31: garden? shadowgast maybe? 🥺💕
When the snows of Rexxentrum had finally receded to the shadows and mountains and forests, the gardens in Zadash had already started to bloom. The first, waxy buds of the trees that lined the historic streets of the Empire's capital-- thin and cultivated branches stretched into pleasant skeletal arches through the winter while the wild and ancient trees that rose like the monsters from Caleb's fairy tales cast their long shadows against the tall city walls-- had started to form. Little beads of promised green that drew in the songbirds searching for seeds as they picked at the shells of the forming leaves and announced the chilly northern spring.
Essek had watched the snows recede with all the careful calculations as he once watched the courtly dramatic in Xhorhas. Every week was the same as he visited. He tried to hide his curiosity, but Caleb knew. He knew that Caleb knew where his interests lay now that the snows had settled into a grumpy pile of muddy grey sludge in the shadow of the garden fence.
"I was considering what to do with it all."
Caleb spent his mornings at the modest kitchen table when Essek was there. Likely when he was not there as well. Their books were set out with their breakfast-- the soft and invigorating scent of the teas Essek had brought with him from the Blooming Grove chasing the familiar smells of crisp bacon and buttery eggs. Food far richer than Essek recalled having so frequently before as they had bent together over their newest innovations and ideas.
Caleb had spoken without looking up from the spell he was copying from Essek's book.
Essek turned back to the garden with a smile as some stray cat confidently meandered around the mud and patches of newly exposed grasses. "You could grow vegetables."
"I was thinking the same. But I only had a talent for beans. Maybe onions."
"Nein, not yet. Beau has asked me to visit them in Zadash to see their flowers."
"They want to know if you can use any of them. They asked me the same when I last passed through," Essek watched the catch pick its way around old flower beds and ruined ceramic pots that had shattered in the cold depths of the Rexxentrum winter.
"Plant something," Caleb said. It could have been an order more than an invitation if Essek didn't know better. "Anything you want."
It was nothing to cross from window to table once the invitation sank in. Essek stooped to kiss the man's cheek and let his hand slip across broader shoulders than his own. "I do not have the skill. You know that."
"Is that an admission of defeat already?"
"Prodding at my ego will not convince me otherwise."
"You can teach me." Caleb turned back to his work in copying out the spell; "Or we can learn the trick together."
Essek considered the prospect for a moment as he reclaimed his chair and watched Caleb's careful trace of each line and pattern of a spell he had only just developed. He could picture it. The man with his hands buried in the soil, coaxing new life back to it. "Together, perhaps."
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