[OPEN/CATCH-ALL] merrily merrily,

[faithlikeaseed]

Who: Myr & OPEN!
When: waves hands vaguely at the month
Where: variously Dorch & Aefenglom
What: some very domestic activities for a faun & eventual catch-all prompts in comments
Warnings: rated B for being COVERED IN BEES


At the Chimera's behest (Dorchacht, early in the month)
i.
"D'you think it needs more bay leaf?"

Having heard that Caren was seeking new pastries to offer Dorchacht's enigmatic black Dragon, Myr's elected to make a go at expanding his own culinary talents. Libum and savillum were the easiest sweet treats he knew, and even if he didn't exactly remember the recipe from last time he'd made either (under Vandelin's watchful eye), they couldn't be that hard to reconstruct, could they? Soft sweet cheese, flour, honey, bay leaves, mix them up and pat them into cakes and bake them, what could go wrong?

A lot of things, it turns out. Starting with them falling apart because he'd used the wrong sort of cheese, and ending Maker only knows where because he hasn't given up on perfecting the things yet. His Bonded and dearest friends have all been lavished with cakes of varying degrees of success; and now he's brought the whole enterprise to Caren's house in Dorchacht to distribute as snacks to all and sundry in hopes of feedback.

So go on, take one. And let him know whether he's put in enough bay leaves this time. (Or, if the idea of a dessert with bay leaves is too alarming, there's another plate of cakes studded with poppyseeds he's been reserving. Not like he'd see if someone snuck one...)

ii.
Myr's time at the Sweet Chimera house isn't all or mostly spent on giving away extra cheesecake; he's here to teach, too. The Coven's recent burst of gardening classes is an inspiration, though it's not potion ingredients he'd teach people to grow--it's food.

Little urban gardens, from his father's in the alienage to the vegetable beds in Hasmal Circle that fell to Myr's care after the uprising, have saved Myr more than once from starving. He's every intention of passing that gift on to as many who'll learn it.

Today he's got a handful of curious Monsters and two starveling humans in attendance as he demonstrates how to pot up zucchini seedlings. The pots he's using are almost comically large for the little plants--something he explains, cheerily: "Don't leave these near anything you don't want covered in vines and marrows. They'll take over your house if you give them an inch."

He's always quick and eager to invite newcomers in, ears swiveling to track the sounds of footsteps or breathing, a bright smile on his face. "Want a pot of your own to take home? They might overrun everything you love but you can't starve with one around."

Oh, for a bee's experience, of clovers and of noon! (Aefenglom, post full-moon)
i.
After another exhausting adventure beneath the full moons, there's nothing so much Myr would like to do as collapse in his own bed a few hours (maybe with company) and then spend the rest of the day working his garden.

He does not even get to his front door before his plans are derailed. By, of all things, one of his beehive's scouts come floating around the cottage on the freshening breeze. Seeing a likely place to stop, she lands on the knuckles of Myr's staff-hand--

And he stops dead in his tracks, ears up and tail flagging with alarm. "Who's there?" he asks, for surely someone snuck up on him, someone with a very small voice who wants to tell him all about flowers and the weather and her pollen harvest...

Oh. Oh.

His staff clatters to the ground. He sits down heavily right there in the street outside the cottage he shares with Caster and Archer, cradling the bee like she's a precious gem. (Which she is.) "I can hear you," he says wonderingly, not caring who might overhear him talking to an insect. "Maker's breath-- After all this time, I can hear you."

He might just cry from the joy--and relief--of finally having magic again.

ii.
If the thoughts of one bee are a treasure, talking to his whole hive is a dragon's hoard, a superabundance of gifts. He'd already loved them--why else struggle as he had to keep them?--and they trusted him, so it's no surprise they're instant friends as soon as they can understand each other.

