Time to inflict my blanksword fics on you guys :) You cannot escape :)) Have a Methusalem fic first because the old man has grisped me
Stray Growths
There was this old saying back when you had been young, and the corn hadn’t yet given away to silk: never feed a stray that you didn’t intend to keep.
Like most things from those times, the adage had faded away into the obscure mists of memory and time as you went from a young’un to a man to an old man to something else, luckier than any several footed forest creature and more unfortunate than any mothbitten corpse. It had been an ancient saying even back then, and with the dogs having been split apart and put together wrong, and company being so scarce, there’d been little point in recalling it. There was never anybody worth feeding, and the eyes in the sky made poor company for a meal.
You probably should have kept it in mind when that angel first stumbled in through the door, dizzy and emptied out. There was emptiness where there had once been light and dirt where there had once been emptiness, packed tight and damp with something that wasn’t quite all there yet. He had stood at your feet, silent and confused, and left the way he came.
The second time around, there was more to those eyes when they darted around the room, and he stood at your feet and listened to the words of an old man, quiet and cowed.
And you had been a farmer, once, a long time ago, before the sea of golden wheat had been overrun by blue blood and the country had splintered under its weight. You were an old man now, but old men had the right to their musings of the past, slow and plodding, so you had turned those last days over and over in your head all this time, the grain on the stalk, the taste of the seed-corn, the routines now forgotten except in the recesses of your head.
And because you were a farmer once, and an old man prone to his musings now, you still recognized good soil when you saw it. Could still make out the shape of the seed beneath it, growing.
And a long time ago, you had killed an Angel and all its useless blood had stained the ground and your hands, so you knew nothing of their lives and only of their deaths, and there was very little you didn’t know these days. There was this saying once that you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks, but maybe an old man could turn to old routines to learn new things, and maybe a young angel could become something else.
You were a farmer once. You used to see to it that things would grow.
“This old man insists.” You told him, as he handled the jar with care, eyes wide. “Take some of the burden with you on the road.”
And behind those empty eyes, in the damp soil of this angel’s mind, you could almost see something sprout.
You shouldn’t feed anything you didn’t intend to keep. That was the rule. But there were worse things in the world than repeating your stories, just as there were worse strays to allow into your house than an angel who visited everyday simply to listen, a garden in his mind.
