[Flashback] Favored Son [Seodai]

[Tabarnac]

Theo's Farm, Denval 45th Fall, 501 A.V. "My mother was a wonderful gardener," Theo said, smiling to his ten year old nephew as they planted flowers in the greenhouse, a bit of a luxury for the farmer and his apprentice. So much of the farm was micromanaged to get the most yield for the least amount of space. "When I was a little boy, I used to help her. I got a copper nilo from Zeltiva for every snail I killed. She had every kind of flower imaginable in her flower boxes: hollyhocks and columbine, tulips, lilies, pansies, sweet peas, forget-me-nots. Her favorite flowers were poppies. They were very big, very bright." He smiled and carefully dug a little hole in the dirt with his hands, the soil ground into his rough skin, caught under his nails. Then he waited for Seo's smaller hands to drop a seed in before he covered it up. "Orange and red. Fantastic colors. She told me... Theo, the secret to poppies is to plant them firmly in the ground. If the roots are firmly set, then the flowers will grow tall. And never water them from above or the flowers will be weighted down by the drops, which would defeat the purpose of the poppy, because the purpose of the poppy is to float above the other flowers. They are Caiyha's balloons. Whenever I would cut them, I held tightly to the stems for fear that they would float away..." Theo paused so Seo could water the rectangular flower box. It would be awfully heavy to lift it up beside the window when he was done, but he wanted the boy to feel like he was helping out even though it was mostly a learning game at this point. But he was learning fast, and he showed a true joy in the work, which made Theo think that he would be a good heir to the farm, even moreso than Cinta, his daughter. "My mother died when I was ten. Her last words to me were, 'I love you, Theo. Don't forget the snails.' After she died," he continued, though his voice sounded a bit rougher than usual, "I wouldn't have anything to do with her flowers. In two weeks, the snails had chewed everything down to the stems. Her flower boxes were lost. I took great pains to punish myself for my neglect: I offered my blood to Viratas, I wouldn't take dessert, I wore my woolen coat without a shirt. I even offered to cut my uncle's toenails." He laughed. "But the next Spring, everything started to bloom again. I killed the snails and I brought my mother's garden back to life. One day in late Spring, the sun was warming the air and the most wonderful perfume rose up from the flowers. It was my mother's scent. I felt my mother bending next to me, guiding my hand as I dug in the soil. And I felt her breath in my ear as she whispered, 'Theo, always turn the soil in the Spring, don't hurt the worms, feed the roses twice a year and please, don't ever water poppies from the top.'" He paused. "That wasn't much of a ghost story. Sorry." Then he grinned, hefted the slowly draining container up toward the autumn sunlight streaming through the thick panes of glass. It would get cold soon, but the greenhouse was rigged to keep growing things alive with a little effort on their part.

[Seodai]

Ghosts stories thrilled little Seodai, but he would never voice a complaint when those stories diverged and became something much more personal, more real. Despite their obsessive over protection of their fragile son, Seo had never felt especially close to his parents. He never felt as if he connected with them about anything except his illness , and that was hardly something to celebrate. No, it was Uncle Theo who had slowly, with stories like these, woven together an identity for the young boy. It was Theo who had given him a glimpse of his own past, as in this, a story about his grandmother. Isolated as he was from other children, Seodai had developed an exceptional imagination. And so as his uncle spoke he could just imagine every detail. The colors, the smells, the sounds. Oh, how he wished he knew the melody of her voice. He imagined that, perhaps, she would sing lullabies. His father had certainly never told him anything of the sort, and Seo had never gotten brave enough to ask Theo, but he imagined it to be. Completely absorbed in the story, Seodai pushed the tiny seeds into the fertile soil when it was time and, later, carefully measured out a healthy portion of water for the planter. It fascinated him, the concept of causing life to spring forth from a miniscule, dry speck. It felt almost as if the seeds themselves were fragments of hope, the gateway to possibility. Absolutely nothing was more rewarding than pushing one into soft dirt, caring for it studiously, and observing as those efforts were rewarded with growth, with life. For the boy who felt so terribly out of control in his own, he loved that feeling. "This is why you fill the sill with them?" he asked, almost rhetorically. He had a way of working through things out loud. "Because they remind you of her," he mused more than he asked. Finished with one task as they were, Seo settled atop a small stepping stool and wiped his dirty fingers against his trousers. "I'm sure I wouldn't miss my mother, if she died. Am I a bad son?" he asked in his open, innocent way.

