[SRP] Winter Garden

[Strifeling]

Private solo self-RP with Champagne and Absinthe, might include Castellion (official wip, earned via tea garden event) or Thistle Boneblossom or Lumi later???

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Plots: Fallen Angel in the Garden of Paradise
Beauty and the Beast
Every Rose's Thorns
Memories of Summer
Cold Solstice

 

[Strifeling]

Champagne shivered, feeling the chill of the early winter evening wind. Her exhaled breath made wisps of warm vapor that shimmered dimly and then condensed into crystals of ice around her face. A borrowed fur shawl lay on her shoulders, and it kept them warm, but it did nothing for her legs. She supposed she was lucky she had hooves and was unable to feel the coldness of the soil, but she hadn't been lucky enough to inherit fur like her brother and sister had. They were well-built for the winter, while she was better built for spring.

The sky had not yet blackened, still colored in the deep blues that appear after twilight, but already the moon was high above the horizon. Somehow, the pale silver light made everything seem colder. As Champagne walked through the garden, now feeling the touch of winter, she paused by each of the rose bushes to check them carefully. Tonight would be a cold and frosty night.

"Hmm," Champagne murmured as she expected another rose bush, double checking to see if the delicate plant had formed seed pods. Her vision was poor in the darkness and this was a task best reserved for daylight, but in all honesty she was only doing this for her own peace of mind. All the roses had already been checked twice before for their rosehips and had soil piled around their base to help protect them from the frost, while other plants in the garden had already been veiled hemp cloth or covered with a mesh to save them from the cold or defend them from wandering winter animals in search of food. Her garden was already prepared for winter.

Of course, she was not heartless. She had spent the summer and fall harvesting, collecting, and preparing seeds with the help of the garden familiars and a passing fire ulun'suti. Champagne had bags of sunflower and pumpkin seeds stored away, along with a variety of mixes, that would hopefully last through the season. When it snowed, she would pour the seeds onto the ground for the local birds and any wandering deer or passing rodents to feast on; the garden had provided for Champagne in her time of need, supplying food and also giving her a place to stay and recuperate, and she wanted to pass on the favor.

She lifted her head and walked a few paces forward, circling the central cirque, a slightly raised platform formed of soil and lined by stones keeping the structure in place. Although Champagne had not built the garden from scratch, she had contributed to its design and structure, and this was one of her ideas: raising the plants ever so slightly to both give the viewer a better eye and to help with the drainage of excess water. The garden was well-placed -- it didn't flood or form stagnant pools during the rains, despite its location -- but water could be a problem. Sometimes there was too much, and at others too little. Champagne had plans for the coming summer to design and install an irrigation system, but whether it would work was yet to be seen.

Champagne Word Count: 526

 

[Strifeling]

Nestled in a garden alcove and hidden by shadows, Absinthe watched her sister. The moonlight didn't reach her here, but her several pale blue eyes glinted like small moons in the darkness. Her pale eyes were very sensitive to sunlight, stinging in the bright light of day even despite the protective shadow of her black coat that functioned like the stripes of those distant cheetah-cats, so Absinthe preferred to be active in the soothing darkness of the night.

Absinthe was only staying temporarily, but Champagne had made a place for herself here, a garden where she could be happy and carefree, living in the moment from day to day. They had both heard of their father's herd, The Primrose and Hope herd that was lead by their own grandmother, Shoshana, but neither of the two sisters had yet sought those soquili out. Champagne was comfortable where she was for the time being, inwardly at peace and still healing internally -- both physically and mentally -- from the ordeals she had gone through in the past sun-cycles, and Absinthe wasn't yet ready for any new encounters. At this point in time, she didn't even vocally communicate with her own sister.

She had suffered no less than Champagne, but where Champagne was like a bright young sapling, ever-thriving, small but still powerful enough to split stones as she set roots, sought the sun, and grew, Absinthe was driftwood: salt-tempered, light as a feather, buffeted wherever the waves took her, and most of all brittle and incredibly delicate -- fragile. That wasn't to say Absinthe didn't have any inner or outer strength, but she paled in comparison to her sister.

Absinthe watched Champagne murmur to herself. The angeni-cerynei was too far away for her to hear, but Absinthe knew she was still fretting over her beloved plants. Absinthe couldn't relate too much. She appreciated the flowers -- she always carried some with her, after all; clusters of flowers tied to her hair and ivy wound around her thin, delicate antlers -- but didn't invest as much time and care into them as her sister did. They were beautiful, but fleeting, and Absinthe told herself there was not much use in getting attached to something that was so weak and perished so quickly, keeping herself at a distance with a shielded heart.

She felt a pang of envy in her chest and her heart throbbed painfully. Now that Champagne had found a place to belong, Absinthe was sorely aware of what she was missing. She could do without a permanent home -- preferred it that way, even -- but she also didn't have any discovered talents or special skills, and Absinthe wasn't sure if there was any place that would miss her if she went missing.

Absinthe Word Count: 455

 

[Strifeling]

Absinthe mulled over that cold, lonely thought. It lay heavily within her and brought with it a sense of both desolation and depersonalization that made her feel strangely and simultaneously hollow yet frozen on the inside, an unnerving sort of chill that was unrelated to the night air. A fleeting thought rose to the surface, telling Absinthe she was fooling herself about not needing nor wanting a permanent home or a place to belong -- if she were so independent, after all, why bother sticking around her sister like a ghost and following her like a shadow? -- but she snuffed it out before it could fully take shape.

She lay alone in the chill and silence, looking at the barbed roses inches from her eyes and thinking about belonging and family. What had ever happened to their father, their mother? By this point in time, she couldn't remember much. She barely remembered their faces. How long had it been since they had seen their father? Absinthe couldn't count the seasons that had passed. She wondered where he was, and what he could be doing, wandering the Kawani lands likely with no home to speak of, for what purpose. But her memories of their mother were still somehow vaguer. Their mother had raised them, or tried to, and had truly done her best, but a part of her -- heart or mind, Absinthe wasn't sure -- had been broken, fragmented into pieces. From what little Absinthe could remember of her foalhood, there had been a melancholic quality to her.

She turned her head to look at her sister. Champagne didn't have family, either. Not really. Neither of them had bonded familiars, nor lovers, nor doting parents. Where was their brother now? What had ever happened to their grandparents? And their aunts, their uncles and their cousins? Were they still with the Primrose and Hope herd?

Absinthe knew they were out there, somewhere, but somehow that thought made her feel even worse: they were out in this world, but not one of them had sought them out. No one had come to them to bring them to their father's herd, not even in their foalhood, and no one seemed to care now either. Vast as the world was, with thousands upon thousands of soquili, not too many individuals looked like her and her sister. How hard could it be to track down soquili with six wings? As far as Absinthe knew, they were all related, too, however distantly. It seemed it made no difference to them whether Absinthe and her siblings were a part of this world or not. She and her sister could track their family down themselves, sure, but as far as she was concerned the fact that no one had tried to find them really said something, and it wasn't anything good.

Absinthe then decided, rather matter-of-factly, that others did not care about anyone but themselves and could not be relied upon in times of loneliness or hardship.

Absinthe Word Count: 500