Oliver cleared his throat softly as she offered her condolences. "It's okay," he answered; "He knew it was going to happen; he had to. He was a guardian." This explained nothing, but Oliver didn't really realize that. Whatever the case, though sad, he seemed... past it? He'd dealt with his grief, mostly. Not that it wasn't still there, but it was hardly a fresh, raw wound, and it hadn't been entirely unexpected.

When Vivilene described her family, though, Oliver--whose family members were all wildly different from one another--had a wholly different moment of "trying to picture" Vivilene's than she did of his. Rather than clones, he at first pictured a number of centaur-creatures like herself but in shocking shades of red and green. Then he wondered if maybe they weren't deer, and maybe-...

His brain pictured mermaids. Her top half, for some reason shining white; but a fish's scaled lower torso and tail. He wasn't sure why, but in his mind, Vivilene was part deer and part mermaid.

And part... whatever had a tail like hers.

He wasn't sure.

She took the stone, and he watched as the fish dipped on and off the stone, seeming to swim into nonexistence and then flit back across the slate. He hoped she liked it; she seemed to, anyway. "Yes," he answered, softly proud and hopeful, and then--as if she hadn't just seen it happen--clarified, "just now."

At her offer, his eyes widened a little. For one stuttering heartbeat he forgot he was meant to be helping her, and he wanted: wanted the flower, cherishing the idea of a thing that lived forever. Then he blinked, and the moment passed, and he wondered if that's what she wanted--for him to take it.

"If you want?" he offered, uncertain, and then (with more enthusiasm, and a tone of praise) went on: "That sounds like an amazing gift? For the flower, I mean--I mean, for me too, other people too but--letting a plant never die..? How do you do that?"

Not that his own garden inhabitants died often; he circuited the caves at least once a cycle, tending his plants and trees in every little grove. But there were those that would wilt without care, that would flower and fall away; flowers themselves didn't seem to last all that long.

But Vivilene could make ones that lasted forever..?

@Vivilene

Vivilene nodded, though privately she wondered how he knew he was going to die. Death was not a natural thing here, after all -- death was never a peaceful sort of sleep. Usually, it was violent. Vivilene had only ever heard of very sudden, very scary deaths. These concerns were not raised to Oliver, however-- perhaps such could have been construed as impolite.

So instead, she pet the illuminated outline of fish across the stone before she set the slab carefully down in front of her and shuffled backwards, lanky limbs performing a short of crab-walk away from the shore. "Um, magic," the hybrid replied-- perhaps an overall unhelpful answer. Magic was usually the answer to most things.

Padded palms pressed into the earth. "It, um... takes a few minutes," her voice came soft. "And I... don't know what it'll look like. Um..." A small burst of magic-- simple spells like this came quite easily to her now, she noticed --and within seconds the damp soil parted and a thin strand of green rose from between her hands.

"Sometimes that's... good," she muttered, partially to herself, now-- focusing as a little leaf sprouted from the plant. "It's like a... surprise. Some people... like surprises."

@Oliver

His ears flattened back a bit as she stroked the illusionary light-fish; his tail wagged, sweeping long feathers slowly across the floor. This was him happy: she liked the gift--right? She was petting them; therefore, she liked them?

Oliver watched, rapt, as Vivilene then sprouted a little seedling from the earth. He hesitated, but eager to help--as before--he asked, "Can I--help with that?" But he waited for a response--just in case it'd somehow mess up her process. Growing flowers, though, that was well within his skillset.

Of course, her mention that people "liked surprises" had him going still a moment later. The compulsion to help, help, help was still scratching at his mind, an itch he could make no sense of, and this concept struggled to settle in and sift down among the rest of these thoughts. Heal. Grow. SURPRISE.

His jaws parted, and he began panting like a dog, like a smile, staring off at nothing. "Some people like surprises," he mused aloud, repeating her words, as if committing them to memory.

