Post by Raul Adalwulf on Dec 4, 2020 0:35:03 GMT -5
*Snip*
The air smelled sweet with the pungent perfume of rich plant flesh, a wholesome, meat odor in which his nose could pick out the signatures of sugars and nutrients that made his belly rumble and his mouth water. Beyond the perfume was that warm, soft, deep and thick tang of loam, of soft, damp soil with which his half-feral brain associated most of it's favorite things. It was the smell of running free in the trees, and of stalking a hare through the underbrush, of lazing beneath a glorious elm. It wrapped him up like a big warm blanket that swaddled him so close that it filled his nose and lungs with that earthy flavor. Stacked on and beside that was the dry dusty scent of thatch and tinder, of dry leaves not yet touched by damp and gone to rot, a scent that called to mind the rustling of leaves and the oranges and reds of the fall. Behind and beneath it all was that last scent. The last aroma had a name.
It was the fragrance of turned soil, and of grassland after a rainstorm, of flowers. Petrichor, was the name for it, not that Raul knew that. A lot of the things Raul could smell didn't have names, and they were so private and personal to his perception of the world that he seldom thought to even ask if they did. This smell though, in his mind it had a different name. Holly. That was what she smelled like. Grass, and rain, and flowers, and sadness...
It permeated the whole of the garden club's rooms, as if each and every object had been touched or placed personally by the diminutive pink haired girl. To his brain, the smell was so completely and intrinsically associated with the girl that it made the whole room, and every plant and object within it, a part of her. Every leaf, every trowel, every grain of dirt, on all of it lingered a trace of that smell. Anyone else might have wondered if the room smelled like her because she had spent so much time there, or if she smelled like the room because she spent so much time within it, but Raul didn't even think to question it, because to him it was such a self-evident fact that the two were one and the same that to question it would be like questioning a sunrise.
This had been more than a room, to Holly. These plants had been more than just a hobby to her. This had been a cornerstone, an inseparable fulcrum of her personality. This room, these plants, this dirt and these tools and these books were Hollyhock, not what people had been whispering about her. Raul couldn't reconcile the two, this place, like a window laid open to the soul of the girl, with the things she'd done, including to him.
*snip*
The shears clipped cleanly through the shoot, and the discarded branch toppled to the earth. Raul plucked the twig out of the planter and examined it, comparing it against the picture in the dirty book laid open in his lap, so small in comparison to his proportions that it looked like a wallet laid open across his thigh. The picture looked similar, but Raul give it a sniff anyway. The tang of split fibers and of infection cut through the loam, and he wondered why the book didn't say anything about that smell when it was so much better at identifying diseased limbs than the frankly superficial flaws it seemed to describe in such exhausting and impenetrable detail. Carefully, he laid the cast off fragment, six inches long and like a toothpick compared to his huge paw, atop a small pile of similar forsaken fragments he'd been collecting in an empty plant pot. The book said to save these rejects for some reason, but Raul hadn't read that far ahead yet.
Holding the pruning shears, absurdly tiny in his grasp, more proportionate to nail clippers compared to his massive fingers, he daintily reached into back into the shrub and selected another likely candidate. He hesitated, as he had every time since starting this task, with the blades barely touching the bark of the shrub. It still felt wrong. It felt like he was maiming this plant, ignorantly and maliciously disfiguring it, but the book assured him that this made the plants happy, and kept them healthy, and Raul wanted these plants to be healthy and happy, if plants could be such a thing. Raul had certainly never smelled happiness on a plant. The book didn't say, but it hadn't known about the smell of the sick branches either...
*snip*
He frowned as the most recent subject toppled free, and he plucked it up, and placed it carefully with the others. Beady blue eyes, seemingly more suited to spotting small game hiding in a brush, as apposed to sickly branches, scanned the remaining branches. He couldn't argue that the plant didn't look a little happier, a little less cramped and crowded, and his knotted brow softened, and his frown became a hint of a smile. He patted the top of the shrub, allowing the blunt and purplish leaves to tickle the palm of his hand, and very slowly, like a giant trying to fit into a room made for normal people, ever conscious that the slightest of a careless movement on his part could spell disaster for any of the fragile residents around him, he collected his book and his pot, and his shears together and stiffly rose up to almost his full height.
