Welcome to Gaia! ::

Since being introduced through a study session, Zekiel had sought Fallon out periodically, coming to visit with her or Miss Keai who also frequented the greenhouse. It was a pleasant and beautiful place, ever-changing and ever alive. Any time he stepped into it, the air was awash with fresh scents woven into it by all the various greenery that made its home there from hanging vines to shrubs, potted flowers to decorative fountains with trickling water and stacked rocks to encourage the growth of mossier species which preferred the dampness.

Today when he entered, the air was warm with mist, the plants looking freshly watered, and all about the air smelled of green and soil. Ze moved with quiet footsteps, as though too much noise from his boots might offend the peaceful, dozing greens, and he walked with his hands behind himself, one hand clasped around his wrist and eyes bright as they skipped from one subject to the next.

There was always much to see, and often enough the plants were shifted to accommodate their needs or make room for new growth or additions to the garden. This kept interest high, and he made a habit of mentally sifting through all the details, trying to find where things were different.

Still, though, his primary focus was a certain priestess, and the news he bore for her.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted, beaming. He tipped his head though at her question. “I couldn’t say,” he said. “Did you? Was I to remind you? Am sorry if I was and I forgot to remind you so that you wouldn’t forget if it is that you do forget if someone forgets to remind you not to forget.”

He glanced to her basket, and then the plant she was working with, freshly pruned and certainly smelling like it.

“I think,” he said, “I came to tell you of something, but I’ve forgotten what that was, too. May I help you with anything until we both remember what we don’t now? Or,” he added, “I could fetch you lunch. Are you quite hungry? I had bluebean soup, and a spiced roll, and berry juice. It was all quite good.”

“Yes, of course,” Zekiel said, already moving to take up one of the water jugs. “Do you sometimes think what it might be like to be a tree?” he asked after hoisting one and taking a step towards the nearest unwatered plant bowl as he spoke. “Or an herb or a flower. To grow downwards into the earth and upwards into the sky at the same time and to eat the sunlight and drink with your toes?”

As he poured, he imagined it: the water trickling down into the soil, the single stream of liquid broken up into a hundred thousand different small streams as the uneven earth ushered it apart, and then gathering down low, out of sight, and moistening all the thin tendrils of plant root. It was a wondrous and fascinating thought to him, at least.

“I think most everything about it must be wondrous except that I would miss being able to move about.”

Zekiel blinked, and then beamed, eyes bright with mirth. “I do also like truffles very much,” he said. “And most sweet things, the way they melt and you can feel their shape changing within your mouth while the taste moves and you can still taste it even after most of it has gone already because it lingers.”

Zekiel poured as he spoke, and did make progress, if not perhaps quite as even and diligent as Fallon’s own. It would get the job done, the plants would appreciate the moisture, and he himself appreciated the chance to be of aid—particularly in a place with so much already going on: growing and absorbing and giving off scent and blooming. All gradual, and all while they worked and spoke of other things.

Even if they did not get to eat truffles, he was fairly sure the life of a plant was quite busy and fulfilling.

“Did I…?” He tipped his head at the latter question. “Oh, yes! I do remember now.”

“Days ago a cart came from the village with a body,” Ze said, smiling. “It was all battered and broken from surf and falling upon rocks, I think, with so many places where stone hit the skin was like the darker portions of a sunset and the bones were not as they should be, and he was dying. Of course, we could not take him within Sanctum but there were many people staring and curious and afraid and thinking it was terrible or dangerous, but Sister Mortrem had me called for and I went with the body—it wasn’t dead yet, you see, which was wondrous because I didn’t know the boy’s name—though I still don’t, though I asked him when he woke. He did wake, you see, later—not then. But I went with him as Sister Mortrem said and I watched the healers tend to him and he has been kept outside the walls in halls for the sick, but it has been some time now and there are no windows there so I thought perhaps it would be pleasing to bring flowers or scent herbs or a plant or a beautiful person or all of those things.”

Ze watched her, expression still warm as it had been through the whole spiel spoken with so little breath it almost might have all been a single over-excited sentence.

“You’re beautiful and have flowers,” Ze clarified after a moment, in case the point had not been made clearly enough yet. “I named him Ottolo because he said he could not give me a name of his own.”

“They are wondrous,” Zekiel said. “Are they of a good season to take any blooms on their own?” he asked. “I should think, since his current keeping room has no windows, I will need first to bring him only flowers that can be put into a vase of water, and some herbs to make the air there fresher. Perhaps if later he can be moved to a place of sunlight, then a full plant would do well. Have you ever seen a foreigner?”

It wasn’t, perhaps, the smoothest of transitions, but that did not occur to Zekiel in the slightest, his attention hopping from the purple-blue curve of the live petals, to Fallon herself, and then back to thoughts of how he had initially encountered Ottolo and how many great changes had already occurred in the time since then.

From a body, to a foreigner, to a boy, to Ottolo—Otto had made significant transitions in his so-far limited stay on Yael, at least from Zekiel’s perspective.

“Ohh,” Zekiel said. “Those are beautiful as your eyes.” In the moment, with their faint glow and white-gray petals, that was what they reminded him of, thus the words came rolling off his tongue without another thought. “And I should think Ottolo would think them lovely to give light in the dark. It upsets him I think to be alone in it.”

Zekiel reached, thumb touching to the outer curve of one of the petals to trace it. Soft, and cool. He smiled at his company.

“You do have enough?”

Then, she mentioned having seen a foreigner.

“You have! I hadn’t. Not before. Now I have. Were they pale? With hair like curled sunlight also and crystals pink like the inside of a shell?”

Zekiel blinked. Orange crystals? Red hair? It seemed wild to imagine, but then, after Ottolo, he certainly could imagine it, and perhaps it meant that the mainlanders came in a great variety of colors—as many even as the rainbow. That would be a sight to behold.

“He sounds fascinating,” Zekiel said. “If I were there, I should have liked to speak with him too.” The moment he said it, Ze felt a small pinch of heat move for his cheeks, for he knew — at least generally speaking — that wasn’t an especially popular opinion. As Fallon had just said Jolanta had done, most of his fellows considered the mainlanders dangerous and best to run from, so perhaps he oughtn’t want to speak with them.

But still, he did.

So far it had gone well, and surely it couldn’t go that poorly in the future.