2019-09-05 - Jessamine and Saffron

It's a lovely Thursday morning, and the business day is in full swing. This is usually one of the shop's quieter days, so only Ully is manning the register and shop, with August taking care of things in the outside greenhouses. Thoma has the day off. A couple of customers roam about in the shop, looking at this and that, but none are outside, at least not yet.

August is working on pruning the bushes and trees they have in stock which have spent the summer growing like gang busters. He gives the impression of someone who's gotten over an illness and is steadily recovering; a little tired, but not exhausted. The smells and sounds that have been plaguing him have loosened their grip, and his head's clear once more. He's in a plain, heather gray Henley t-shirt, denim jeans, and his work boots, and sporting garden gloves and a pair of sheers as he prunes.

Lilith wanders around the shop instead of going straight to the register to ask, looking over the grounds, then the lay of the shop before she finds August out working the shears with a whole lot of snip and clip. She's wearing a button down shirt dress today that's light cotton charcoal color with a little cinching hip dangle of chain belt through the loops and silver lacing sandals to match. The woman also keeps her sunglasses on until she gets a good look at August, then she flips them upward to squint at the man a beat through her lashes, assessing one thing or another before fully stepping up, "August, hey. Giving those trees and bushes the what-for, huh?"

The brunette stays back a little playfully with hand out in brief, like he's going to whip around and prune her too on accident for walking up and talking to him while he's in workmode. But August isn't that surly.

August glances up from clipping a Japanese maple, double takes when he sees who it is. He eyes the hand with an amused look. "Don't worry, you don't look that much like an overactive ornamental," he says. Turning back to his clipping, he says, "Some of them had a banner month. Got a bit out of control. Keeping them pruned keeps them healthy."

He glances between her and his work. "How've you been doing?" If he's still looking for signs of what she went through earlier in the summer, it's not obvious. Of course, there's been plenty more going on. A small smile. "Think you're ready for one of your orange jasmines?"

"You know. I got a few days breather finally of decent days between one shitshow and two new ones, so maybe that's a win for my general sanity, I'm not sure." Lilith tells August with a shift of her weight between hips and a hand resting at curve of one, tongue clicking a few times like 'fucking town' without actually saying it. After pulling in a breath, she informs with a dry kind of brightness, "Plus side, I'm not possessed and hexed or drained nowdays, so that's nice. Probably a little less of a liability. Probably."

Then she nods a little pointedly at the question from him about the jasmines plant, "And yes, please. I think I am. Thinking about getting a dog soon too, house might actually feel like life instead of just me if I can keep everyone in one place and alive. The orchids, though, I'd like the prettier of the pair delivered to the Penthouse at the Bayside apartments for Byron Thorne. I think you probably know who that is by passing, at least. That's his floor all at the top. It's pretty ridiculous." The last bit is said just a touch fondly, though.

Then as an afterthought, she adds, "Also, I know I said 'no' to the saffron, but I've made a chef friend that would get all tight in the pants over freshly harvested saffron."

August meets Lilith's dry brightness with a rueful smile and a laugh. "Been through a little of that myself. I mean one shitshow to another, not the possessed or hexed part." The ruefulness turns sympathetic. "For what it's worth, I don't know if I'd call you a liability. Not your fault all that went down. I know that might not mean much, considering, but..."

He nods, taking in her request. "Will do. I've been thinking about a dog myself--maybe a herding animal of some kind, or a hunting dog." He relishes the thought of orchids he obtained up in Bayside's penthouse, considering propagating it into a half-dozen so Thorne winds up with a whole bunch of them.

"Doable," he says, of the saffron. Setting his clippers aside and pulling off his gloves, he nods at the smaller, private greenhouse all the way out back of the property. "Saffron and jasmines are out there, if you want to come have a look." He gives her a brief once over. "And feel up to it."

Lilith looks dandy and seems to feel fine, save for maybe some general air of restlessness in general-- even standing still, she's changing stance or weight shifting and finger fidgeting a fair bit. It's not a big deal, but probably some residual of whatever shitshow last happened. Her shoulders shrug a little to the first bit, small rise and fall of good-natured dismissal that's probably more of a non-comment brush off, "Time has helped some, so it'll be fine when it's time to be fine about that particular shitshow. The other ones will eventually distract me out of it, I'm sure. Like mm."

Lilith looks at the greenhouse indicated, then nods easily and readily, because she figures those damn orchids probably look different here cultivated and spread out and in natural environs compared to the ridiculous bouquet form they were in before, "And sure, I'm down for it. It was infuriating at the time, I don't know how I had the grace to piecemeal all the pretty instead of immediately kill it, considering what had just happened at the Bridge. I guess I have my soft bone moments."