@Vivilene

She looked between Oliver and the fresh stalk, for a moment, wondering, contemplating-- would helping make him happy? Calm him down? Help him relax? That little twinge of anxiety was lifting in her chest again as she thought; something about Oliver's eagerness was... unsettling. Wrong, in a way that Vivilene couldn't quite comprehend.

Something just didn't seem right, but all the same, Vivilene was scooting further backwards and moving her hands away from the new plant, to let him come closer towards it. "It.. might not even be a flower," she said, after a beat. They'd just have to find out.

She didn't like whatever feeling was sitting like a pit in her belly, and she didn't like that no matter how hard she thought, she couldn't come to a conclusion just what was up with Oliver. On top of it, it seemed rude to ask.

Pale gaze drifted to the soil again. "I have a garden," she whispered, as though she were informing the sapling rather than Oliver. "Do-- do you like.. gardens?"

@Oliver

Oliver leaned forward, almost reverent--his full attention on the plant--and very gently attempted to infuse it with that growth, the kind powered by magicka. If it were the flowering kind, it would flower; if not, well... it'd grow to an adult stage, at least.

His gaze flicked up, and he blinked, at Vivilene's question; black lips slid up into a kind, wondering smile. "I love gardens," he near-whispered, as though it were some sort of confession. He sat back, finally seeming almost-... relaxed, even content, as if somehow growing this plant had at last satisfied his need to "help."

"I grow them. Big ones. Eridanus-... the forest cave, um. It had some fires, awhile back. And I thought to myself, what happens if it burns away-? There's no other plants, really--not like those--anywhere else, so... I got some baskets," he went on. His voice was soft, his story unhurried, happy. "I carried dirt a lot. To, uhh--I have a grove, a big garden, in Canis. And one in Monoceros--down at the river. We planted--I wasn't alone that time--trees, and grass and things. And I hung glowing rocks from the branches. In Canis I have-... ferns, and flowers, and trees. I had to make the water pure because it was all bad--it turned black at first. And I have food there--fruits, and melons--so others have something to eat if they come."

He hesitated, though seemed still to be smiling, peering at Vivilene. "What's your garden like?" he asked, and it had the air of a genuinely curious, interested question, rather than one just asked to be polite.

@Vivilene

"Eridanus," she muttered softly. She had lived there a majority of her life with her family-- but not once had she ever seen a fire spread to the point where it consumed everything in its wake. Eridanus was always lush and green and comfortable. Vivilene had not even considered the possibility that each room had its unique set of plants that might just go away forever if something bad were to happen.

She made a little note of this, as she listened to Oliver with lifted ears, and a small-but-growing, genuine smile. It seemed nice-- she imagined this little bough among the rocks with trees that offered shelter from Monoceros's wind, with little lights hanging from its branches. It seemed warm and inviting and comfortable. She loved gardens, too.

The plant rose and spiralled into a white flower on a tall, thin stem. She'd seen these before by riverbanks (that made sense, she supposed) but not in Polaris-- in places like Eridanus and Pegasus and Cepheus where it was more lush, in large bundles with lots of tall grass. This one seemed... lonely, in comparision.

Lonely. The thought of it-- in conjunction with Oliver's implication that he, too, was lonely --distracted her enough that she felt magic spark and then fizzle weakly out in her hands. She wanted to take Oliver home and introduce him to her sisters, eat stew with him and sit by the fire. She wanted to make sure he wasn't lonely-- it did not occur to her that he might have liked being on his own.

She fidgeted, for a moment. "I... had one in Eridanus," she whispered. "It was.. hidden away. Special. Um.. just for me. It had orchids and rose-bushes. The trees had these... hanging moss-things from them, that made it kind of hard to see, if you didn't know where it was." Talking about it seemed natural, all of a sudden-- though her tone was still mousy as per usual. "I grew them all, when I was really small, um... but I haven't seen it in a long time."

