Painted Garden (for esper_cave)
Title: Painted Garden
Theme + Number: #35 Flowers
Claim: Relm
Characters/Pairings included: Strago
Rating: K
Warnings: Set several years after the end of the game.
Summary: The lack of color nearly hurts Relm's eyes.
The Thamasan soil still is parched and cracked. Thirsty. The townspeople had all hoped that the destruction of the Statues would somehow partially reverse the new, dry climate they had had to live with for that past year, but even now, a number of years after then, the winds show no sign of slackening. They just keep bringing hot air and cloudless skies. The trees have started pruning their own branches, deciding which ones are the most essential, while the others wither away. The small harvest dwindles. New plants refuse to take root as the old ones silently accept their demise.
Strago misses his flowers.
Relm knows this, can read it in his deep forehead wrinkles as he boils water in the morning for a cup of matcha tea. She does not ask. The flowerboxes, once filled with scarlet and white impatients, hold only the same dry Thamasan dirt. The garden, too, is bare. The lack of color nearly hurts her eyes. Next time she travels to Jidoor for her next exhibition, she will bring him back two large arrangements, one for each floor of their modest cottage, birds of paradise and amaryllis and whatever else strikes her fancy. She will bring three dozen irises back, and a bouquet of tulips imported from Maranda. She resolves, promises to herself.
He adds water to the finely ground powder and whisks it around, not as briskly as he did in Relm’s youth. She frowns slightly. His liver-spotted skin has sallowed and grown more tired, and she reads in the spots’ punctuation, and the irregular clinking of the whisk, that she is uncertain whether she can keep her promise.
Relm nods to Strago and takes the whisk from him, takes down a second cup from the cupboard, and stirs vigorously. With a slight smile tugging at one corner of her mouth, she hands Strago his tea. She takes hers and both sit at the table wordlessly. Two thousand phrases and scraps of thoughts feel as though they are bursting her lungs open, that she must talk, but somehow she demurely stirs her tea and sips without a word.
Strago looks out the window at the empty garden beds.
With an inward sigh, Relm finishes her tea, gets up, and places her hand on her grandfather’s shoulder for several seconds before hesitantly walking to fetch her easel and palette. On her way outside, she notices with some relief that he has at least started to read this week’s newspaper imported from Tzen. She walks through town, several large canvases strapped to her back, and cheerfully bids good morning to the others in town, and, sets her easel in the ground within sight of the placid ocean.
Though the scene in front of her is peaceful and beautiful, Relm attacks the canvas with a yell and an energy she didn’t realize she had suppressed all morning. The seascape in front of her is the last thing she thinks about as she layers paint thickly with her palette knife. Alizarin crimson. Cadmium red. Titanium white. Some cobalt blue and ultramarine mixed with burnt umber, a viridian mixed with sap green, and a glaze of yellow ochre. Suggestions of forms appear: ghosts of impatients overflowing from their flowerboxes. Relm smiles.
The painting has the same subject as some dozens of earlier paintings, but Relm doesn’t mind. It’s a series of sorts, much like she used to paint the ever-changing aura of the mystical mountains before the world turned itself inside out. It seemed to her that every morning, the mountains would take on another personality. Now, her memory dresses the flowerboxes in a different outfit every day, and she paints how her mood has shaded that picture in her mind.
The sun is well in the west when Relm saunters back to the cottage. Her arms and forehead and the bridge of her nose are smeared with paint, although she doesn’t care or notice. Her skin is taut and dry from sitting in the wind and sun all day. She deposits her paintings in a shed she built for her artwork and swings around to see Strago methodically raking sand around the stones in his prayer garden.
He acknowledges her with a nod. His contemplativeness and silence has aged Relm more than him, and he knows this. He is too frail for frivolity and Relm’s Malboro mouth, and she knows this.