Then with a click of her tongue as they start preparing to walk the stretch and change plant scenery, she sideeyes August a little, "One of the new shitshows, for me, involved getting very little sleep and a bloody rend instead. Still kind of have the marking even though it was days ago. You sleeping alright? Look a little worn."

"We all do," August says of them having soft moments, his tone wry. He nods at the greenhouse again, heads that direction. As they walk, he says, "I had a bit of a week. Turns out it was Them." The capital letter is hard to miss. "They dragged Ellie and I Over There, had a little fun with us." He makes a face. They're just about to the greenhouse now. "We made it out alright, but it's left me thinking. About a lot of things." He looks askance at her as he opens the door. "I guess that's just how it is, with Them."

Unlike the Quonset canopies and public greenhouses, this one's more sparsely filled, and has the sense of being a privately curated set. It's eclectic, to be sure, and clearly includes some plants being tended to for damage or illness. (Not that it takes him long to heal anything.) One rack has a group of four pots holding a series of pebble plants; another has numerous bouganvillea vines in various stages of growth.

Her orange jasmine--the regrown original, and its propagated offspring--are in a set of pots along one wall, the regrown the largest of them, the same size as the one she purchased those couple of months ago. The child trees are smaller, and accordingly in smaller pots on a rack.

The saffrons aren't far from the jasmines. They've all been rooted into a series of plain terracotta pots, the sort of intermediate potting that's a preface to them finding a home. There's four pots of them left, now; the rest have gone to various cooks and August's personal garden at the cabin.

"This is kind of like on Little Shop of Horrors where there's a bunch of little Audreys as backup. I think I'm naming it Audrey, hell with it. It can have a name." Lilith says after nodding her head a bit direly at the first walking bit of the explanation, lighting up with mild amusement when she sees the familiar-style plant and all the little ones as spares, more or less. "That means the orchid I'm keeping is Seymour on principle." After reaching fingers to touch at the greenery budded tall and anew, she turns to look at the saffron placement with a bit of a twist of her lips.

"Oh, wow, nope, they're still making me mad. But it's tolerable." Lilith sighs to herself and reaches up to pull the sunglasses from her head for tucking into her shoulder bag before moving over that way, toward the scent of them, "Probably because he was in... the dream. Byron got dragged in with me and we had to... face a couple of my fears and insecurities and bitter makings. We could see childhood versions of ourselves in similar situations as driver and clue, and those were real memories that... I guess manifested and warped on the side we were standing on to challenge. It was... fucked up. We both woke up a little bloodied by personal demons with legitimate claws."

Then Lilith confesses, "I thought... maybe we wouldn't look at each other the same after or something because of some of the content. Because those... happenings do make you think about things, the long shadows twist things we feel because we're too damn bright. I shouldn't be surprised, it happened right after I did something big at the hospital at range to heal Alexander to ensure he was stable. I figure fanning all that power into the air just... mm. Do you know him?"

"I'm not saying I could take a flytrap or a pitcher plant and see how likely it is to make an Audrey, but..." August flashes his teeth in a teasing grin, brief and amused with the possibility even as he dismisses it. He knows he couldn't do that. At least, not here. Over There, though...

He nods at her description of the Dream, ducks his head. "They turned Gray Harbor into...somewhere I've been before," he says, voice low. "Kept hammering on both of us with some of our worst fears." He's quiet a few seconds, then says, "It probably did make you see one another differently," he says. His eyes are fixed on one of the bouganvillea's; he's clearly thinking of someone other than Lilith and Byron. Then he blinks and focuses on Lilith again. "But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. They can be revelatory. Even as they're trying to drag you over the coals with the bad shit you've been through."

Mention of the hospital and Alexander gives August pause. "Yeah. Itzhak and I went to visit him." He manages a small smile. "You did good, injury like that could have left him with permanent vocal damage easy." And then she was dragged into a Dream. So it went. "He's a friend, so. Thanks for that."

Lilith chuckles a little at August's offering for bite-plants and almost looks a little excited at the prospect as she stops looking at the damn saffron and knocks a hand through her hair while listening to his next bit. Breathing a puff of air over her lips, she nods a little bit and speculates, "I guess it did. Maybe for better. Maybe just for confusion." There definitely had been a couple of notable moments of development over one thing or another the past few days, but there was the other incident too. She can't figure out if she wants to read into or not to read at all for caution sake.

The woman breathes out a tiny sigh to herself and continues on with a little twitch of semblance smile after she's thanked for Alexander.

