She would have waited any amount of time for Obieth to accept or reject the flower, watching her reaction, every whisker twitch and sniff. As Obieth hadn't experienced much, Pollen hadn't either- it hadn't occurred to her that some things didn't eat plants. And certainly, it was still lost on her when Obieth gauged it not for her. It was sweet, and Pollen smiled at that fact. "It is!" Pollen said, nearly sounding like a teacher praising a child for discovering something new.

If the teacher was the same age as their student. But, that was also lost on her.

She watched on as Obieth also taste-tested the other plant, not hindering the action in any way, only watching. In fact, why hadn't she tried that, too? But, it looked like Obieth didn't like it, and Pollen frowned sympathetically. She'd put it aside once she swallowed, the corners of her lips pulled back in recognition of that face.

Did she hurt herself, with the spines? Or- Oh. Not good? Pollen looked over and pressed a finger to the tip of the succulent, pinching out a few beads of the inner liquid. Her hand drew back up, and she dashed her tongue out to taste, unaware of just what she was getting herself into.

In short, she fully reared her head back into her neck, a full-faced grimace on her expression. "Ew. It really doesn't," she agreed, scraping her tongue against her top teeth (or, whatever baby teeth were left there, anyways). "Not all plants taste good. Don't eat that one, then. I just eat the ones I see Nedies cook, usually." She shuddered, stretching her jaw before leaning back forward, her hands on her knees.

Her eyes went to the plant as Obieth inspected it, watching the interaction with warmth in her heart. A shared experience, discovering something so nasty! But, otherwise, it was very pretty. Pollen's legs swung gently off the bench, not yet able to reach the ground, as they talked.

"I thought you would! You look spiney." Her head tilted this way and that- what plant would she be? She let off a soft hum of consideration, before perking up. "Oh! I didn't put them here- I just take care of them! I'd like to get more, though. There's a lot of different plants outside the Palace, and I wanna try and plant them here. It'd be really pretty!" She used the word pretty a lot, but she truly meant it, excitement ramping up her voice just a little.

Her legs swung a little more, one out, one in, then switch, then repeat, before they slowed. She thought for a good long moment before blurting out, "what's your favorite plant?"

A very important question.

@Obieth

Obieth watched, silent and almost dogged, as Pollen tasted the succulent, too. She observed closely each shift of fur, the way the muscles beneath it moved, the grimace that twisted the creature's face. She took it all in, indifferent but interested, each shutter-click scene imprinting in her memory. Each would fade, of course--or many of them would; but for now they were bright and clear in her mind, beautiful pictures of one-of-a-kind scenes. Art, from life; no imitation here.

The words sparked interest. Or one word, in particular. Curiosity rose in her tone, head cocking to the side as Obieth spoke. "What does... cook mean?" she asked, her husky voice soft, and she flicked one ear to the way her own tone sounded against the backdrop of the birdsong. She took one step forward, and again pressed muscled haunches to the earth below.

And as for a favorite plant-? This was a question she had not considered, and after a long moment she mirrored it, as if to better understood what she herself was being asked. "What is your favorite plant?" and the words were slow, thoughtful.

But no sooner had she asked than her gaze began to stray, one ear turning back the way she'd first come--across the fields of Cepheus, past the great tree, Aethril by her side. The first glimpse of palace and grounds was still another tapestry in her memory, prominent and clear, and this was one she cherished. It was not one of those memories that would fade away.

"The petals on the tree," she decided, eyes shifting back to study Pollen. She adjusted her weight, one paw to the other, as her mind ran back over the way each soft brush of color had quivered in the evening wind, the very breeze that had carried their fragrant scent. "The smell spoke of... other places." How to explain--with her still-limited vocabulary--the poetic concept that tree had seemed so exotic? "It moves, all the time... a little bit. The air shifts it. The colors are... soft."

She ran her mind back over rough bark, over forking branches arching high overhead.

Yes, she decided; I like that one.

@Pollen

Pollen... paused. What does cook mean? "Umm..." She thought for a moment, pulling back into herself. "It's when you make food tastier. I like it when Nedies makes it spicy. It makes your mouth tingley." She hummed out a small giggle. "You should try it! He's the big orange guy in the kitchen- maybe you can get him some food to cook, too." Looking down, Pollen looked at Obieth. Yep, definitely a hunter. They could eat a lot when Obieth hunted!

What was her favorite plant? She thought about that, looking to the aloe to her side. No... Too spikey. And it tasted weird. Hmm- that plant archway? No, she didn't even know what grew on it, really. She liked her honeysuckle... Roses, maybe... But those specific roses? Hm.