[Tabarnac]

Uncle Theo merely nodded to the rhetorical fragments of a question, then gave his last question due consideration, lips slightly pursed in thought. He couldn't think of the right answer for that, which happened more and more to him now he had a daughter and a nephew constantly asking him questions about the world. He had knowledge within a certain purview, but he made no claims to wisdom. "Lord Viratas commands we honor our bloodlines," he said, working the idea out slowly for himself and for his shadow. "We can exact respect out of ourselves, but we cannot command ourselves to love or feel attachment. If you respect your mother, you fulfill His command. If you do not miss her once she has died, well, she can be a handful... Even your father says so." He grinned conspiratorially and patted young Seo on the shoulder. "But remember that she does love you, even if the way she shows it isn't always the way you would like. Your grandmother would have loved you, too. Perhaps she even does from the other side, if she hasn't yet been reincarnated." He took a separate pot that they had planted and set it in Seo's lap, putting the boy's hand over the warm soil and his own rough hand over the softer, younger one. He called out to Bala in the silence of his soul and was answered by a cool slither of divine power through him that spoke to the seed, woke it early from its rest to awareness of the damp soil around it. In mere seconds, green shoots sprang up between their fingers, a plant growing in mere minutes, crowned with bright, cheerful flowers. "For mothers," he said, and kissed his nephew's curly head before ruffling the hair with his holy hand.

[Seodai]

Seodai took the words he was given and mulled them over for as long as his patience would allow. It was hard to remember that his mother might genuinely love him, or perhaps it was harder still to believe it. She was a source of antagonism and anxiety for him, and little else. His dark little thoughts were soon swayed, though. First by the smile of his relative, and then by the pot plunked into his lap. "We should make melo-" he began, but a peek up and the boy recognized the peaceful focus on the older face above him. Seodai instantly lit up with absolute fascination. It was his favorite thing, ever, to watch Uncle Theo speak to the earth and bring forth something beautiful, to channel the divine energy into something so tangible and visible. Seo was awed enough to find silence, even when his small hand was trapped in between. The small boy wiggled in anticipation, but all of his eager shufflings were cut short because, for the first time in his young life, he felt it. Divinity. Power. Something he was much too small to name. It didn't even matter, the words. Seo felt it like a shiver along his spine, gooseflesh on his thin arms. He gave a little gasp and, even as the plant blossomed and the moment itself had passed, his fascination didn't fade. He blinked at the beautiful thing that had been coaxed forth before his time, and then at his uncle. "Ooh, uncle! It tickled!"

[Tabarnac]

"Lady Bala was kissing your hand," he assured him, wanting the boy to love and revere the gentle goddess rather than fear Her. Leaving the quickened pot in Seo's lap, he began to go about his business within the greenhouse. It was as important for the boy to study plants, assess their health, and grow accustomed to them, as the actual work at this point, and they didn't have anything terribly pressing to attend to at the moment. Theo could go it alone, waiting for the next bout of chatter from the boy that needed answering. Leaving the flowers to soak up the water and the heat, he began to look into his hydroponics experiments. In a little compartment of his mind that wasn't focused on his tasks or watching out for his young apprentice, he was content. Though he was wildly in love with his daughter, now it was like he had a son too, and the farm seemed complete. "What's your favorite thing about the farm, Seo?"

[Seodai]

Seodai was unusually quiet following the shared touch that had brought the plant in his lap to life. He simply held it, with all the protectiveness his slender arms could offer, and stared at the shiny green leaves, the beautiful blossoms. Watching Uncle Theo call such life forth from nothing was one thing. Feeling it was another, and his young mind was stuck on the moment and couldn't let it pass. So it was that he said nothing more until Theo called to him, questioned him. "Oh," he half sighed in response, finally looking up from the treasure in his lap. "I don't know..." Theo bit his lower lip and pondered, a serious look of consideration on his young face. He loved everything about the farm. How could he choose? Was it the attention he received? The nurturing that so sharply contrasted the bewildered sheltering of his parents? Or was it something more substantial, like the dirt, the sunlight, the seeds, the plants themselves? Such an impossible task Uncle had set before them and so, being the child that he was, Seo focused more on the imminent. "Lady Bala. She makes all that happens here possible, doesn't she? And she makes such beautiful things."

[Tabarnac]

"Lady Bala and her siblings," he agreed. "Lord Tivaku calls the seeds from their slumber. Lord Sivah warms their days and allows them to grow. Lady Bala ripens them for harvest, and Lady Morwen kills the remains, tending to things while they sleep, clearing the way for Her brother's return. Everything is circular, Seo. Cyclical. My Uncle cared for me while I was young, taught me. Then I cared for him while he was sick and pass on what he taught me to you, and someday you or Cinta will feed me when I can't feed myself... take my nightsoil out to fertilize the crops so I'm still good for something." He grinned at the thought. When one truly lived, there was no need to fear death. "You're a part of that, Seo. You and me and the rest of the family."