What's a little more surprising--for outsiders, anyway--is how at least a third of the hive decides to sit on him while they commune and he experiments delightedly with his newfound plant magic. He'd been quick to shed his shirt to give the bees more places to crawl that wouldn't catch them in a fold of fabric--what reason now has he got to fear stings?--though they're mostly festooning his antlers to avoid too much jostling as he works. It makes for a uniquely pastoral sight: A muscular Faun, stripped to his waist, up to his elbows in dirt and covered in bees as he encourages blossoming bee-balm to spring up through the soil.

The bees had requested it, after all. And there was plenty of room in the front garden to grow more.

(OOC: If none of these suit or we've discussed other plans, hit me up via PM or Discord--Plagueheart#0051--and I can add a prompt! Myr is also on the Hungry Grass and Strae quests for the month.)

Comments

[wylderrant]

Iramaat settles down next to him, watching as the bees begin to drift over to investigate her. Her lips spread in a little smile. She has always appreciated nature - here it's a little different. Like something else has woken up inside of her recently. She stretches a finger out and lets a bee land on it, watching it curiously.

"...as well as expected, I suppose," she allows after a moment, trying to put a little more cheer in her voice than she feels, "Dealing with the aftermath. You know how it is. Trying to keep busy and avoid going stir-crazy and also trying to find a new bond..."

She shakes her head, "So... busy, I suppose."

[faithlikeaseed]

Connecting with Talam's wilderness--even the little bits of it one could keep in a garden--is and isn't like Myr's connection to the Fade back on Thedas. Yet the strangeness is as much of a delight as the familiarity; that he can hear the bees in a way he never had before, and they him, is pure wonder. He tips an ear the better to listen to the one scout exploring Iramaat's finger, quite unable to keep a touch of awe from his face.

This may not be exactly what he was Made to do, but it fills the same need.

"...I do know," he allows, after a moment--because while he'd never been kidnapped and tortured, dealing with the aftermath is achingly familiar. Not even really thinking about it--because Iramaat's herd, even if they don't spend so much time together--he leaves off his digging and shuffles over on his knees to sit next to her, and offer her a side to lean on.

"How that is. Maker, and without a Bond, too?" Thinking of how the previous night might've gone for her makes him flinch. "Have you any prospects? Or would something temporary do until you've got some?"

[wylderrant]

Oh. That's a pleasant surprise. Iramaat lets out a sigh and slowly lets herself slide up against MYr's side. It's comforting to have someone to be close to. Maybe especially another faun, although she hasn't spent much time around him lately. She rests her head against his shoulder and tries not to be so deeply unhappy about everything.

It's hard, though.

"I'd like something that will last, but... I'll settle for temporary at this point."

She exhales again.

"I've been looking around, but haven't really found anyone..."

[faithlikeaseed]

At some unheard signal, the bees disperse themselves, drifting off their various ways to forage among the spring flowers. Which makes it much easier for Myr to lean his own head against Iramaat's, mindful of his antlers as he does. Sitting with her like this has ever been a comfort, and hearing that note of melancholy in her voice... He makes a note to seek her out more often.

"I'm Bonded to a Witch," he says, slowly, "so if you've need of a Bond to keep you from listing feral, I'd be glad to share something temporary."

Not wanting her to feel, well, unwanted, he adds: "I'd offer more but I'd fear to promise what I can't give, right now. I'm afraid some days I'm already neglecting one of my Bonded or the other, trying to keep after both of them."

[wylderrant]

"That... would be a great comfort to me, honestly," Iramaat replies slowly, "I just - I don't want to go completely mad over the full moon. It's not pleasant afterward and my memory is always shaky."

She frowns and he can probably feel the way her body relaxes against his. There's something very tired about her.

"Even if it's temporary. I might be done trying to find something permanent. It's less of a weight on my heart."

[faithlikeaseed]

He shivers to hear her say that, the fur of his neck up on end in sympathetic reaction at the idea. "No. No, I'd not want that for you either."

