, and visitors were few and far in between these days.

As if on cue, a voice broke through his idle musings. Grigori's head lifted, the beak on his horn hissing when it narrowly avoided colliding with the invader. A chaotic swirl of silver hair and half-translucent feathers met his vision, too much, too close. It receded just as fast, allowing him to look down and spot the creature to whom they belonged. A mare, slight and babbling even as he stood there, his mouth slightly agape. It took him several moments to parse the words, and by then irritation had arisen to cover the slip, falling over him like a mantle. His gardens' defenses were far from complete, it was true, but he'd hoped they would be enough to dissuade most from entering. Clearly he'd underestimated the single-minded potential some of the Barren could rally.

Still, his annoyance cooled when he realized she hadn't injured any of his plant-kin, a stroke of luck considering the haste with which she'd approached. Some of the low-growing shrubs displayed evidence of her passage in the form of stray hairs, strung thin and delicate as spidersilk amidst the leaves. He returned his attention to the Barren, considering her words anew in light of his findings. For its part, the Multitude blinked at the self-proclaimed King, petals unfurling from where they'd folded up on themselves as it watched her. Grigori felt the roots of his tree shift slightly to accommodate any sudden movements, snaking around his belly to hold itself secure. To him, the preparation seemed somewhat unnecessary. Then again, she had apparently come looking for him - or at least the guardian tree he bore - specifically. That could mean any number of things, some of them less desirable than others. Had she known Genesis in passing? Or had a run-in with one of his wayward siblings? Their guardians didn't have much in common, but they appeared similar enough to the untrained eye. It was also unlikely that someone had pointed her his way on a whim, especially since so few knew where he dwelled. Fortunately, she was small, and aside from the horn upon her brow, without any solid means of exacting damage. His size and knowledge of the terrain gave him a significant advantage. Still, if the worst she planned to do was shed all over his gardens and spout nonsense, he could afford some shred of civility in turn. "Grigori," he said, expression gone opaque. "What is it that you want?"  

[Of The Epidemic]

King shifted backwards a bit more; the stallion didn’t seem terribly pleased by her presence. Of course she supposed that made sense, she had sort of bum rushed into his gardens. Her eyes drifted up to the horn he bore with a flower on top, it had been the thing to hiss at her. It vanished into his hair so she wasn’t sure if it was part of the root system or actually attached to him. There were so many questions she had but the other didn’t seem to be a terribly talkative type.

She inclined her head once more before speaking. “Grigori, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” King’s voice had lowered considerably since she had first started speaking. Her excitement tempering down now that she realized there was someone else here. She seemed to be composing herself; it wasn’t like she normally dealt with others. Well that wasn’t exactly true, it’s just those she normally spoke with were fading away or looking to trade. Rarely did she engage in recreational friendship making, or whatever it was others did when they sought others out.

“I had wanted to examine and learn about the tree situated on your back. It’s unlike any that I have ever seen, or any that reside in my gardens. I was curious about it.” She glanced back towards the tree on his back. Her eyes kept drifting there despite how she tried to stay focused on the big male. It wasn’t disgust that seemed to fill her though; it was something closer to wonderment, and perhaps pleasure.

“I wasn’t informed that they were attached to anyone though.” King said, looking back and up towards Grigori’s face with a small smile. “I apologize for startling you, and your small dear there.” She indicated with the tip of a wing the flower at the tip of his horn. The mare drew her eyes away from the little flower and around the garden, taking in the beauty around her once more.

“You’ve got a beautiful place her. I’ve never seen some of these grow so large before. Others I’m sure are creations all your own right? Like that one there?” She asked indicating the ghostly white petals with powder blue that fell not far behind him. “It could possibly be a flower I’ve never seen but I didn’t think there were many of those left in this world.” She mused softly if only to herself before closing her mouth. She was rambling again, if only slightly, King admittedly couldn’t help it as this was one of the few things that excited her.  

[Lady_Ourania]

He watched the strange mare bring herself back under control, vaguely appeased by the distance she'd put between them. It showed that she understood the tenuousness of her reception, or at least knew better than to invade his personal space anymore than she had already. An awareness that extended beyond the immediacy of self was not always a trait cultivated in the Barren. It may not have been enough to have prevented her intrusion in the first place, but perhaps what little she possessed would keep the proceedings civil.

The brevity of his question was repaid at length, though Grigori offered nothing to encourage the outpouring, not in a word or a gesture. Inwardly, however, he mulled over her apparent sincerity, and the implications behind it. Someone or something had sent her on this fool's errand, in search of a species that existed purely as an extension of himself. He'd emerged into this world with his guardian already attached, little more than a bud lodged low on his spine that sprouted the day he'd opened his eyes. It had kept pace with his own development from foalhood, requiring neither sun nor water to flourish. On the rare occasion he'd contracted some minor illness, it had responded in kind, shedding leaves and bearing wilted flowers until he felt well again. Adolescence had seen the Multitude spring into being, its many-eyed blossoms providing feedback which augmented his own senses. As such, a defensive undercurrent ran beneath the surface of his thoughts, intensifying with every fresh, darting glance she paid his guardian. When she raised a wing toward his horn, it clacked its beak in some small echo of his own mood. There was no separating the tree from himself, and little room for misunderstanding as a result.

A break in the discussion had him looking to where she gestured, and his progeny glowed ghost-like against the rich dark of the soil. "Yes," he said finally, the word quick on the heels of her final sentence. He paused then, weighing his options and idly searching the surrounding woods. Whatever sent her away most quickly was preferred, but it seemed wrong to repay her curiosity with antagonism. It was, after all, not her fault that she'd been born into a half-life, forced to admire connections such as his and his guardian's from afar. While he had little interest in being the subject of her study, he had no trouble comprehending her motives, even if she had papered them over with tolerable lies. Still, experience had taught him that her ilk did not take kindly to pity. Directness seemed the best course if he wanted to avoid further confusion.

"They are my own, as the tree is part of me. You were misled," he said, meeting her eyes with a slight downward pull to his mouth. "And I am not in the habit of entertaining guests. Inform your source of as much, should you come across them again."