He'd been sitting for a while, and he was stiff, but it felt good to know that the stiffness had come from doing something nice for the plants who couldn't prune themselves. His blue green eyes passed affectionately across the row of recently pruned shrubs, with their purplish leaves and bushy profiles. He didn't know what they were called, and it didn't seem important, as most of them had little notes taped to their planters with instructions for how much water and fertilizer to give them and how often, and that was the actually important information in his mind, and apparently the mind of the person who wrote the notes too. Raul wondered if it had been Holly as his eyes drifted to the row of tomato planters on the far side of the room, nearest to the windows.
He hadn't pruned those plants yet. He hadn't dared touch them. He hadn't dared because, those plants were apparently Holly's favorites. No one had told him that, but the smell of the girl was strongest around those plants, and they were by far the healthiest and most well tended plants in the whole club, their fruits glistening red and ripe on the vines even now in the midst of winter, as if a bit of Holly's influence still clung to them.
Raul hadn't touched those plants yet, because if he did, it would mean admitting that Holly wouldn't be back to look after them. It would mean admitting in spite of the fact that he could smell her scent so clearly that it was like she was all around him, that Holly was gone
Raul simply wasn't ready to do that yet.
The smile he'd been wearing dissolved, and left behind the blank impenetrable expression of a face only faintly related to humanity. Despite himself he found himself approaching the tomato plants, and the aroma of petrichor and sadness grew so thick that he half expected to see the pink head of the garden's former groundskeeper peaking over the rows at any instant. He blew out a sigh from a nose that had more in common with a muzzle than was typically considered polite in high society, and on haunches better suited to four legged locomotion he crouched down before the plants. He felt for a moment like someone come to tell a family that something had happened to one of their number, but he didn't say anything. The book said some plants liked to be talked to, and Raul had even found some music players scattered around the garden, so apparently someone else had agreed, but it had proven too noisy for Raul's sensitive lupine ears and he'd abandoned that experiment very quickly. Besides, he didn't have any better of an idea how to talk to plants than he did people, and he didn't want to offend anyone.
That was how he was, crouching, looking into the tomatoes with no hint of expression on his broad, pointy face, when the door clicked and started to slide open.
1445/1445
The air smelled sweet with the pungent perfume of rich plant flesh, a wholesome, meat odor in which his nose could pick out the signatures of sugars and nutrients that made his belly rumble and his mouth water. Beyond the perfume was that warm, soft, deep and thick tang of loam, of soft, damp soil with which his half-feral brain associated most of it's favorite things. It was the smell of running free in the trees, and of stalking a hare through the underbrush, of lazing beneath a glorious elm. It wrapped him up like a big warm blanket that swaddled him so close that it filled his nose and lungs with that earthy flavor. Stacked on and beside that was the dry dusty scent of thatch and tinder, of dry leaves not yet touched by damp and gone to rot, a scent that called to mind the rustling of leaves and the oranges and reds of the fall. Behind and beneath it all was that last scent. The last aroma had a name.
It was the fragrance of turned soil, and of grassland after a rainstorm, of flowers. Petrichor, was the name for it, not that Raul knew that. A lot of the things Raul could smell didn't have names, and they were so private and personal to his perception of the world that he seldom thought to even ask if they did. This smell though, in his mind it had a different name. Holly. That was what she smelled like. Grass, and rain, and flowers, and sadness...
It permeated the whole of the garden club's rooms, as if each and every object had been touched or placed personally by the diminutive pink haired girl. To his brain, the smell was so completely and intrinsically associated with the girl that it made the whole room, and every plant and object within it, a part of her. Every leaf, every trowel, every grain of dirt, on all of it lingered a trace of that smell. Anyone else might have wondered if the room smelled like her because she had spent so much time there, or if she smelled like the room because she spent so much time within it, but Raul didn't even think to question it, because to him it was such a self-evident fact that the two were one and the same that to question it would be like questioning a sunrise.
This had been more than a room, to Holly. These plants had been more than just a hobby to her. This had been a cornerstone, an inseparable fulcrum of her personality. This room, these plants, this dirt and these tools and these books were Hollyhock, not what people had been whispering about her. Raul couldn't reconcile the two, this place, like a window laid open to the soul of the girl, with the things she'd done, including to him.