"Anyway, the healing, yeah. I usually can only do it for Byron because I'm used to how he's made. At least with relative ease. It's hard for... but the thing is, I--" Lilith has to pause here and kind of force the words before they pick back up to casual again, "at the bridge, I flayed Alexander's leg open to the bone, so I remembered what it was like to be inside him like that. And I didn't realize that I didn't need to touch or see him, but I tried because ah. Stuff. Lots of guilt over what I did to him and didn't get to fix the first time, Isabella needing to feel okay, and... I just found him using the bad to make good. It was stressful. Had consequences, I guess. But worthwhile in a couple of ways."

August shrugs. "Confusion can lead to good things," he says. "Eventually. When you find yourselves on different wavelengths, working towards a common ground can really strengthen you in ways nothing else will." An apologetic wince. "Of course, it can be rough, in the mean time."

He listens to Lilith's description, folds his arms and looks thoughtful. "So--a good breakthrough, then." He looks around them at the plants. "And maybe a step towards better control with the rest." He can't himself conceive of severely injuring someone with their power--the equivalent of punching someone in the kidney, or boxing their ears, definitely, but bone breaking and cutting through flesh and muscle, those are nauseating to consider.

He clears his throat. "Glad to hear you got there, even if it would've been nice if the circumstances had been anything else." He huffs a laugh, shakes his head. "I hope they can sort out something with that Ghoul business, we're not going to get that lucky most of the time."

"Yeah. Byron got attacked the day after the dream issue by a psychic force. Crushed his ribs and he was able to get me on the phone, thankfully. I guess we're going to look for a clue for something to execute on the other side soon and I offered to um. Take out my aggression and protect the others with the wits and eyes while they're trying to figure out what to find or do." Lilith explains to August with a tiny nod of her head and a grim set to her mouth and features there for a moment, the shift of her standing anxiety intensifying there for a few beats. "It's... hard to be on guard to the very air itself because of a ghost... or an Addington, depending. Or both, hell. I don't even try to make sense of most of it. I'm just ready to swing when someone points me.

Curiously, Lilith wonders of August then, "Not that it's necessary, really, the bad things all twisted up with shadows tend to find people like us, I think, and start fucking us up early in life... but had you been exerting yourself more than usual before? I was probably overdue, myself, for it. Especially after the stress of July in general, but... I am curious. Sometimes I wonder too if there's just some kind of bad mojo in the air because occasionally others have issues around the same time, separately."

August listens to her description of Byron being attacked with a frown. He gets a distant look, starts to say something, stops. "You know...our range. It's really wide, the stronger we are." His mouth flattens, and he explains, "I can talk to Itzhak, using my power, from my cabin when he's here in town. And I'm not that powerful with that kind of thing, I'm nothing like," he waves a hand, "Alexander. I wouldn't be surprised, if this...ghost, or whatever, if it were one of us? Is strong enough to do whatever it needs to, from anywhere. I mean they could be...miles, and miles away. So they're not even there. Just their power is." He raises his eyebrows at her. "And you, or me, if we were familiar with an area, or people, we wouldn't need to see." He starts to go on, stop, licks his lips. "I've healed people without being able to see them or have a good idea of where they were, before. And I'm not as powerful as you, or this ghost, I expect."

He stops there, leaves off that tangent. He nods about the expedition to the Other Side. "I guess you could bless them, to protect them--you know, like we can do to ourselves. Maybe it won't be able to harm them as much."

To the other question, he looks at the ground. "I used to think I couldn't use my powers until Bosnia. Now, though, since I've been here, I'm remembering things about when I was a kid. And I think I was using them then--they just weren't as strong. Bosnia's just what blew them wide open." He sighs. "I don't remember anything like what just happened when I was young, or in Sarajevo, but that could just be my memory." He looks back up at her again. "You know? How when we're not near a place like this, it all gets muddy, and we forget. But we get back here, and the details, they creep back in. Sometimes. But I was definitely using them more than usual. Think I must've gotten Their attention." He sighs. "Itzhak said someone Over There said something about this. They...farm us, basically."

"Yeah. I hurt someone on accident at range, I guess, while mad and sleeping, supposedly. And I thought they were bullshitting me. But I remembered that when I reached out to find Alexander using what I knew of his body. I didn't realize before that how... extensive it could be. I don't even know what my limits are, but... with healing, I'd prefer to see anyway just because I'm so anxious about doing it and need the focal points. But we don't always get to choose our moments, do we? Especially not here." Lilith turns up a bit of a quirked up, rueful smile after her last bit and breathes out a tiny sigh to herself.

Then she's nodding to the forgetting and tilting her head a little, "I think I was close to somewhere strange, where I spent some of my time away, come to think of it, in retrospect. I did more weird justifying and pushing things out of mind than I forgot, I think, but I also... think I had vestige power I didn't realize I was exerting to sate urges that cropped up. It confused things and what I thought... I needed to do. And I made a career out of it there for a while which... mm."

