diligence, chapter 1

From her very, very fleeting experiences with cherubuns, Aurora couldn’t say that she was jealous of the saintly sort’s origins, but curious? She would freely admit to that, and how could she not be, when seemingly overnight a bed of fluffy, marshmallow-like clouds appeared on the outskirts of Burrowgatory? It was evidently the perfect foundation atop which to build shops, restaurants, and even an Embassy for the newly displaced buns, since those popped up nearly as quickly. Aurora was one of the many buns whose eyes sparkled at the novelty of it all, so she made it a priority to plan a day to visit.

Planning wasn’t quite in her wheelhouse, however, getting as far as checking the calendar on her phone for one of the many reminders she set for herself before ending up distracted or overwhelmed by choice– or, more often than not, her slothful nature won out and she decided that, since it was not an overly pressing matter, she could wait to figure out her plans another day. It was only once the rainy season passed, giving way to a series of blissfully warm days, that Aurora decided, planning be damned, to put on her best sundress and take the elevator up to the Heavenly Embassy that day. It would be fun!

And it was! There were a few boutiques to poke around in, and the rich scent of fresh coffee even lured her in for a cup, but what she hadn’t heard much about was the well-appointed greenhouse tucked away near the Embassy itself. It came as no surprise to most that Aurora adored gardens, fitting right in with the fanciful flora that bloomed at the base of her tail and near her horns; likewise, she couldn’t keep her own garden to save her life. Try as she might, she just couldn’t keep a bloom alive for any period of time longer than what it took to purchase and take home a plant from the store.

Places like this, then, to absorb the ambiance of a garden without necessarily taking responsibility for another life (even just a plant’s!) were ideal for a bun like Aurora.

It was quiet when she stepped inside and warmer, too, on account of the humidity that the greenhouse kept trapped to support the foliage inside; for a moment, she wondered if she was even technically allowed to be in here…

“Excuse me.” The two words that came from behind her were so terse, Aurora nearly jumped out of her skin. She didn’t want to get in trouble, after all, considering how prickly she’d heard the caretaker of the Embassy could be. A tongue-lashing on a day meant for some quality rest and relaxation would be the very last thing she needed! A dainty hand at her chest as if it might still her over-excited heart (was the coffee from earlier so strong?), Aurora turned to take in the sight of a mildly impatient-looking cherubun.

In his arms, he carried an almost cartoonishly large bag of fertilizer, with a much smaller bag on top of that; he wore all white, but a little gardening apron and gloves presumably kept him from dirtying his otherwise pristinely ruffled and pressed clothing. There were no horns hidden in the golden curls on his head, just a halo fixed at the crown of his head. He frowned, and then shifted his weight from one foot to the other, considering Aurora was still blocking his path completely. “Excuse me.”

“Oh!” Aurora finally realized her faux pas and practically jumped out of the way to allow the cherubun to pass by. Her eyes fixed on the fluffy tail at his lower back– much like the cloud this placed was fixed upon, it was just a white tuft in place of the long, slender tails she was used to seeing in Burrowgatory. It struck her as something particularly charming.

The cherubun stopped in his tracks before glancing back to Aurora, brows furrowed. “Well? Another pair of hands would be appreciated, even…” He eyeballed the pale, sharp nails tipping each of her fingers. “Clawed though yours may be.” Now that she thought about it, cherubuns didn’t have claws, did they? They were so common down in the city that succubuns didn’t really bat an eyelash at them.

Aurora took no offense to the presumption, even smiling a little at what she knew was an invitation. “Well, sure,” she replied, taking the initiative to open the next set of doors into the greenhouse for him. “Are you Primrose?”

He didn’t so much as bristle at that, angling himself and the giant bag through the doors and leading the way. “I am, yes. Don’t tell me that my reputation has preceded me?”

So he did know that he’d been presumptuous. Aurora grinned again regardless before taking the smaller bag off of the top (“Careful with that!”) and following behind. “No, not quite. Beanny at the coffee shop talked about you a bit.”

It earned possibly the softest scowl she’d ever seen. Had a rose ever tried so hard to be thorny? “In any case,” he answered, “you are…?”

