Eridanus had been her place. That fraction of the caves that they could return to when things got confusing and messy, when sleep tugged at their eyes and their roots twisted in the soil, always soft and wet and full of the only food that she could truly eat and the only sleep that could give her peace. The trees had been her walls and the canopy her ceiling. It was safer here, more than any palace or perfectly maintained lawn.

Adenium stared at its home, the place it had been born. It watched as it lay dying.

Its lip quivered as it saw how the strings of sickness crept their way through leaves and bark, ate away at the fruits and branches that were not theirs to take. Emotion rose in her throat - or was it bile? She felt sick.

Maybe it had been naive to assume it would remain as it had been forever. Maybe the liquid stinging its eyes was selfishness manifest. No, No, No. This wasn't right, something was wrong, something was sick. The fear that bubbled when the glass-eyed birds flew past was not of her own mind, it couldn't be. It was stronger, visceral. Something had infected Eridanus. Something had taken their home from them.

They ripped at some of the fungus that curled on the bark of the tree, movement strained with the feeling of helpless, hopeless fury. They couldn't fix this - not alone.

Something approached as she tore at the infection, letting the threads flutter down like snow. They were spongy, damp with life. The feeling of the fungus breaking in her grasp brought a satisfaction - one that didn't soothe the buzzing in their ears, but something that promised to once this was over. If that was true - well, Adenium would have to finish the job to see, and that was difficult enough.

It hardly gave Sprig a glance. "Hi." It tried loosen its voice, to seem relaxed and welcoming, as if its grief and anger didn't billow from it like pollution. It wanted to suffocate this place.

She grasped for another clump, grief warring with anger. She wanted to blame something. Could something be blamed? She didn't know enough, she wished she did, but maybe she didn't know what she was wishing for. "Yeah, I wonder."

They were focused on the task at hand, freeing one tree from the fungus in a forest full of it. They tried to ignore the hopelessness, the feeling of grief that pulled at their limbs. They wanted to collapse, to cry, to take root in cold dead soil, search for any of that warmth they had known. The paradox - they wanted to search for recovery in a place that drained them.

The other gembound muttered apologies to things that could not hear them, smothered in the blanket of mold as they were. Not that the meek attempts at cleansing it where any better - no, she couldn't think like that, not now, not yet.

"So - what brought you here?" A limp attempt at distraction. They moved to remove more of the fungus as she spoke.

She was finding a rhythm now, which helped. The company did too, made things the odds feel a little less stacked - even though the both of them were at a severe disadvantage. She found fragile respite in the darkness of the bark underneath, a marker of some semblance of progress.

His answer disrupted that beat.

"I'm... I'm sorry." Maybe it had liked the feeling more when it was lonely. The fact that the loss was shared - it made the burden heavier on their shoulders. Of course it was. Eridanus had been home to others, and she felt selfish and stupid for ever believing otherwise. She pushed it down again.

"I did. I- I left for a while, after I woke up again. I got tired, and I came back again to sleep and, well, you know. I never had anything here to care for though. I'm sorry about your garden." Too close to home, they needed to refocus- "Hey, do wanna try tearing it from the tree? We might be able to cover more ground if we switch places."

The apology was appreciated, as much as it felt like a band-aid dropped in a gaping hole in her chest. But, everything felt like that - maybe lamenting over it so much was a waste of energy. Gods knew it needed as much as it could get. It's not your fault. Yeah, that was part of the problem.

"Adenium- Elenya." They took a long step, squatting to face the saplings, choked mercilessly by the sickness. That felt especially cruel - they had barely gotten a chance to live. She picked at them with gentle hands.

"I'd like that a lot." She wanted, needed some place to return to, once it was over and there was nothing left to say or do. When the weight would crush the both of them. It couldn't picture what that'd look like - and maybe it never would. The bile rose in its throat again. It tried to fill dead air. "What did you grow, in your garden?"