When We Plant the Apple Tree
Summary: Molly dies. Melody Farm falls into divine hands. A story about growing up, even if you're already a god.
Flashbacks and inner thoughts in italics.
II: Ground
Molly was barely into her mid-twenties when she died, a victim of intensely hard work and her own treacherous genetics. Her death wasn't so much an accident as it was a surprise, not only to the villagers, but to herself. She died smiling.
For five long years she tilled the land and weeded the fields and husbanded her animals, turning Melody Farm into a triumph of production that had people from Forget-Me-Not Valley to Mineral Town praising her work.
She left behind three cows, a sheep, a horse, a flock of chickens, and an apple seed.
Even before the Harvest Sprites' bells rang, he knew Castanet was in trouble. But, as the saying goes, heaven helps those who help themselves, and so he waited. He waited even as the river ran dry and the wind held its breath and the ground turned barren. He waited even as the Goddess Tree began to wilt.
Just one person, he thought. Surely, one person will work out what needs to be done to breathe life back into this land.
He was right, as usual. It was one person. Just one person. A farmer. A girl.
"Save me."
The bells were finally ringing; a chorus of five tones tolling in harmony, singing out his name, calling him back. Fire, soil, wind, water and wishes: the desperation in their sweet song was not lost to his ears. For the first time in the long ages of his absence, his hands were needed to tend the land once more.
"Save me."
He formed himself from fire, taking on its color, its heat, its burning brightness. With the song echoing like a symphony in the crystal cold air, he appeared on Mount Garmon's peak, his body draped with claret and ivory robes and his wrists and neck heavy with golden jewelry. He looked every bit the deity that the townspeople had depicted in stained glass in Celesta Church. Pennants of flame swirled stormily around him, frightening away the crowd of harvest sprites circled around his throne, ringing their bells. The song clattered to a stop, and suddenly the only sound on the mountaintop was the sigh of the wind.
The sprites trembled in front of him, their faces pressed into the snowy ground. Drawing himself to his full, towering height, Ignis pressed his hand to his bare chest.
"I have heard your call. What would you ask of me?" His deep tone made his fingertips buzz.
"Oh," said an irreverent voice. It was husky and quiet and harsh all at once; he found it both intriguing and irritating. His ruby eyes sought its owner.
He hadn't known a human would be here, too.
She was standing in snow that nearly came up past her rubber boots, shivering because she was only wearing a skirt and a wool sweater. Her brown hair was a tousled mess around her face, and her earth-colored eyes regarded him with muted awe, as if she hadn't expected him to show up. Her hands, clad in white gardener's gloves, were pressed over her bony hips. She was tall, and gangly, and her wiry muscles moved like a foal's under her dirt-smeared, incredibly sunburned skin.
Next to the human, her hands clasped in prayer, stood Sephia. The goddess's pearly luminescence had drained from her skin and hair, but her smile was the same as it had been all those years ago when they had last parted, and she looked not a day older. Ignis's intrigue vanished, replaced by amazement. She looked mortal. She looked weak.
"Ignis," Sephia whispered. "The tree."
It had been harder to resurrect the Goddess Tree than he had been willing to admit. It was dry under his touch, dry and dying, and he poured his energy into it until it overflowed, until his power chased out every seed of weakness and sickness and death that lurked in the roots. He lit up the entire grove with his energy, and everything began to glow—even the farmer, who looked at herself in wonder as a glimmering outline appeared on her skin.
Ignis only lifted his hands from the tree trunk when the first green buds timidly unfolded, like butterflies emerging from cocoons. A perfect imprint of his fingers remained on the bark.
"You should have told her to hurry."
The three of them—two deities and one farmer—stood alone in front of the Goddess Tree, long after the townspeople had ceased their joyous celebration of its resurrection and gone home for the night. The tree shivered in the wind, drooping once again with silvery green leaves, its bark so deep brown it was almost red. The farmer had left them to their quiet conversation and was hovering awkwardly by the pond with Finn.
Sephia's voice was soft and musical when she finally spoke. "I trusted her." She shone once more, perfectly healthy and perfectly beautiful.
"Sephia, do you realize how close she was to being too late?"
Smiling, she did not answer.
"M'name's Molly."
Ignis turned. The farmer was right behind him. He smelled her before he saw her: sweat and earth on her skin, freshly harvested onions on her gloves. She was standing so closely that the flames that surrounded him stirred her hair, too. Her head only came up to his shoulder, but there was a challenge in her eyes when he met her gaze.