He'd gotten lucky in his own moon-madness, in the months before Bonding L; he'd been a risk to himself but not anyone else, in being pulled out to the Wilde as he had.

At least, he thought. My memory is always shaky. The worst part of it.

He firms his hold on her as she relaxes into him, offering wordless support. "Then I'm yours, when you need me.

"And I'm sorry, cousin, that it's worn you so thin as this."

[wylderrant]

"I didn't think it would," she replies with a groan, running a hand through her hair, "I thought it would be... how it always was. And then I found out I actually cared. It's not like it was, you know."

She sighs and puts her face in her hands for a moment.

"I have learned what it means to lose and to lose something meaningful and I detest it."

[faithlikeaseed]

There's always been something about Iramaat that's struck Myr as--well--alien, as distant from him as the ancient elves of Arlathan. It had never really bothered him (quite the opposite, actually; even if he'd given up daydreaming about those same ancient elves sometime in his early childhood, the appeal had never vanished)... But now, sitting here in his sunny front yard, with an arm around her and his bees buzzing away merrily in the background, the exact depth of that distance is clear enough it sends a shudder down his spine and fluffs out the fur on his tail.

What's strange is even finding himself wrong-footed like that, with one hoof out over the abyss, doesn't change an ounce of how he feels about her.

The heart's a strange thing.

"That," he says, slowly, but not without sympathy, "is a powerfully hard lesson to learn this late."

[wylderrant]

"I never wanted to learn it," she says with more than a bit of petulance, "I shouldn't have had to."

Which is perhaps the height of self-centered self-pity, but she's still a work in progress. Still, she manages to follow it up with something a bit more palatable, even if she's perhaps unaware of how selfish she can make herself sound at times (or is, honestly).

"But now I have. And I am dreadfully mortal. So I have to live with the pain of it and go on living with it, even if I go home and somehow go back to being... ageless. Eternal. I will always have it. How do you deal with it all? You've always been like this, haven't you?"

[faithlikeaseed]

An absent part of him wonders if that childishness comes hand-in-hand with an eternal nature; spirits, certainly, didn't progress the same way mortals did, with a circumscribed arc from birth to death. Why should it be any different for a creature that wasn't, in the balance, all that different from them? (Though she hardly seems as limited as they do, otherwise.)

He gives her question the consideration it's due, though one corner of his mouth twists up wryly at You've always been like this, haven't you? "So far as I know," he says, with gentle amusement. "Though I haven't died yet, so there's no telling.

"And sometimes we don't deal with it; I don't know any of us are able to, the first time we lose something important to us. I cried myself to sleep a week straight after I was taken to the Circle, all for missing my family, and that's before I even understood I'd never see them again. It did stop, eventually, and that's why the hopelessly naive will tell you it gets better over time, or you find other loves to fill up the aching spot inside you--"

He says it with such breezy dismissal because he'd been exactly that hopelessly naive sap, not so long ago.

"--but truth be told it's never really gone; it's simply become part of who you are. Your losses, your griefs--they make you up as much as your triumphs and friendships do, and build the foundation of the person you become after. Bear them with dignity and gratitude for what they've taught you, and you grow bright and noble; let the pain and regret eat you hollow inside and you'll twist up with fear and anger."

Which he's got experience with too, if the passion--and regret--in his tone are anything to go on.

[wylderrant]

"Not dealing with it sounds horrible," Iramaat murmurs in response. She doesn't want to imagine just carrying this frustration and hurt around with her. There are good days and bad days of course. Sometimes she wants to curl up, other times she feels almost as light and carefree as she used to (but it's never quite the same). She stretches one limb out with a little roll of her neck.

"...that makes it sound almost noble. I'm not used to accepting hurt with grace. I get revenge. I make people pay for hurting me. That's what I do," she continues, a tinge of real anger creeping into her voice, even in this idyllic setting, "I don't let people get away with that sort of thing. Not to me."

Her shoulders slump.

"But I suppose I haven't a choice, do I?"