“Oh, I’m Aurora,” she replied, reaching her hand out for him to shake and… dropping the bag entirely, sending little, glimmering seeds in all directions along the pathway. The moment played out almost in slow motion, from seeing the color drain from Primrose’s face to the bag practically exploding, to his face regaining its color to instead turn bright red. “Ah, geez.” She wasn't sure how he might react, but Primrose simply took a shaky breath to calm himself.

“Aurora.”

“Yes…?”

“These seeds are very important and remarkably delicate,” he explained, slowly, clearly trying to keep himself from bubbling over.

“I understand.” Aurora had practically deflated. 

“And being that they’re now coating the wet pavement, they will need to be planted immediately,” Primrose continued.

“I see.”

“I do hope that you didn’t have plans for the rest of the afternoon, since this is a labor-intensive process,” he finished.

“Well, I…” Aurora was not good with plants, or “labor-intensive,” though she did not have any plans or moral standing with which to refute him. “I should start picking these up.”

“Mhm. I’ll prepare a spot for these.” Primrose’s sigh was a heavy one. Clearly, this was not what he had blocked off for his afternoon, either. Aurora resolved herself to get the seeds picked up, and she would just tell Primrose after that she was no good at the actual… planting part.

It didn’t take quite as long as Aurora feared to clear off the pathway, and by the time she found Primrose, he’d already laid down the soil for a decent sized patch. “Well, I have these,” she explained, showing off the seeds she’d gathered and returned to the torn bag. “But there’s a problem.”

“Hm?” Primrose gave her only a sidelong glance.

“It’s… really not that I don’t want to help, but I’m no good at keeping plants alive,” Aurora explained. “I want to help, I do. I really love flowers, but every time I give it a go, they just wither away…”

“Diligence.”

Aurora stopped her circuitous explanation in its tracks. “What?”

Primrose sighed before turning around and crossing his arms over his miraculously clean apron. “That’s the problem with your type,” he explained. “Assiduity, sedulousness, effort. Have you heard any of those words in your life?”

“Well, effort, I suppose–”

“But you’ve never embodied a virtue like that.” Aurora felt her cheeks grow hot. So she’d spilled the bag of seeds. There was no need to be chastised! And to think that her first impression of him had been that he was thorn-less. She’d been pricked, and it hurt! “When you’ve planted seeds in the past, did you bother with fertilizer? Temperature, humidity requirements? Did you research how often the plant would need watered, and ensure proper drainage?”

“I… watered it, sure,” she said, weakly. Was all that other stuff really necessary?

“If you take on a responsibility, you must see it through to the end,” Primrose concluded. “If you don’t want to plant these, you should leave, so I can do it correctly.”

Aurora considered his words. Primrose was sanctimonious and not… nice about it, necessarily, but he was right. It wasn’t like she had much of a work ethic to speak of. She took a deep breath. “I’d like to learn how to do it right, if you’re offering to show me,” she answered, kneeling down to look at the patch he’d prepared so far.

Primrose, evidently satisfied with that, finally obliged Aurora in showing her how it was done. “Right now, I’m making a small indent for each seed. They’ll each need enough space to root, but since we have so many to plant, we’ll need to maximize space. This pattern should be sufficient.” He pointed out where he’d already started. It wasn’t easy to see while she was standing up, but a small grid-like arrangement of indents was as neat and tidy as the cherubun himself.

“So I should imitate that on my half?” Aurora replied. She reached down to begin smoothing out the soil in front of her.

“Yes, but make sure you don’t pack down the dirt. The roots will have nothing to grow into if the ground below is too compact.” For his blunt assessment of her earlier, Primrose was not a bad teacher, reaching over to fluff back up the dirt she’d accidentally pressed down.

“Oh. And… the dirt shouldn’t be wet?” Aurora was already starting to understand where she’d gone so wrong in her earlier forays into home gardening.

Primrose offered another side-eye. “No.” A brief pause. “Did you soak the soil first, in your other attempts to grow a garden?”

Aurora flushed, but like Primrose, she didn’t look directly at him, instead focusing on her little indents. Just a single fingertip was enough for the dainty seeds they’d be planting. Not too deep, either, on account of her claws. “Of course not. Whoever would do something like that?”

