Return of the Ambrosia-Related Mishaps

Honestly, Morgaine had come to really enjoy the gardening aspect of tending the ambrosia flowers in the greenhouses. It was physical work without being overly strenuous, and the aspect of being able to see one’s progress rewarded as you went along made it easy to stick with. When he and Dove arrived at the Embassy that day and were informed by Primrose that the beds of ambrosia the two of them had personally planted were ready for harvest, Morgaine was supremely satisfied and didn’t care how obvious it was.

That said, as he finished the careful pruning of a few more flowers and straightened up on his knees with a grunt, his lower back throbbed with a warning that it might never forgive him for this.

Both Primrose and Dan’s voices telling him to put weight on his legs and not his back echoed in his mind, and Morgaine futilely retorted in kind that such advice just didn’t apply when he was having to get up and down off the ground to prune flowers rather than lifting something heavy. He deposited his flowers in the basket sitting by his sighed and pressed one hand to his back, leaning back to stretch with a soft groan.

“Doing okay over there?” Dove called to him. There was a knowing tone to their voice and smile, and Morgaine waved a hand at them.

“I’ll be fine, sugar, don’t worry about me. This shouldn’t take too much longer, hm?”

“I hope not, but…” Dove looked down the row of flowers that the two of them had yet to harvest. Morgaine let out a controlled sigh and had to concede the point.

“Well, no point in stopping halfway - it’ll just be harder to get started again.” That was one lesson among many learned from years of tending and generally maintaining the bar.

“True,” Dove agreed. “It’s better to think about how nice the break will be when you’re completely finished!”

Morgaine hummed agreement, moving down the flowerbed to begin snipping at the next group of flowers. The ambrosia’s petals were delicate and white, veined ever so faintly with different colors if you looked at them at just the right angle in the light. They barely wanted to touch the petals with any more force than a passing brush of their fingertips, wary of bruising or breaking them off. With that careful touch, Morgaine tilted the stems just beneath the flower’s blossom to angle them for cutting.

The harvested flowers went whole into the basket in a neat-enough pile. When Morgaine and Dove were through with collecting them, they’d go on to be separated as Primrose had explained before (and as he was sure to explain again, Morgaine had no doubt). Petals, stems, and leaves would be separated and then processed in different ways - boiled, dried, ground down into a paste, and so on. Every part of the plant had different uses, even the roots that someone else would come along to dig out of the dirt when the two of them were done here. They could make medicines, soothing teas, and of course, the secretive concoction that the cherubuns considered such a delicacy.

It really was a bit of a shame that Morgaine would never be able to taste it for themselves. They’d have to live vicariously through others trying the finished product and telling them how it turned out, once they got around to that stage of things.

Right now though, they needed to focus, as they were sharply reminded when the hand holding the small shears slipped just enough to nick the fingers of their other hand. Morgaine hissed through their teeth and quickly pulled their hand back; it was only a small cut, but if they bled on these precious flowers, they could just imagine Primrose teleporting directly into the greenhouse to finish them off with his own two hands.

Then he’d probably lecture their corpse on making a mess in the greenhouse by being dead in there, even though that would be his own doing. Wouldn’t that just be typical.

“Are you okay?” Dove called with mild alarm as Morgaine popped his injured finger into his mouth to soothe the cut.

“Mm,” he made an affirmative noise around the finger in answer. Removing his hand from his mouth, he assured them, “I’m fine, it’s just a little cut. There’s a first-aid kit around here somewhere, isn’t there?”

Dove nodded and rose in spite of Morgaine’s attempt to not make a fuss, dusting themselves off before going in search of said first-aid kit. Morgaine rose to his feet as well, sighing at both the minor injury and the way his knees ached after kneeling for so long. The physical labor had gotten easier, but never quite as easy as he thought it eventually would. Ah well.

Dove returned in short order with a small roll of bandages and some peroxide, and Morgaine allowed them to clean the cut before securely wrapping it. He could have done so himself, and it really didn’t merit that much fussing, but hey, it was nice to be fussed over now and again. Better to let Dove hover over it now than be distracted with concern and end up injuring themselves in a similar way because they were distracted, too.

“How is that? Not too tight?” They asked, cradling his hand like it might fall off if they weren’t careful enough with it. He could have told them that would have been a more reasonable concern with the other hand, if he didn’t always make a point of reassuring people that his skeletal arm really wasn’t in danger of falling off regardless of how it looked.

(Nobody ever seemed quite as concerned about his tail… though on the upside, few people had ever bothered trying to pull on his tail to be funny, either. Silver linings.)

“That’s perfect, I’ll be good as new in no time.” Morgaine wiggled his fingers to make his point, and Dove let out a small laugh of relief before releasing him.

They returned to their respective flowerbeds and got back to work, both perhaps a bit more studiously careful in their work than before. Morgaine’s knees were loudly protesting by the time he reached the end of his row, and he sat back on his heels to mop sweat from his brow, heaving a deep sigh. 

Dove approached with their own basket full of cut flowers. “Ready to go? How’s your hand?”

“Still functional.” Morgaine held said hand up and wiggled it at them again, making them smile. The bandage would probably need to be changed to a fresh one soon, since it had collected a bit of sweat and dirt while he worked, but it was far from the worst cut he’d ever had. Better to work in the greenhouse with such a cut than to be at the bar squeezing lemons and limes into a mixer and trying not to have a mishap with the juice, at any rate.

He gathered his own basket and stood, dusting himself off. “Let’s drop these off, and then I see a cold drink and a nice, long nap in both our futures. What do you say, sugar?”

“Sounds like a plan to me!” Dove agreed chipperly. They looped their arm in his as the two of them left the greenhouse, though it was really more like they were pulling him along than walking side by side. Dove’s knees obviously weren’t as cantankerous as Morgaine’s.

Well, his put-upon knees could rest easy now. They were through cultivating the ambrosia and only needed to process it, and then Morgaine would have a nice little while of simply appreciating the culmination of a job well-done before he had to think about doing it again at some point. He was looking forward to it.