Crystal Children

When Maude hears that this girl, too, is a gardener, she becomes so wrought with emotion that tears actually well up in her citrine eyes, the corners creasing with happy delight, her smile so robust that it actually borders on being one of her old expressions. What were the odds! Of all the things she missed from Helovia, what she felt to be most absent from her life (aside from her friends and family) was the garden she had loved so much. The thought that she had found a fellow herbalist in the middle of all this chaos was such a hopeful thought that the girl could barely contain herself, hooves eagerly moving beneath her as she cranes her head to see what the girl is gesturing too. Suddenly blooming from the ground before her, an oddly colored plant sprouts up, its soft, baby leaves supple and smooth, and very strange to see amidst the sand of a beach. Not surprised (as the sand was not suitable soil for most things, though she was a bit disheartened), her happy smile downturns ever so slightly for but a brief second, before she is smiling, and attempting to be uplifting. Especially so, when she realizes that Otem seems to be a bit upset by her magic not going as planned. "Its okay, I can only do stuff with plants already there, so you’re already doing better than me. I think you just need some more lessons, is all," she says with smile and a sage nod, recalling her hours upon hours of studying and tending to the plants in the garden, with a sorrowful sigh that drowns out her initially cheerful words; doing her best to stuff that terrible loss down underneath the delight of potential friendship, though, she carries on with a struggling smile, "I’m sure if you’d tried in properly aerated and prepared soil it would have lived." The filly introduces herself as Otem, which Maude decides she likes, quite a lot. It makes her think of the deep rumbling rhythm behind all music, or the steady thrum of the water dropping onto the shore. "It’s nice to meet you, Otem," she says, genuinely meaning it; remembering her plants, now, she excitedly asks, "I have some plants I grew with me! Wanna see ‘em?" Not waiting to hear the answer, Maude promptly plunges her muzzle deep into her endless pockets, wary of her somewhat tempestuous plants. It was odd, but ever since she’d showed up here, they seemed to, well, have a mind of their own. Thankfully, however, she manages to retrieve one of her peculiarly behaving potted plants (pretending to be normal, at the moment) with relative ease, and sets it down on the sand. Carefully nudging its jostled twigs back into place with her muzzle, she gestures to it proudly with a fore-hoof. "Ta-da!" she declares, feeling only the slightest pang of sadness when she talks about the pocket battered specimen (she really did need to find a more permanent place to stay soon, before they died…), "it’s called Nightshade, and it grew all over the Edge back home. My Auntie gave me this one. I sure hope she’s… AHHH! Oh no! Not again!" Kicking sand at her suddenly on fire Nightshade, Maude’s frantic squeals come to a sudden stop when the plant ceases its odd burning. The flowers are left piteously wilted (looking how the ginger and cream maiden feels on the inside), but the plant is incapable of the frustrated tears the burst forth from the girl’s eyes as she stares at it. "Why does it keep doing that?!" she half shouts, stamping her foreleg down aggressively, and rubbing her suddenly intensely itchy back leg against its compatriot, her brows furrowed with disgruntled anger at the way life has gone since she’d been forced through the portal here. Looking at Otem apologetically, though still quite cross with her ill mannered plant, she sighs. "I’m sorry, it didn't burn you, did it? It doesn’t normally catch on fire like that." MaudeHow should we like it if the stars were to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.

Image Credits | Table