He didn’t answer her right away, fortunately, letting the embarrassment wear off just enough that she’d almost forgotten entirely when he said, “Liar.” Aurora couldn’t help but sit back on her haunches to laugh. It was a gentle sound, but genuine, and she could feel Primrose smile just slightly to himself beside her. Thank goodness for it, too, the sound absorbing some of the tension from before and letting it float up and away.

“Alright, how about this?” Aurora eventually leaned back to show off her hard work, arms spread out to her sides. Dirt had gathered and caked beneath her claws, but it was worth it, in her opinion, for the satisfaction of a job well done…

“Wrong.”

“What.”

Aurora sat up a little straighter and looked back down at her half of the patch. What was incorrect? Maybe a couple of the grids were crooked, but it was basically just like his! “You rushed it at the end,” Primrose explained, pointing down to her last few rows of indents. “Look at your spacing. It’s too close together here; the seedlings might take root, but as they grow, they’ll fight for space and choke each other of nutrients. Like I said, these seeds are very important. We can’t waste them on silly, impatient mistakes.”

Aurora huffed as she took note of the mistakes he’d pointed out. Primrose was right, of course, but she didn’t have to like it! Carefully, she fluffed back up the soil on the rows he’d pointed out, ensuring that she didn’t disturb the ones that had won his approval. This time took a bit longer, though mostly because she was careful to keep the spacing between indents even and straight, glancing to his side every once in awhile simply to verify she was on the right track.

“It takes so long this way,” she sighed, leaning back again to wipe at her forehead with the back of her arm. However Primrose managed to stay clean during this process was surely a miracle.

Primrose leaned back, too, looking over her work. “It takes even longer when you rush through it the first time,” he answered, though he nodded all the same. “This will work just fine.”

“So now we plant the seeds?”

“Now we plant the seeds,” he agreed. “Exactly two in each, and then you add a bit of the soil back on top.” Primrose was already demonstrating. He pinched two of the teeny, tiny seeds between his fingertips, let them drop into the indent he’d created, and then in a quick motion, swiped just a bit of the dirt back to cover the seeds.

This part, mercifully, required much less technique, so Aurora felt comfortable to chatter while they worked. “What exactly are we planting, anyway?” Two seeds in the hole, cover. Two seeds, cover.

“These flowers will be used to make ambrosia,” he explained, working at what she noted was a faster pace than herself– not any less precise, though, which she guessed was just the benefit of being well-practiced in something.

Aurora dropped a pair of seeds in an indent before glancing over. “I’ve heard of that stuff. Is it any good?”

“Is it any–” Primrose halted his work only to stumble over his words. “It’s amazing. It’s a shame you can’t drink it. It can cure your ails, consumed for its taste– it can transform cherubuns’ very bodies, if diluted properly…”

“Oh!” She sat up straighter. “So it’s a bit like the drinks that Hops mixes up back in the city, huh?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” he huffed, though Aurora still thought it sounded an awful lot like something similar. “It’s– it’s not like that.”

There was only the briefest of pauses before Aurora spoke up, albeit softly. “Liar.” Primrose hid a small sound behind his hand that she wouldn’t dare call a laugh. Aurora just didn’t have the heart to embarrass him like that.

Though her back ached, they did, eventually, get through the rest of the seeds, the pair both taking a moment to appreciate the well-cultivated patch of soil. “I bet they’ll be beautiful,” Aurora sighed wistfully. If the surrounding flowers were any indication, she would be right. The way she spoke earned a sideways glance from Primrose, whose brow furrowed in bemusement.

“I thought you were taking responsibility?” he countered, taking his gardening gloves from his fingers for the sole purpose of placing a hand on his hip.

Aurora’s eyes widened. “There’s… more?” she asked, standing up a little straighter.

“Of course,” Primrose replied, not missing a beat. “I’ll need you to come back tomorrow for more work. If you went home now and tried to cultivate a houseplant, you’d probably inadvertently drown the poor thing. Diligence isn’t just an afternoon of work.”

Aurora opened and closed her mouth. There was more? Just how much more? Regardless, she felt a strange tug at her heart, one that wouldn’t let her throw her hands up and just leave all of this to someone else. It was, for the first time, a sense of responsibility blooming in her heart, and all she could do was nod.

“Until tomorrow, then,” she replied.