She'd bent down, paw on her chin to think, when Obieth came to her decision. "Oh!" Pollen recognized the tree she was talking about. She hadn't been close, but it was a pretty tree, and she liked looking at it out the windows of the Palace. "That's a very pretty tree. I wonder what kind of tree it is?" She wondered out loud, head tilting as she looked up to the distance. Was her favorite plant a tree..?

Pollen turned to her left, looking up. The pedestal she'd sat by held her favorite, she decided, and she shuffled up to stand on the bench precariously. "This is my favorite plant," she declared, reaching over for the intricate, square pot that sat atop the marble pillar.

It took some work, and Pollen nearly lost her balance, but she'd soon placed it next to the aloe on the bench. It was obvious why she had so much issue- it looked like an ancient bonsai tree, twisted and curled about itself a million times over, with light green leaves that shone like silver when the light played across them. While not particularly heavy for an adult, it was definitely awkward for a child like her to pick up.

"This one's my favorite. It makes me think of Miss Aethril." Her paw gingerly touched the surface of the leaves, making the light dance across them. "It's really soft. Do you want to feel it?" Pollen sat back on the bench, crossing her legs and watching the leaves play in the faint light of Cepheus.

Maybe Obieth would like the softer plants, more? This one was a little like the big tree, anyways, just without the petals. Or the pretty smell- other than woody and earthy. That just smelled like Cepheus, to her- at least, the places outside the Palace grounds. So, maybe not other places? Still, something nice.

@Obieth

Spice.

The turned the concept over in her mind, rolling the word through unknown memory. Meaning bubbled forth from buried programming, and it was though a light were being shone onto a previously-shadowed patch. Ahhh, thought Obieth; and she imagined spice. Imagined... biting into something; and then it biting back. Not like the thorns, but with something else, something other. Taste, rich and blooming with acid touch.

She quite liked that idea, and gave a soft hum of thought before responding. "I will look for Nedies. I will eat cooked food." Perhaps she could request from Aethril attendance at one of their teas: she knew they sat at tables to eat, and surely their food, too, had Spice?

Black muzzle tilted up a fraction as Obieth watched Pollen. Thought made the greenish creature's eyes grow distant--and she herself was staring off at the tree, it seemed. Obieth wondered what exactly was going through her mind. Ahh--she was wondering... what kind of tree it was? The Valkhound turned, staring off at it. "Are there... different kinds?" she asked, bemused. "I think it is a beautiful kind." Categorization and species lists were well beyond her realm of experience. To her, the succulent must have been a one-of-a-kind mutation. She herself was unique. Aethril and Pollen were the only ones she'd seen like themselves, and Vargas too. Would it not be strange, if living things were patterned after one another-? Surely the trees, too, were each a wonderful standalone example.

Ahh, but Pollen had chosen something other than a tree. Or--perhaps, Obieth reasoned (as she examined this new plant) it was a tree; just... very small. Her gaze travelled over the ornate pot, the way the voidlight cascaded off its corners--and off each silvered little leaf. She was held rapt, at once. It was like the big tree, but... small enough to hold in the hand.

Black limbs pushed up without conscious intent, her nose again reaching for this one--to take in its scent with quiet sniffs, even as her ears pushed toward it. But the little tree made no sound, and had little odor whatsoever. Still, the constant play of light over tiny leaves was fascinating to her. It was not as pretty, she decided, as the flower petaled tree--but it was very close. "Why is it your favorite?" she asked, not putting one remark together with the other. And she tried, too, to compare it to Aethril. But she could find no similarities between the two. Both were beautiful, yes, but their beauty to Obieth was wholly different. "How is it like Aethril?" Her eyes flicked up to peer, empty of all but faint curiosity, at Pollen. When they returned to the miniature branches, so did her nose: pushing lightly into it, feeling through the leaves as Pollen had suggested.

She did not find it soft so much as tickling, and pulled away with a flinch and a light sneeze. This felt undignified, and Obieth sniffed somewhat haughtily before lowering herself to her haunches once again--a little farther from the sneeze-inducing tree.

@Pollen

Obieth would try cooked food. Pollen nodded excitedly at that, her hands resting on her thighs. Would she liked cooked food, with its glazed sweetness, or its wild tasting meat, or its biting, crunchy apples for desert? Perhaps she'd like a pie, or something with a meat texture, or something big to hold and dig into? She couldn't use utensils- but neither could Eggbert, Pollen realized, taking that into account.

Oh, the foods she could wonder about for Obieth.

"I think. I haven't seen a tree like it, though, but there are trees like the ones outside the Palace in um-- uhh- I think it's Pegasus? And ones in the mountain cave are tall and have angry, pointy leaves." She thought for a moment, looking back towards the tree, though. "It is really pretty, though. Beautiful. I like it." She liked most things, but she loved that tree.