Relm tosses and turns at night. She cannot sleep in this silence that threatens to crush her eardrums. She tiptoes to the hallway and looks in Strago’s room. She freezes. He is gone, sheets rumpled. Relm gallops down the stairs and runs outside, her eyes hiccupping back and forth in the faint moonlight, the trees swaying in the hot breeze, grass crunching under her feet, no, he’s not on the bench in the garden. But that’s - and there he is, hunched over, quietly murmuring to himself. Relm watches him for a moment, puzzled. Scraps of fabric napkins litter the ground, but Strago precisely, authoritatively picks them up, folds them, softly wedges them in the cracks in the dirt.
Strago looks up at her not without a tinge of guilt in his eyes. “I just… I, well, I miss my flowers.”
Relm nods. “I know.”
He motions. “Help me plant again.”
The scraps slowly unfurl from their resting places in the cracks of the soil. Relm runs to her shed and returns with a small basket of paints and brushes. She squeezes a dollop of white paint into the folded napkins and arranges their petals, sets them aside, then digs a small hole in the dirt with her finger. Strago watches expectantly as she twists off the cap from a bright red-orange tube and, with a few bold strokes, she has made an amaryllis. Delicately, she pushes the blossom into the ground and proffers a paintbrush to Strago.
He smiles, gingerly.
The two dive into their work, folding, pressing, painting, and planting the makeshift flowers into the ground. They fill a plot outside the cottage and move on to the flowerboxes, filling two with fabric irises, mums, and roses. They run out of fabric, and Relm cuts up some fresh new canvas, and eventually they exhaust her paint. The moon has shifted overhead and they admire their handiwork, perky little flowers in the arid ground, drips and knots of paint all over the ground. The two grin at one another, and Strago shows a contentedness in his eyes he hasn’t displayed for months.
The makeshift garden welcomes the new weeks ahead with an unwavering joy. Relm embarks to Jidoor with several crates of new paintings. On her return journey, her cargo is baskets and pots of real flowers: birds of paradise, irises, chrysanthemums, roses, trilliums, daffodils, tulips. The joyful riot of color in the painted garden welcomes her back home, but she approaches the front door apprehensively and says a small prayer as she pushes the lock into the key, the metallic clinking of the mechanism echoing emptily in her ears.
Theme + Number: #35 Flowers
Claim: Relm
Characters/Pairings included: Strago
Rating: K
Warnings: Set several years after the end of the game.
Summary: The lack of color nearly hurts Relm's eyes.
The Thamasan soil still is parched and cracked. Thirsty. The townspeople had all hoped that the destruction of the Statues would somehow partially reverse the new, dry climate they had had to live with for that past year, but even now, a number of years after then, the winds show no sign of slackening. They just keep bringing hot air and cloudless skies. The trees have started pruning their own branches, deciding which ones are the most essential, while the others wither away. The small harvest dwindles. New plants refuse to take root as the old ones silently accept their demise.
Strago misses his flowers.
Relm knows this, can read it in his deep forehead wrinkles as he boils water in the morning for a cup of matcha tea. She does not ask. The flowerboxes, once filled with scarlet and white impatients, hold only the same dry Thamasan dirt. The garden, too, is bare. The lack of color nearly hurts her eyes. Next time she travels to Jidoor for her next exhibition, she will bring him back two large arrangements, one for each floor of their modest cottage, birds of paradise and amaryllis and whatever else strikes her fancy. She will bring three dozen irises back, and a bouquet of tulips imported from Maranda. She resolves, promises to herself.
He adds water to the finely ground powder and whisks it around, not as briskly as he did in Relm’s youth. She frowns slightly. His liver-spotted skin has sallowed and grown more tired, and she reads in the spots’ punctuation, and the irregular clinking of the whisk, that she is uncertain whether she can keep her promise.
Relm nods to Strago and takes the whisk from him, takes down a second cup from the cupboard, and stirs vigorously. With a slight smile tugging at one corner of her mouth, she hands Strago his tea. She takes hers and both sit at the table wordlessly. Two thousand phrases and scraps of thoughts feel as though they are bursting her lungs open, that she must talk, but somehow she demurely stirs her tea and sips without a word.
Strago looks out the window at the empty garden beds.
