When We Plant the Apple Tree

Summary: Molly dies. Melody Farm falls into divine hands. A story about growing up, even if you're a god.

Flashbacks in italics.


I: Seed

She found him alone on the beach.

She had come to the farm as soon as Finn had told her the news, but the house had been dark and the animals had been asleep and the fields had been unwatered and empty. Even the orchard had been abandoned, and the trees, their dark leaves whispering against each other, cast long, flitting shadows over ground that had been untrodden for days. She wandered like a ghost around the property, a little orange fairy following dejectedly behind her. At last she had seen the harsh glow of light at the edge of the property, and she went softly down the hill to meet the lord of the harvest.

Physically, there was nothing different about him: his bare arms were folded across his chest, his silken robe contrasting beautifully with his olive skin and braided crimson hair. Divine flames stirred at his feet, giving off warm, golden light that was too bright for any human to bear looking at, and if she had been a human she would have been overwhelmed by his might and majesty. Even now, his aloof self-confidence, the obvious grandeur with which he carried himself, gave him the noble air of a statue in a cemetery, but there was something in the line of his shoulders and the way he seemed anchored to the earth that told her that he was struggling with something-a memory, a feeling-that he didn't quite understand. Her heart went out to him and she came up behind him and put a milk white hand on his shoulder. His skin was hot under her palm.

"Oh, Ignis," she said. Her voice was quieter than the foamy waves hissing up the beach.

The Harvest King's sharply angled eyebrows lowered even further over his narrowed eyes, but he made no reply. His scowl was enough to make water boil, but he was a part of her, after all, and she could feel his sorrow as plainly as if it had been her own.

Molly had been precious to her, too.

The shoulder under her hand stiffened, then relaxed. When he spoke, his voice was deep and low and steady, the same voice she had known all through the ages of their mastery over Castanet. "If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to be alone at the moment."

"Ignis, I'm so sorry."

For the first time, the Harvest King tore his gaze from the horizon and fixed it on the figure beside him. She glowed in the moonlight like the inside of a seashell, her worried eyes the same seafoam color as her dress. Her wings were lined with starlight and her circlet glowed like a halo around her forehead. Sephia, the Harvest Goddess. The mother of this land, his sister, the other side of his coin, and the last person on Castanet he wanted to see.

"There is nothing for you to be sorry about."

A faint line appeared between Sephia's eyebrows. "Please, do not shut me out. I want to mourn with you."

"Death is natural and necessary. She did not suffer and she did not linger. If you must mourn, take comfort in that."

"There is no comfort in thinking of the manner of her death. Ignis, what's gotten into you? You are speaking as if she was a sick cow."

"I should be asking the same of you, Sephia," he returned gravely. "Is there a difference? One death should hardly matter more than another; plant and animal and human lives are all equally brief in our eyes. Let the villagers perform the funeral rites and mourn as they see fit. I am confused as to why you're so desperate to join them. I will have no part in it."

Sephia's frown solidified into a scowl. "You're already a part of it, whether you like it or not. Castanet is ours-its triumphs, its failures, its births and deaths. Do not lie to me and tell me that you feel nothing when a life passes from yours, be it a flower's or a fish's or a person's." Her eyes misted over. "Especially her's."

"I am no liar," he said shortly. "I felt her death, as you did. I do not, however, see any point in dwelling on it. She is gone, like countless others before her, and countless others who have yet to follow her."

"There is nothing wrong with being sad."

"I did not say there was, but making a spectacle of it is pointless. You have spent too much of your time around humans—"

"And you have not spent enough of yours," Sephia said sharply. "You are the lord of this land, but it was she who rang the bells and revived Castanet, and not you. It was she who saved my life, and not you."

Ignis bristled. "The Goddess Tree bloomed again because I restored it, Sephia."

"Only because she called you to do so. Had she not, I would not be here, and Castanet would be dead. The moment I chose her to save me, she became stronger than me. The moment she called you, she became stronger than both of us. We had nothing to do with Castanet's restoration, Ignis. If Molly hadn't chosen to become the owner of this farm, we would have been lost."

"You presume much." The Harvest King's grim face was dark with unspent anger. "If not her, than someone else from the town would have taken on the task, surely."

The salt wind blew a few strands of Sephia's cerulean hair into her eyes. The expression on her face softened, and she smiled sadly up at him. "Even if you say you owe nothing to her, she walked up the mountain to see you every day. You can't possibly expect me to believe that you weren't her friend."

Ignis returned his gaze to the ocean, watching the moonlight ripple on the waves. This section of the beach was hers, too, although she had told him she was never much of a fisherman. Still, that never stopped her from wading into the water every morning and trying to catch salmon for the white-haired boy in town. From the King's Seat on Mount Garmon he had watched her, casting and reeling and casting again, turning red-faced with equal parts frustration and anger.

She got angry a lot. She also got sad and happy a lot. Usually all in the span of a few minutes. It fascinated him to watch her expressions change.