There's a few bats of her lashes with sudden recall that starts slow, though, once his words about farming sink in, "I've heard things about the Facility, but that aside... One time we... had a bit of a faceoff with agents of dark things that attacked us in the theatre, back in spring. They definitely... wanted the chaos and suffering and fear and violence doled out, even to the forces that were fighting for them. Like they wanted them attacked to feed on the... mm. All of it. One of them got away. I'm sure that'll bode well one day." Totally won't bite anyone in the ass, right?

"I'm not that..." August stops. No, it's a lie to say he's 'not that good' with healing people. "It's a bit harder for me to heal people than other things." There. He came clean, he can reward himseld later. "Doing it from range, up close and personal...doesn't really matter." But then, it wouldn't, considering. He thinks of the fog, which had grabbed them right out of bed, and so somewhat...underprepared. "We really don't get to choose. Not here." He snorts, shakes his head.

He makes a low sound, listening to that explanation without judgment. "I imagine us, with our power, it's a lot harder to not get lost than it would be otherwise. A whole new thing to lead us off on some really wild tangents." He's symapthetic to it, even if his own experience was quite different.

"That would make sense. Feeding's feeding, right? Sure, maybe those people thought they'd be spared if they fed some of you to Them, but I don't get the impression They're all that picky." He laughs, bitter. "Poetic justice, I guess. Screwing themselves over as much as anyone else." Of the one who got away, he says nothing, just bobs his eyebrows in agreement. Nothing to do there but wait and see.

"Yeah. Nothing to do really, around here, but wait to get screwed in some way. I guess it makes us special kinds of screwy that's... interesting, I guess. It's something to bond over, in its own screwy way. Like... what would we be standing here talking about otherwise, actual plants to look pretty on a windowsill instead of utility warning and coping mechanism for me?" Lilith chuckles a little dryly and helplessly before shaking her head at August and leaning down to touch at one of the saffron crocuses for a beat before drawing her hand away after the ginger touch, eyes a bit contemplative.

On straightening, she shakes her head again, this time more solidly, "We think we want boring and normal, and safe, you know, but when you start here, I think it... gets in your bones. It's why so many people end up coming back, you know? And I don't want the what-would-look-pretty-on-my-windowsill conversations in life. I'm kind of stuck here for now, but when I'm not.. I don't know how well I'd fare out there, again. Complicated, as most things are in life when they're thick and full of mattering."

With a touch of wry humor, August says, "Might be here discussing a special plant I was hybridizing just for you to use to harass Thorne." It's about as 'interesting' an alternative for them, in a more mundane setting, as he can think of.

He sighs a second, nods in agreement. "I grew up in s spot like this. Didn't realize it, then, but it meant I was never going to not be anywhere but somewere like this. Don't know how much I'd have ever wanted 'windowsill' conversations--even if I didn't have this," he reaches out to run a hand along a bouganvillea, causing a new bud to form, "the other stuff I went through..." He shakes his head. "Normal and I parted ways a while ago. Might as well be here, with this, in that case." What was he otherwise? Another vet, torn apart by a war, trying to find a way to live.

He nods at the orange jasmine. "So, let's get this one back out to your car. I'll have Ully bring the orchids to Thorne tomorrow, if that's soon enough." He moves over to the potted shrub, hefts it up. "Want to send a note with the orchids?"

"This place makes damages and compensations, I guess. And I bought a new SUV finally post-wreck, so I've got a nice flat back space for Audrey." Lilith tells August with a nod of her head. And she won't say it, of course, some things don't compare entirely, but PTSD and feeling a little war torn is kind of a thing with her too now, especially since she was in a terrible position to deal out some nasty friendly fire. You don't forget what it's like to rip into people and splay them open to gore and blood and feel the bones snap.

But is she closer to certain people because of it, in some strange way? Maybe she is. And that's better than feeling isolated, misunderstood, and alone on the outside, in a whole lot of ways. So when August asks if she wants to send a note, she starts to handwave it, then says quietly, "Actually... yeah. I'll write one up at the counter on the way out and grab up some of the harvested saffron for Corey. Might come back at some point soon to have something picked out and sent to Isabella too, if I remember and decide on something that's suitable for her. But not until we have something to celebrate."

On the way out, she murmurs to August seriously, "But maybe people will soon, if we can put the Ghoul to task takedown or bound up rest." She pauses and turns up a little smile, like thanks for the outlet of conversation as well as the services rendered, "Thanks for being a pretty keen guy, you."