"I have.. a smaller one, in Cepheus," she went on. "Um... we live near this big tree with white blossoms, and.. I have a little garden near our home. It has things that.. make people feel better, when they eat them or have them on their skin, um.. poppies, and the seeds make pain away. There's a thing I call Warmroot and when you chew it up it gets really warm and you put it on your muscles when they're sore. Um-- it makes them feel warm, and it helps make them feel better. Stuff like that."

Scritch, scritch. That was a lot of words, her mouth twisted. "I, um.. I can show you, sometime?"

@Oliver

Oliver stayed quiet, rapt, lost in the descriptions Vivilene wove of her own gardens. He wasn't sure what orchids were, but they sounded pretty and he blinked, trying to imagine them. He wasn't far off: he imagined fairyflies, but... in flower form, delicate and colorful.

The news that she wasn't sure if it was still okay drooped his ear-tufts back a bit, but then she was moving on.

Then she was telling him of poppies and of Warmroot, and that little something snapped back into his place with a mind with a sharp snick. That could help people, he thought, and that snick led to a lurching in his thoughts, a blinking of his eyes. At once, he wanted--desperately--to see it; to get seeds from these plants, so that he would also have them available if anyone ever needed.

"Please?" was his immediate response, still blinking. "I could-... Bring you some of my seeds, in return? I have... fruits, and melons, and little... tough vines that are good for sowing things up. Um, wounds, too," he added, with a little wince. But it was true--with a guiding thread of magic, they were almost as good as sutures.

Not that Oliver knew what those were.

"Your gardens both sound--beautiful. I hope you can find the one in Eridanus again? And that it's... okay," Oliver hastily added. "And, uh--what's an orchid?"

@Vivilene

"Okay," Vivilene said, with some muted enthusiasm. "I like melon."

She had liked giving melon to that Orthoclase. She missed it-- but she was also fairly certain, with its sudden disappearance from Canis, that it didn't want to be her friend anymore. That was a little hurtful. That was something she tried not too think too hard about.

A pause, as her padded fingers touched the soil again. "They're... pretty flowers. Pink and white, um.. they kind of look like faces, to me? But-- but not really." The hybrid was beginning to regret learning how to speak. It seemed as though she only had silly things to say, never important, special things.

She fidgeted, and then the magic shimmered from her hands and into the soil. The pale flower's very roots were preserved, and sprawled from there-- up the stem and to the delicate petals, as though it were encased in a very clear frost. Vivilene spent a moment touching a leaf, cautiously. "You can... pick it, or dig it up," her voice was very hushed. "It won't die, um... but it won't grow any taller, either."

With a twisting mouth, Vivilene leant back a little, pale eyes never leaving the plant. "Um.. I can take you home, though? My dad's always making, um... soup."

@Oliver

Oliver, of course, was wholly unaware that Vivilene thought her words silly. On the contrary, he was listening in rapt silence, the tufts atop his head pricked firmly forward, his eyes fixed on her face. "I'll bring you melon," he assured her hastily, "with seeds in it, so you can plant some!" That ticking urge of help, help, help was whistling through his mind again, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else--on anything but trying to sift, from Vivilene's words, ways that he might aid her.

"Flowers that look like faces-?" he asked, and in his mind's eye, the faces were those of birds, and dogs--the faces he imagined being family. It didn't occur to him, in his hushed awe, that the faces Vivilene pictured might be humanoid, or something else entirely. It took a moment for his mind to catch up to what she was saying--that this flower, even if picked, wouldn't ever die.

He blinked, and stared, and wondered at this. It was magic; it had to be, but wouldn't ever grow, either-? That seemed... sad, somehow, and he hesitated to try and find a way to phrase that, even as he gently cradled its roots up from the earth. "It will never grow..? Is it... okay?" he asked, uncertain. And then, hastening to reassure Vivilene, "It's very pretty."

As for her offer-? "I'd like that, but, um--what's soup?"

This seemed like an important consideration, and the crow-dog paused, head tilted a little as he peered at her.

Once that was answered, it would be time to visit the gardens--something Oliver couldn't wait to see.

@Vivilene

exiting as viv wants to focus on other chars!