"What do you mean, you don't like apples with green skin?"

Molly stood before his throne with an apple in her hand. The ribbon around the brim of her straw hat, he noticed, was pale yellow. He couldn't decide which he disliked more.

"Just what I mean. If you insist on gifting me with this patch-colored cultivar, I hope you've got a cocktail maker in that rucksack of yours, as that is the only way I'll consume it."

Her mouth, which had been gaping open, closed in a stubborn line. "If you insist on being picky," she mimicked, "I guess I'll have to bring one next time." She inspected the apple she had held out to him, then took a juicy bite. "It tastes fine," she complained around her mouthful.

"Red," he had told her, immovable as the mountain they stood on. "Grow a red apple for me, and I will eat it."

A tiny, tremulous voice interrupted his memory.

"What's going to happen to the farm?"

The two deities turned their eyes to the voice's owner, the orange harvest sprite that had followed Sephia to the beach. Ignis recognized him as Finn, the sprite that had always accompanied Molly up the mountain on her daily visits, although he always cowered behind her shoulder, as was proper for a sprite to do before the Harvest King. Now, though, etiquette was the last thing on any of their minds. The pom-pom on Finn's triangular hat hung in front of his face, which was tear-streaked and pale, and he wiped tears from his eyes as he spoke.

"She planted crops. There are animals in the barn. What's going to happen to them?"

Sephia spoke as if she was calming a lost sheep. "What seeds did she sow?"

"Wheat," Finn sniffed. "And cocoa and lavender. Thirty squares each. And there are eggs incubating in the coop."

"It's the beginning of the season," Sephia murmured to Ignis. "I assumed the fields had only been ploughed. I did not think she had had time to plant already."

He had known. He had watched her, mere days before, scattering seeds on the dark earth she had turned over and over again with her hoe. She had brought the reek of fertilizer up to the King's Seat when she visited him that night, although she had soaked in the hot spring for nearly an hour to get clean. He had watched that, too.

"She'd be upset if her animals were left alone." Finn was persistent, pleading, looking from Sephia to Ignis with shining eyes. "I can't take care of them all by myself."

"Of course you can't," Sephia said gently. "You shall be helped, even if I have to take up a hoe and a scythe myself." She looked up at the Harvest King. "Ignis, we can't let Melody Farm go fallow. I couldn't live with myself if we undid all of her work."

"So, send the other sprites to seek out other farmers."

"Yes, but what's to be done in the meantime? Let the fields go unwatered, let the animals go unfed? This place is the heart of Castanet."

"You are the heart of Castanet," Ignis corrected irritably. "This farm is well tended, yes, and fruitful, but no more blessed than any other plot of land. If the townspeople realize that they need this place to survive, they will preserve it. If Melody Farm must go unworked for a while, so be it. Farming is a human endeavor, and a human endeavor it must remain. We bring the harvest. They sow the seeds."

"How could you?"

Finn's squeaky voice was harsh with betrayal. Forgetting his station, he buzzed right up to Ignis's face, his little wings flapping furiously.

"You're going to forget everything she did for you, just like that?" he demanded, his pom-pom shaking with every movement of his head. "You're going to let the farm die, just because you're too high and mighty to help? You call yourself the Harvest King?"

Ignis tightened his fists against his biceps. "Leave my sight, little firefly," he said dangerously, "and do not presume to speak to me in that manner again."

Finn's face was flushed with anger and tears. "I will," he bawled, his voice like the chirring of cricket's wings. "I'll take care of it just like Molly did, and I'll visit her grave every day and tell her that you hated her, and hated the farm, and hate Castanet!"

Like a tiny comet, the orange sprite streaked away in a shower of sparkles, disappearing over the sand dunes. Ignis unfolded his powerful arms, although Sephia noticed one of his hands was still clenched.

"You didn't have to be so harsh," she reprimanded gently. "He misses her so."

"He should not have gotten so attached to her, then. He has you to thank for that."

"Maybe so." Sephia's hands moved to his wrist. "What are you holding?"

Ignis looked down at her gentle fingers on his skin. He opened his hand for her, and there in his palm lay a tiny black seed.

Curious, Sephia leaned down to inspect it. "My, my. She certainly knew you very well," she said with a sly little smile. "Who exactly sows the seeds, again?"

"Yes, I know," he answered dryly. "She gave this to me."

"Ah. Did she ask you to plant it?"

It was so tiny in his hand, a little brown teardrop, smooth as glass. He was afraid he'd lose it.

If I did, I could easily make another.

But it would not be the one that she had given to me.

The thought instantly ashamed him.

The ocean reached up with a wave and swirled around Sephia's feet, making her ankle bracelets chime like bells. "You know," she said, almost absently, "they bear fruit in the summer."

She took a dainty step forwards so her gossamer dress floated on the black water and looked backwards at the Harvest God as he closed his hand on the seed once more, struggling to come to terms with the death of someone he didn't realize he loved.


A/N: Part one of seven.