*~*~*

12 Fall, 504 A.V. "Seo?!" His pinched face was pale with worry, and he instantly crouched down beside his nephew amid the splintered wood, shards of pottery, dirt, and the corpses of plants. The blood drained from his face at the thought of Seo's draining out of his body, not wanting to staunch its own flow, that flaw of the old blood that Viratas' blessing, careful family planning, and the more recent influx of new blood had done its best to keep at bay. His hands were everywhere, looking for damage. "Shit." His hand squeezed hard around the boy's skinny bicep, a fleshly tourniquet to slow the bleeding of his arm. "Shit, hold on." He took Seo's hand, clamped it down where his had been, then tore the sleeve from his shirt with savage ripping noise, quickly tying it painfully tight just under his shoulder. He tore off the other sleeve and made an impromptu bandage out of it. He couldn't look at the dead flower, its paleness no longer reminiscent of those portions of his wife that had never been kissed by the sun, but only by his fevered mouth. Now the petals were chalky, corpse-like. Dead as dear Amaranta. "Everything will be all right," he promised, trying to persuade the boy. Trying to persuade himself. He wept as he said it, tending to the hemophiliac as best he could.

[Seodai]

Seodai had watched the shimmering, pale life drain from those petals. Sat in the ruins he had created, even as Theo undoubtedly heard the noise and ran for him. He had witnessed with a sinking, terrible feeling of sorrow and guilt, the death of something his beloved Uncle prized above everything else in the greenhouse. Seodai was too young to understand the significance, perhaps even the difficulty in acquisition and nurturing the rare, beautiful thing. Intuitively, though, he had known, had understood how precious it was. He had known better. And perhaps that was the worst sort of mistake to make, the most terrible kind of guilt to labor beneath. He had knowingly committed an act that would hurt Uncle a great deal. And that was why Seo wept. His words were choked around tears that might have embarassed him otherwise, tears he certainly wouldn't have let his father see. "Uncle, I am so sorry..." a hiccup, a shudder, and again... "I've ruined it. Ruined it," he whimpered, only half paying attention as his hand was lifted to squeeze at his own arm, then replaced with a cloth binding that was uncomfortably tight, in order to staunch the flow of his blood. He'd yet to glance at his injured limb, the blood everywhere, the worried face of his uncle. Mostly that. He couldn't begin to cope with the thought of how angry Theo must be, how disappointed. And so the young boy who had never disobeyed before that day simply sat in his own disaster and wept with his uncle, for other reasons entirely.

[Tabarnac]

The greenhouse was half-full -- or half-empty -- of its living things. Seo was crying, Theo too, but salt tears would not bring back the dead, neither human nor plant. He was upset over his little creation, of course, but sick with worry for the only one he had left, the boy who would be his successor. He gathered Seo in his arms as if to carry him down to Master Jarret's clinic, or perhaps to that healer of the Opal Order -- he seemed nice. But with the youth in his arms, the both of them weeping, he paused just to rock him as he once had his daughter when she woke with a nightmare. It was into this scene there stepped a cool Presence, smelling of ripening things, hinting at a colder tomorrow. Theo felt a tingle rising up from the tip of his tailbone rising up his back, a familiar and beloved sensation. "Here now," came a beautiful voice, turned heads revealing a beautiful figure, too real to be mere human, "have you forgotten the stories about your mother, Theo? Didn't she teach you how to bring a garden back in spring? And Seodai..." So much meaning reverberated in those elided sounds that made up his name, as if she knew his true name, spoken in the celestial language that mortal ears could scarce support. "Seodai," she repeated, "you and your uncle are My favorite parts of this farm as well."

[Seodai]

Uncle's love and concern only made things worse, because the rationalization of a child told Seodai that he hardly deserved it. He had, after all, been intentionally disobedient, and taken away something that Theo loved very much with his foolishness. His arm was beginning to hurt, too, more from the necessary bindings than the wound itself. It was, altogether, a very low moment in the life of the stick thin boy who didn't have the heart to be brave, and so he wept instead, into the very chest he had offended. And then the very air he was breathing seemed to change, every pore in his young body coming to life in a way he had never known. And her voice. Her voice soothed all the raw places in his heart where his own mother's love had failed to reach, where she hadn't cared to try. Seodai loved her in an instant, a glance. If not for the beauty that bespoke of deity, then for the gentleness around her eyes, the way her voice caressed his name and then, ultimately, for her admission. That he, a simple and disobedient child, could be the favorite of such a Goddess, in any capacity, was enough to move him, young as he was. Gooseflesh raised all along his slender frame, Seodai the skittish found a courage he had never known, and tried to gingerly wriggle from Uncle's grasp. It hadn't occurred to him that there was, perhaps, a certain protocol or respectful way to approach a situation like this, a Goddess. He was a small child whose heart was suddenly filled with awe and love enough to make him forget his transgression and, ultimately, his pain.