Pollen was enraptured by Obieth's interest, as if she'd just brought her favorite toy to show and tell. "I like it." She shrugged. "It's silvery, and it has a pretty pot, and I love the swirls in the bark, and it's really fun to watch." She waved a hand over it, gently, and watched as the gentle motion of air sent the leaves sparkling.

She paused, though. "... It's shiny, like her clothes. And it's hard for me to use my magic on. It's really stubborn, but I don't think it would ever want to die." She rumbled out a light laugh, putting a hand on the pot with the gentleness of someone holding hands with their family. "I wish I had a better plant for me, but that one is small and green and spiky like my fur, so I was using it for now." She pointed down to the aloe before looking to Obieth. "What kind of plant do you think you would want to be? Something sturdy like this one, or sharp, or dark and shiny, or maybe one that's really pretty and important? You could be the big tree, if you want, since it's your favorite." She tilted her head, thinking.

"Plus, you make me think of other places, too, that aren't in the Palace. In a good way! You're very cool and new and different and it's very nice." Apparently, the more positive adjectives she could tack on, the better the compliment must be. She did mean it, though- she did like Obieth. She liked having her around, showing her the plants...

She liked talking to her.

@Obieth

Pollen's words filled the air, and Obieth sat silent. Tail twitched across her toes as she listened, as she watched the creature speak. In part, her mind did wander; as Pollen spoke of Pegasus, she was running her mind back over it. It had been a little bright, for her. Too hard to see, the flashes pressing her eyes down in pained squints. But she had seen the trees, if at a distance: their silhouettes tall and shadowed, lining the edges of the soft fields. Pegasus, too, had a mountain--did it not? Was it not "the mountain cave," then? Hmm.

Her attention drifted down to the bonsai as Pollen spoke of that: of its silvered leaves and its ornate pot, the textures of the bark. She liked those things, too, though not quite as much; and its hold on her was fading, now. It was no longer new and exciting, and what was not new rapidly became stale.

Metaphor, next--and ahh, for whatever reason (be it inexperience or a mind of a different sort), these were mostly lost on Obieth. She could grasp 'shiny, like her clothes' well enough--the golden-gilded wash of blue cloth that Aethril wore swathed over her freckled body was certainly shining, and beautiful. But hard to use magic on, or stubborn? Those things she did not immediately equate. Obieth assumed that Pollen had gone back to speaking of only the plant, although it was true that Aethril did not want to die. That was why she had Obieth, after all: to guard her, to prowl sleek alongside her through the shadows, her Valk-cat eyes prying them for threats.

This faint metaphor-confusion continued as Pollen tried to explain that a plant was... her, and that Obieth could 'be' a plant. What kind of plant would I like to be..? She stared for a time, nonplussed, at the gardener, before clearing her throat and speaking slowly. "Do plants feel, and think? Can they see, and hear, and--taste? Can they smell? I did not think they could," she suggested, pushing up, stepping over, batting thoughtfully at a stray bit of green in the garden dirt. She settled her paws and looked to Pollen. "I would not want to be a plant; I like to walk, and smell things. I like to hunt," she added, a flash in her eyes, though she had yet to do so. The instinct was there; she'd merely not had a chance to indulge it.

She pondered the final remarks, and sensed somehow that they were compliments; to this she offered a regal dip of her head. "Thank you. Where I come from, I am a Queen," she decided; "It was a place with light like this. Only darker; and there were no plants. It was rock, rock; and only rock, and other creatures, other Valkhounds. It is where we are born."

Yes; that made sense. She would have--if she'd had the worldview--compared Draco to a used car sales lot, or perhaps in less civilized terms, a livestock farm. Creatures had been browsed, compared; in the end, Obieth had been the chosen purchase. "Perhaps... when you see me, you think of there."

It didn't occur to her that Pollen had likely never been to Draco; it wasn't important. The exotic locale the gardener thought of, upon seeing Obieth, had to be something like that--no? Draco was like her, after all: dark and full of spines, and most certainly not a plant.

@Pollen

Pollen had to pause for that one. Do that? She didn't know, that much. "They feel.. touch, pain, but not much else." Her digits brushed across the leaves again as she thought, attempting to reach into her magic to explain it. It had reached inward as her mind focused, and she squeezed her eyes shut, a string running out as the pain of the rooted honeysuckle digging into her arm. 'Fine, just... Do it from memory.' She huffed out, shaking her head and gingerly holding her arm, looking down to the bonsai.

