A butterfly came to rest on a flower for a few seconds, then took flight again as Sunset stepped past it. "What plant is this?" she asked, leaning closer to a tall shrub with pink flowers.
Wallflower barely had to glance back before she could answer that. "Nerium oleander. Usually just called oleander," she replied, focusing back on the hole she was digging in front of her. "I'd rather not touch it. It's not that strongly poisonous, but if there's sap on it that can still lead to some skin irritations, and it can get bad if some gets in your eyes."
Sunset drew back and grimaced slightly. She turned and walked towards Wallflower instead. "How poisonous is it, exactly?" she asked, kneeling down to look at what the other was working on.
"Not particularly, unless you eat a lot of it. And given how awful the leaves taste that rarely ever happens." Wallflower stuck her garden trowel into the ground once again. "There's a story about Prench soldiers dying after using oleander branches to roast their dinner over a fire during Naponeon's invasion of Bitaly, but considering you can find nearly identical stories about different military campaigns as far as two thousand years before then, and no actual evidence any of it happened, it's probably just a myth. A fairly recent one, too, more commonly the story is about a family roasting hotdogs while camping or similar."
"I see." Sunset leaned a little closer to the ground, just as Wallflower inserted one of the flowers she'd carried there into the hole she'd dug for it. "Do you want help with this?"
"I'd rather do it myself," Wallflower replied, filling the sides of the hole with leftover dirt. "But you can watch if you'd like." She moved a little to the side, and grabbed another flower pot.
Sunset stood straight again. "Alright then."
Wallflower paused, and looked at her. "It's not that I don't want you here or that you're bothering me. This is just something I'd rather do myself, since you don't have the experience for it."
Sunset smiled at Wallflower. "It's okay. I get it."
Wallflower smiled back. She turned back to the pot and carefully pulled the flower out, along with all the soil held by the plant's roots wrapped around it, then placed the plastic container aside. Holding the flower in one hand, she reached for her scissors with the other. "When a plant is rootbound like this you want to make sure you break up the roots a little before you put it in the ground. That way they'll spread out properly." She began to make a few cuts into the thick tangle of roots surrounding the dirt, starting from the bottom and going upwards. She also used her hand to pick apart and break off some portions of it on the bottom side.
Sunset nodded along, following her motions.
Once she was satisfied with her work, Wallflower set the plant back down and grabbed her trowel again. "You want to make sure the hole is the right depth. It's not hard, especially when you're moving them from a pot like this, but you should always make sure you get it right just in case. It's good practise. Too shallow and the plant sticks out too much, you're left with a bump and maybe the roots are too high up. Too deep and you end up burying part of it, and covering grown leaves." She stabbed into the dirt. "It doesn't matter too much on a potted plant that's already grown though, like I said. And it's easy to fix, too. It's a lot more important when you're dealing with seeds."
"Makes sense to me," said Sunset. "The plant will have trouble coming out and growing if it's in too deep, won't it?"
"Exactly." Wallflower pulled up her trowel and looked at the hole, then dug in again. "But if it's too close to the surface that can be a problem too. Of course, every plant has its preferences. Some are fine with being left on the ground or even just on a layer of dust. In general though a decent rule of thumb is to put a seed under as much dirt as it is long. It usually works out."
"Huh. That's easy to remember," Sunset said, looking between Wallflower, the plant, and the hole. "Maybe this whole gardening thing isn't that complicated."
A somewhat mocking chuckle escaped Wallflower's lips before she could stop it, and she looked at Sunset a little guiltily. Blushing, she cleared her throat, and grabbed hold of her plant to lower it into its hole. "Well, it's not too hard once you actually get into it, no," she explained. "But it's still not as intuitive as you'd think in some parts."
"For example?" asked Sunset, looking at Wallflower with genuine curiosity.
Once she was done with the second plant, Wallflower grabbed her third flower pot. "Pruning. Mostly compared to dealing with animals or people, I guess. If you don't know what's going on it looks like you're seriously hurting the plant, but sometimes you need to... you know..." She sighed, breathing deeply for a moment to stop her light shaking. "Cut off dead branches. Or even living ones. Sometimes you'll end up cutting off way more than what's left on the plant by the end."
"Well, yeah, maybe that'll look wrong to someone who doesn't know what's going on," said Sunset. "But that doesn't mean it's not good for the plant." She smiled. "I guess it's not that different from those dogs that are over fifty percent fur in volume. You've seen pictures of those, right?"
Wallflower had to make an effort to contain her laughing. "It's nothing like that, actually."
"Plants are just very furry dogs," Sunset continued, doing a better job at keeping a straight face than what Wallflower was doing, but still not a perfect one. "Except the fur is leaves and branches."
"Actually stop. I will physically hit you," Wallflower said.
Sunset finally broke down and laughed. Wallflower also chuckled alongside her. She took the third flower out of its pot, and looked at her trowel, then at Sunset. "Do you want to dig this one?"
Sunset smiled. "Sure." She grabbed the trowel and began to dig.
Wallflower instead began to cut open the roots, as she'd done with the previous plants. "The main thing is that plants don't bite back."
"Huh?" Sunset looked up.
"Unlike dogs." Wallflower turned the tangle of roots and dirt around in her hands. "Or people. Plants aren't silent, they're quiet. They still have a way to tell you when you did something wrong. But it's not a violent one." She gave a few more cuts. "Instead you're just left with the sinking realisation that you made a mistake and there's nothing you can do about it and all your hard work was for nothing and you just destroyed what you held dear." Wallflower blinked. "So it's like human relationships without the screaming."
Sunset let go of the trowel and moved closer to Wallflower. "It sounds nothing like human relationships, actually."
Wallflower looked at her. "It doesn't?"
"First off, when you're dealing with a plant the plant doesn't make mistakes. But people do. It's usually not just your fault." Sunset sat at the other girl's side. "It doesn't mean you should blame the other when things go wrong. I've had that problem, still do sometimes. But you've got the opposite one, and you should get used to thinking that it's never just your fault."
Wallflower opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. "Knowing other people can be bad too doesn't actually make me feel that much better. I know it's good to understand that no one is perfect, but I would still hope others would be better than me."
"That's only half of it," Sunset continued, leaning on Wallflower.
"The other half?"
"When people have a fallout, it's not the same as when a plant dies. They can still talk to each other. Admit their mistakes. Get back together. They can both work towards fixing things." Sunset smiled, and hugged Wallflower. "I feel like you should know this already. Us being together now and all," she said, her tone tinted with some laughter.
"I... I don't know, I feel like that one was different." Letting gently go of the plant, Wallflower finally returned the hug. "It was a huge change. You don't just... Well, the average person doesn't just run into ancient magical artifacts from the horse dimension every day. It's one thing when you have a big heart to heart moment that changes your whole life, it's another when you're just... When I'm just me. Day to day."
"Not every change needs to be big, or all at once. It just needs to be there. Taking its time." Sunset hugged Wallflower tighter. "Like a plant growing."
"Please never make botanical metaphors again. Leave those to me." Wallflower rested her head on Sunset's shoulder, just so she could feel her chest shaking as she giggled.
Then Sunset pulled back, and looked Wallflower in the eyes. "No promises about that." And before the other had time to open her mouth to reply, she placed her own on top of it.
As she blushed and drew slightly back in surprise, Wallflower's eyes looked aside for a moment, at the flowers she'd already planted, and at the butterfly resting on one of them. And after a moment longer she smiled, closed her eyes, and held on to Sunset as they kissed.
Author's Note
Thank FanOfMostEverything for coming up with Naponeon and Bitaly.