With an inward sigh, Relm finishes her tea, gets up, and places her hand on her grandfather’s shoulder for several seconds before hesitantly walking to fetch her easel and palette. On her way outside, she notices with some relief that he has at least started to read this week’s newspaper imported from Tzen. She walks through town, several large canvases strapped to her back, and cheerfully bids good morning to the others in town, and, sets her easel in the ground within sight of the placid ocean.
Though the scene in front of her is peaceful and beautiful, Relm attacks the canvas with a yell and an energy she didn’t realize she had suppressed all morning. The seascape in front of her is the last thing she thinks about as she layers paint thickly with her palette knife. Alizarin crimson. Cadmium red. Titanium white. Some cobalt blue and ultramarine mixed with burnt umber, a viridian mixed with sap green, and a glaze of yellow ochre. Suggestions of forms appear: ghosts of impatients overflowing from their flowerboxes. Relm smiles.
The painting has the same subject as some dozens of earlier paintings, but Relm doesn’t mind. It’s a series of sorts, much like she used to paint the ever-changing aura of the mystical mountains before the world turned itself inside out. It seemed to her that every morning, the mountains would take on another personality. Now, her memory dresses the flowerboxes in a different outfit every day, and she paints how her mood has shaded that picture in her mind.
The sun is well in the west when Relm saunters back to the cottage. Her arms and forehead and the bridge of her nose are smeared with paint, although she doesn’t care or notice. Her skin is taut and dry from sitting in the wind and sun all day. She deposits her paintings in a shed she built for her artwork and swings around to see Strago methodically raking sand around the stones in his prayer garden.
He acknowledges her with a nod. His contemplativeness and silence has aged Relm more than him, and he knows this. He is too frail for frivolity and Relm’s Malboro mouth, and she knows this.
Relm tosses and turns at night. She cannot sleep in this silence that threatens to crush her eardrums. She tiptoes to the hallway and looks in Strago’s room. She freezes. He is gone, sheets rumpled. Relm gallops down the stairs and runs outside, her eyes hiccupping back and forth in the faint moonlight, the trees swaying in the hot breeze, grass crunching under her feet, no, he’s not on the bench in the garden. But that’s - and there he is, hunched over, quietly murmuring to himself. Relm watches him for a moment, puzzled. Scraps of fabric napkins litter the ground, but Strago precisely, authoritatively picks them up, folds them, softly wedges them in the cracks in the dirt.
Strago looks up at her not without a tinge of guilt in his eyes. “I just… I, well, I miss my flowers.”
Relm nods. “I know.”
He motions. “Help me plant again.”
The scraps slowly unfurl from their resting places in the cracks of the soil. Relm runs to her shed and returns with a small basket of paints and brushes. She squeezes a dollop of white paint into the folded napkins and arranges their petals, sets them aside, then digs a small hole in the dirt with her finger. Strago watches expectantly as she twists off the cap from a bright red-orange tube and, with a few bold strokes, she has made an amaryllis. Delicately, she pushes the blossom into the ground and proffers a paintbrush to Strago.
He smiles, gingerly.
The two dive into their work, folding, pressing, painting, and planting the makeshift flowers into the ground. They fill a plot outside the cottage and move on to the flowerboxes, filling two with fabric irises, mums, and roses. They run out of fabric, and Relm cuts up some fresh new canvas, and eventually they exhaust her paint. The moon has shifted overhead and they admire their handiwork, perky little flowers in the arid ground, drips and knots of paint all over the ground. The two grin at one another, and Strago shows a contentedness in his eyes he hasn’t displayed for months.
The makeshift garden welcomes the new weeks ahead with an unwavering joy. Relm embarks to Jidoor with several crates of new paintings. On her return journey, her cargo is baskets and pots of real flowers: birds of paradise, irises, chrysanthemums, roses, trilliums, daffodils, tulips. The joyful riot of color in the painted garden welcomes her back home, but she approaches the front door apprehensively and says a small prayer as she pushes the lock into the key, the metallic clinking of the mechanism echoing emptily in her ears.