"It's um-- they can tell how much light they're getting, or if something moves their leaves, or if they get cut off if aren't getting food from their leaves." She released her aching arm and drifted her hand over the bonsai, a leaf falling. "But, they don't get hurt like pain causes them, if that makes sense? Like, they don't... have the system to go oh no, I'm hurt, kind of thing." Her paw reached out and took hold of the fallen leaf, twirling it in her digits before she looked to Obieth.

Obieth... Would not like being a plant. Perhaps the metaphor was lost on her? But, Pollen wasn't one to go about and explain it, really, and she understood what she meant anyways. She didn't need to be a plant. Honestly, Pollen wouldn't want to be one, either.

A Queen sounded important. Was it more important than Hand? She didn't know, and she assumed not, but it did still sound fancy. A place with no plants... That sounded very sad, but perhaps that's what Obieth liked. She had never known a place without them other than the Palace- and, suddenly, Pollen imagined a different, darker Palace, one where Obieth was Queen in.

Man, she really was important, huh? "Could you take me, sometime? If you want to go back, I mean. Then I could think of there when I do see you!" If that's what Obieth wanted? Pollen leaned in, her sore arm forgotten and excitement rippling over her pelt, an easy grin on her face.

@Obieth

Obieth's head dipped, rose, her gaze studying the honeysuckle and then Pollen's face, the slight contortion of it. She didn't know what had happened--she wasn't aware of the backlash of magic--but hollow ears pricked forward to listen to the description of the way plants felt pain. She assumed that Pollen was simply so deep in the description that the wince was almost sympathetic, and so she didn't think more of it than that.

After a moment, she considered Pollen's words, and did her best to summarize them, her voice husky and quiet with thought. "So you are saying... they know they are harmed, but it doesn't hurt them?" In all honesty, the Valkhound had yet to feel true pain, herself. She'd felt weariness, but she had little context past that instinctive, in-built knowledge of what real pain would be like.

Pollen was asking, then, if Obieth could take her back to Draco. And that moment chose--unrelated--to bring a swimming sense of unease, and Pollen simply... vanished. Cepheus itself vanished, dimming down to almost nothing, so that the Palace was a tower of dust, its motes drifting in the fading void-light. Empty, hollow, dry, lifeless-

-and then it returned, Chaotic magics shifting through her and rustling away as if taken by the sweet-scented breeze. Obieth glanced around, and looked back, trying to sound as though nothing had happened.

"...I can take you there," but faint confusion laced her words. "When Aethril allows it."

Then she glanced around, again, puzzled: "Did you see that?" she asked the gardener.

@Pollen

The soreness was fading now, at least, and Pollen rubbed over the vines that curled over her arm. Had they... Grown? She could feel the roots under her skin, and she managed to not blanche at that, instead focusing her attention on the leaf in her digits. Obieth summarized her words, and she nodded to that. "Yeah. Sort of like... If you cut off your fur, I think?" She'd never cut her fur, but she imagine it would feel the same. "They don't bleed as much as animals do, so it's ok to trim them a little, as long as they still have some leaves to make food with."

At least, that's what she gathered from using her magic on them before.

Obieth had gone quiet, though, and Pollen's eyebrows furrowed together with faint worry. Was she okay? She leaned in just a little as the Valkhound came back to, obviously a little rattled, and she frowned just slightly. Yes, she would like to go to Draco (they could all go, maybe), but...

"See what?" Was Obieth okay? Actually, best to get the answer straight from the source, and so- "Are you okay?" she asked quietly, patiently watching her. Worry sat uncomfortably high in her throat-- what had Obieth seen?

@Obieth

Like "if you cut off your fur" was an excellent metaphor, but one unfortunately utterly lost on the Valkhound. She'd never done that, either, and she fired a puzzled look at Pollen. "Why would I cut off my fur?" she asked, genuine startlement in her tone. Pollen's, too, was pretty to her: the plush greens, soft; why would she cut that off, either?

As for the question presented her, Obieth shook her head, whiskers pursing briefly. "I am fine. I thought I saw... something." Her eyes trailed around Cepheus, almost suspiciously, but unafraid. There was nothing but the plants, the flowers, the distant Hellswans. "I had thought... everything had become empty. Dark. But then it came back," she explained--and then shrugged it all away.

She paced past Pollen, circling into the garden itself. "How did you become a Gardener?" she asked, at last, glancing back. She studied Pollen; had the little creature been distinctly made for it, or had she somehow fallen into the job, or forced her way in, as Obieth had?

But the novelty of this place was slowly growing thin. She had her last few questions, perhaps, but her attention now was wandering--looking for something new to tease her senses, to capture her mind so that she might indulge herself in the New and Exciting.

Still, she wasn't quite done here, and in a moment of sudden and inspired curiosity, she asked: "Do you have a bed?"

@Pollen