[Comm] Pursuit of Diligence: V

The next time he ends up at the Heavenly Embassy to harvest the flowers which he so diligently planted, Primrose is back to looking annoyed at him. Ashes has done nothing wrong to his knowledge. All the same, Primrose’s expression does not change. Ashes has never felt quite so guilty for having a cup of coffee on him except Beanny’s coffee is worth every carat and he has no intention of letting it go.

“And here I thought that you’d never arrive,” Primrose comments. “It’s almost time to make ambrosia and you’re a bit late for the harvesting of the flowers that you planted last time.”

“Ah,” Ashes replies without letting go of his coffee cup. “That sounds terrible actually. I don’t have a green thumb, Primrose.”

The Cherubun looks at him as if he’s grown a second head. “At least finish what you start, Ashes. You’re literally at the end.”

Except he wants to know more about Cherubuns other than the fact that they do this flower planting constantly. Ashes does not think that he has the diligence to do this. Except he’s also almost done and he’s also too far into this to let it go.

“Lead the way then,” he concedes because he can’t give up now though he doesn’t expect Primrose to tell him much about Cherubuns once again or anything about himself. Maybe he ought to meet a different Cherubun later down the line to get his questions answered. “I guess we gotta finish what we start.”

“It’s good for you,” Primrose replies rather lamely. “After you do it enough times, really, it becomes part of a schedule. Or a work schedule, if you can even call it that.”

“That’s not comforting.” He wonders how sloth buns power through this entire thing, Ashes swears that he’s never worked so hard in his life before having to commit to this. Though when he sees the flowers that he’s planted, well, there’s a swell of pride and then the gut punch that he has to harvest all of this.

“Don’t worry,” Primrose assures him. “At most it’ll take a few hours and once you’re done then you’ll be done and only have to come back to brew the ambrosia. It’s a bit like jam and it’s much easier to do than the whole planting aspect.”

Ashes still does not want to do this even as Primrose shows him how to remove the flowers to ensure that the nectar and so forth all stay on. Apparently harvesting part of the stems is also quite common and Ashes has never been so scared to cut something in his life. It’s too easy to mess up and he’s nothing if not a bit paranoid about this even if Primrose acts like this is the most normal thing ever to do in his life.

“I can’t believe you do this every couple weeks,” he finds himself saying as he starts harvesting the flowers. At least these plants smell nice. “It feels like such a pain.”

“Well, it is like putting on inventory if you’ve worked retail before,” Primrose explains. “Which is a pain, but you have to do it regardless if you want to or not.”

Ashes supposes he can see the perspective in there but all the same, he doesn’t quite want to work on plucking them. And the Cherubun seems to see through his exact thoughts when he opens his mouth again.

“I’ll buy you another cup of coffee if you help me with this,” Primrose adds. It’s music to Ashes’ ears. Beautiful, it’s the incentive that he needs as he slowly starts to harvest every flower. Some of them much smaller than others while others are larger, all of them are light yellow and a bit gold in colour. They’re beautiful flowers, Ashes still has no idea what they’re called nor does he expect Primrose to tell him what they are but he does decide to take one with him for research reasons.

“Do you mind if I attempt to research one of these? For academic reasons of course,” Ashes prompts. “I’m not going to eat it.”

Primrose scoffs. “You’d better not, Ashes. They’re poisonous for Succubuns and I’d rather not have you kneel over from ambrosia flowers.”

“I’ll ensure it doesn’t get eaten then.”

He does not ask Primrose how many times someone’s attempted to eat an ambrosia flower, or seeds in the Heavenly Embassy, really, those numbers that he can do without. With the amount of flowers around him, it does still make him wonder in regards to how many Succubuns that Primrose has witnessed or had to ensure that nothing went wrong. Though it does seem like that the other Cherubuns also lend a hand here and there to make it easier.

“Am I even close to being done?” he then asks only to find that there’s even more rows of flowers in front of him. Oh, this is going to take forever and Primrose only helps occasionally as the flowers are set into a small basket. From a distance they look like yuzus if they were fruits instead, there’s definitely a resemblance in the colours. “Nevermind, forget I asked.”

“It’s going to be a while, Ashes. If you want, I could entertain you with some stories about the Heavenly Meadow or just life here. Some of us are uh... they would have been better if they stayed here instead of being raised by Melangel.”

Now that’s a name that he hasn’t heard that much, if anything none of the Cherubuns seem to enjoy talking about their caretaker in the meadow. It’s almost like a ghost that haunts all of them, even Primrose avoids mentioning them and Ashes thought that he’d be a favourite but he supposes that being raised like that doesn’t exactly lead to happy feelings over time.

“How so?” he finds himself asking after snapping a particularly thick flower stem. It’s a big flower and Ashes swears is the largest one that he’s harvested so far.

“They tried to make us fearful of sin and some of them took it as a challenge,” Primrose explains simply. “Anyways, let me know when you finish with the flowers and we’ll go to the last step whenever you’re available next.”

Ah, Ashes looks at the flowers that seem to become more plentiful as he looks at them. This was going to take a while.