*snip*
The shears clipped cleanly through the shoot, and the discarded branch toppled to the earth. Raul plucked the twig out of the planter and examined it, comparing it against the picture in the dirty book laid open in his lap, so small in comparison to his proportions that it looked like a wallet laid open across his thigh. The picture looked similar, but Raul give it a sniff anyway. The tang of split fibers and of infection cut through the loam, and he wondered why the book didn't say anything about that smell when it was so much better at identifying diseased limbs than the frankly superficial flaws it seemed to describe in such exhausting and impenetrable detail. Carefully, he laid the cast off fragment, six inches long and like a toothpick compared to his huge paw, atop a small pile of similar forsaken fragments he'd been collecting in an empty plant pot. The book said to save these rejects for some reason, but Raul hadn't read that far ahead yet.
Holding the pruning shears, absurdly tiny in his grasp, more proportionate to nail clippers compared to his massive fingers, he daintily reached into back into the shrub and selected another likely candidate. He hesitated, as he had every time since starting this task, with the blades barely touching the bark of the shrub. It still felt wrong. It felt like he was maiming this plant, ignorantly and maliciously disfiguring it, but the book assured him that this made the plants happy, and kept them healthy, and Raul wanted these plants to be healthy and happy, if plants could be such a thing. Raul had certainly never smelled happiness on a plant. The book didn't say, but it hadn't known about the smell of the sick branches either...
*snip*
He frowned as the most recent subject toppled free, and he plucked it up, and placed it carefully with the others. Beady blue eyes, seemingly more suited to spotting small game hiding in a brush, as apposed to sickly branches, scanned the remaining branches. He couldn't argue that the plant didn't look a little happier, a little less cramped and crowded, and his knotted brow softened, and his frown became a hint of a smile. He patted the top of the shrub, allowing the blunt and purplish leaves to tickle the palm of his hand, and very slowly, like a giant trying to fit into a room made for normal people, ever conscious that the slightest of a careless movement on his part could spell disaster for any of the fragile residents around him, he collected his book and his pot, and his shears together and stiffly rose up to almost his full height.
He'd been sitting for a while, and he was stiff, but it felt good to know that the stiffness had come from doing something nice for the plants who couldn't prune themselves. His blue green eyes passed affectionately across the row of recently pruned shrubs, with their purplish leaves and bushy profiles. He didn't know what they were called, and it didn't seem important, as most of them had little notes taped to their planters with instructions for how much water and fertilizer to give them and how often, and that was the actually important information in his mind, and apparently the mind of the person who wrote the notes too. Raul wondered if it had been Holly as his eyes drifted to the row of tomato planters on the far side of the room, nearest to the windows.
He hadn't pruned those plants yet. He hadn't dared touch them. He hadn't dared because, those plants were apparently Holly's favorites. No one had told him that, but the smell of the girl was strongest around those plants, and they were by far the healthiest and most well tended plants in the whole club, their fruits glistening red and ripe on the vines even now in the midst of winter, as if a bit of Holly's influence still clung to them.
Raul hadn't touched those plants yet, because if he did, it would mean admitting that Holly wouldn't be back to look after them. It would mean admitting in spite of the fact that he could smell her scent so clearly that it was like she was all around him, that Holly was gone
Raul simply wasn't ready to do that yet.
The smile he'd been wearing dissolved, and left behind the blank impenetrable expression of a face only faintly related to humanity. Despite himself he found himself approaching the tomato plants, and the aroma of petrichor and sadness grew so thick that he half expected to see the pink head of the garden's former groundskeeper peaking over the rows at any instant. He blew out a sigh from a nose that had more in common with a muzzle than was typically considered polite in high society, and on haunches better suited to four legged locomotion he crouched down before the plants. He felt for a moment like someone come to tell a family that something had happened to one of their number, but he didn't say anything. The book said some plants liked to be talked to, and Raul had even found some music players scattered around the garden, so apparently someone else had agreed, but it had proven too noisy for Raul's sensitive lupine ears and he'd abandoned that experiment very quickly. Besides, he didn't have any better of an idea how to talk to plants than he did people, and he didn't want to offend anyone.
That was how he was, crouching, looking into the tomatoes with no hint of expression on his broad, pointy face, when the door clicked and started to slide open.
1445/1445
