reaching out for sunlight just to be ripped up by the stem

Sable kneels down in the cold, dark earth, facing the ambrosia flowers she’d planted. It feels like so long ago, but… she smiles, tracing an opalescent petal with her fingertip. It glimmers pink and blue where the light dances on its surface, and when she pulls away the petal curls as if to draw her back. 

It feels like so long ago, yet at once like barely yesterday. 

“They grew so beautifully,” she murmurs with a smile, looking over her shoulder at Primrose.

Primrose has a softness to his face that she’s never seen before, a smile pulling at his thin lips. “Indeed,” he says, “I’d say you did an adequate job with them. Above expectations, even.”

Sable has to stifle a snort at the dissonance between his words and the warmth in his voice. “Well, thank you, though— we should harvest them before we congratulate ourselves about it, right?”

He clears his throat, and rolls up his sleeves. “Right, right. Do exactly as I say, yes? This next step is just as crucial as the previous ones.”

Sable nods, fiddling with her spade as she waits for him to continue. He doesn’t seem in any particular hurry for it, however— he fusses with his clothes, with their equipment, and Sable’s attention wanders. The early morning sunlight trickling through the greenhouse ceiling dapples the earth and plants alike, and when she shifts her weight forward, her knees sink into the rich soil. Thank the demons Hollis lent her their old overalls— her usual clothing would already be ruined by now. 

Close by, Churro is loafed in a patch of sunlight, and when she reaches over to give him scritches he instantly flops so she has access to his belly. “You are so silly,” she says, to which he has no response but the thump-thump-thump of his tail against the ground. Sable giggles at him, then turns back to Primrose when she hears him settle next to her.

“A very silly boy, yes, though hopefully not silly enough to eat the plants,” he says with a sniff.

Sable furrows her brow and tilts her head at him, feigning confusion and concern. “Oh? How many times has he done that?”

Primrose huffs, scrunches up his nose like a Rabebe. The answer to that question was, of course, zero. They both knew it. “Hmph, well, no use dwelling on the past, I suppose,” he mutters. “Let’s focus. We’ll start by removing the plants from the soil— roots and all. We use every part of the plant for ambrosia, so every part is important. The tap roots and heart roots are of particular importance, hm?”

Sable nods, frowning in thought. “Those are… the biggest roots for these plants?”

“Tap roots go directly down, heart roots grow more… diagonally, down and away from the main plant. Don’t concern yourself with the tiny roots, just the big ones.”

“Um, okay,” Sable mumbles, studying the plants in front of her. “So… we keep the plants all intact, and then..?”

“Then we take them back to my workshop, and I’ll start preparing them to make ambrosia from.”

“Okay,” Sable says with a deep breath. “I’ll try my best…”

Primrose hums, and begins to dig into the ground with his spade, much slower and gentler than she’d seen him do before. He shifted the loosened earth with his gloved fingers, searching for any sign of roots. He seems to find none, though, and kept digging. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter.

Sable starts mimicking him, focusing on her own spade and the dark soil beneath it. The soil is surprisingly loose, not sticking together like the more clay-filled dirt in her garden back home, so her spade digs deeper than she expects. Squeaking, she nearly jerks her hand back when a hand steadies her own. 

“If you accidentally crushed a root with that, you shouldn’t pull away so quickly,” Primrose says sternly. “There’s important transformative properties in the ground up roots, but it’ll bleed into the earth if you just pull away. Keep the spade in there, like a knife in a stab wound.”

“Okay??” Sable says, and swallows at the crack in her voice. “What do I— what do I do?”

“You shall keep still, while I dig around and see if anything was severed.”

Sable nods a few times, the movement matching the staccato drumbeat of her heart in her chest. She felt a warmth against her side, and knew more by memory than anything that it was Churro. She took a deep breath. This is one root, and it can be fixed. This is one root, and this is her first time doing this. It’s okay.

She watches as Primrose gently feels around the soil in front of her, his angle awkward enough to make the task difficult. She has to move her head back to avoid an elbow to the face once or twice, but doesn’t feel the need to complain when Primrose has to twist his upper body like a contortionist just to reach it. 

Primrose’s thin lips press into a frown. “Feels like there’s a root there after all that may have been crushed a bit. We’ll have to free it quickly and carefully so I can staunch it.”

Sable gulps. “Okay? Just, um— tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I’m so sorry Primro—”

“Just focus on keeping still so I can work,” Primrose bites out, sharp enough to cut her apology at the quick. 

Sable falls silent, just watching Primrose as he begins to operate with all the cold efficiency of an emergency room surgeon. He digs into the surrounding dirt with his spade, combing through it with his fingers as he’d been doing before, but at a speed that had Sable struggling to keep up with it. He digs down, down, down— quick but careful, until at last he seems satisfied with how much he’s exposed.

“I’ll grab the plant by the base, and start pulling on three. When I do, I need you to find the crushed root and wrap it in a rag— there’s some in the cart I prepared for transporting the plants. I’ll take over holding the spade while you fetch it.”

Sable nods, wide-eyed, and Primrose takes hold of the spade from her. She has to pry her fingers out of their death grip, but does eventually hurry over to the cart. Just like he said, there’s a small pile of rags puddled at the bottom of it. Sable grabs one and brings it back over, clenching it between his hands. He nods to her, and lets go of the spade slowly. 

“Ready?”

“Y-Yes, um, I’m ready.”

“Good, on three— one…”

He grabs hold of the plant’s base, gentle but firm. 

“Two…”

Sable falls to her knees at his side, rag at the ready.

“Three!”

The plant comes out of the ground with a shower of dirt and debris, and Sable’s heart pounds— where is it, where is it—

“To your left, by your pinkie— there you are, yes, wrap it tightly now.”

Sable ties the rag around the root as tightly as she dares, and lets out a shaky sigh of relief, rocking back on her heels. A few spots of dark gold show through the fabric, but the ichor or… whatever it is… seems to be at no risk of bleeding through for the moment. 

“Oh demons below, I’m glad we could fix that,” Sable breathes out. 

Primrose sniffs. “I doubt they have anything to do with this,” he replies, getting up. He cradles the whole plant the way one would a precious treasure, and carries it over to the cart, laying it to rest there for now.

Sable doesn’t know how to respond, so she just nods, picking at a loose thread in her borrowed overalls. “Um… hopefully it’ll be less eventful from here on out, right?”

Primrose snorts inelegantly. “We can only hope.”

And as it turns out, their hopes came true. Time slips through their fingers like dark earth, and together, the cherubun and succubun reap what they sowed.