"I heard you talking about me," she said in her sandpapery voice. "I want you to know I worked as fast as I could. I was doing my best the whole time."
Behind her, still by the pond, a mortified Finn hissed, "Molly, no! Remember what we talked about! Respect! Respect!"
"Finn, did you hear him talking? Like all I did was sit and scratch my butt all day!" The farmer—Molly—threw up her hands. "Was he around to do any of the hoeing? How about the harvesting? Or the fetching of vaguely specific items?" Taking his appalled silence for guilt, she sniffed disdainfully at him. "Thought so."
Beside him, Sephia put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. "He has been away for a long, long time, Molly. He was just surprised that everything has changed. The Harvest Lord is indeed overjoyed that harmony has been restored to Castanet. We both thank you for what you've done, from the bottom of our hearts."
The ire on Molly's face faded into grudging acceptance, and she made a noncommittal noise. "I'm just happy you're feeling better, Harvest Goddess," she finally said. "If I can do anything else for you, at any time, please call me. I'll come."
The words were more sincere than a prayer, and Sephia reached out and grasped Molly's filthy hands, making Ignis flinch. Silent and shocked, he looked from one woman to the other, wondering just how his sweet Sephia could have made friends with such a brat.
And then, with inexcusable confidence, Molly leaned in and, thinking that Ignis couldn't hear, whispered in Sephia's ear, "His head is kind of big, isn't it?"
So went the first meeting between the bringer of the harvest and the sower of seeds.
Ignis had claimed the King's Seat long ago, back when the land and sea around the mountain were wild and free, inhabited by none but feral animals and unchecked forests that grew straight down to the rocky shoreline. After his Summoning, he chose to stay, and took his place on his solitary throne once more, preparing to join his counterpart in her task as Castanet's guardian. If Castanet's hero was someone who had, unwittingly, almost caused its destruction, he could not risk leaving again.
A wave of his hand had parted the clouds swirling below his vantage point, and he looked down at the world for the first time in ages to see just how much it had changed.
The first thing he noticed was that her house was dilapidated. The barn and the coop were not.
The ploughed field directly in front of her house had been planted from end to end with five or six different kinds of crops, looking more like an overgrown jungle than anything. Her livestock—three cows, a sheep, a horse, and a flock of chickens—wandered in and out of this forest, knocking corncobs off their stalks, crushing onions and lilies underfoot. They were all preened and fat and content, soaking up the late afternoon sunshine.
He had given a disdainful snort and turned his view to the western corner of her property.
That's when he noticed that she had an apple orchard.
He appeared on the slope of the hill like the breaking sunrise, and although dawn was some hours away, he cast light wherever he walked. He inspected the cocoa bean pods and lifted the pale purple lavender flowers and sank his fingers into the moist soil to examine how recently it had been watered. Knowing the animals would become fretful if he approached the barn, he instead moved across the bridge, as if in a dream, and walked up and down between the rows of apple trees. Their branches sprawled over his head in a canopy of leaves and pink, sweet smelling flowers. Winter had barely ended and already the trees were blooming, ready to bear fruit.
He found Finn in the last row, digging at an empty square of dirt with a tiny stick, an orange sapling beside him. If he noticed the Harvest King's presence, he did not immediately acknowledge it, and Ignis was content to watch him in silence, listening to the chirping crickets and feeling the grass tickle his ankles.
Finn set his stick aside and swiped at his dirty face with the back of his hand. His voice was hoarse when he spoke.
"That should be deep enough, shouldn't it, Harvest King?"
"It will do."
Finn nodded once, then grabbed the orange sapling by the root ball, which was wrapped in a small burlap bag. Ignis's fists tightened.
"Don't plant that one," he said. "I have something that is much more important."
Dumbfounded, Finn tilted his head. "But she wanted oranges—"
He wisely closed his mouth when Ignis held out one hand, palm up, to show him the little seed that lay cupped there.
"It needs to grow," Ignis said, very quietly.
Understanding was slow in coming, but finally the little harvest sprite dropped his head and shivered as tears streamed down his face again, and he made a weak gesture towards the freshly dug hole. Without fanfare, Ignis knelt on the ground and placed the seed into the hole and scooped loose soil over it.
It had been so, so long since he had helped create new life. He watched the pile of dirt intently, as if he was expecting the tree to burst from the ground like a geyser of leaves and bark and apples, freshly grown, red and glowing. He didn't even notice that his impeccable robes were becoming saturated with dew or that his braid was dragging in the dirt.
After a moment, Finn fidgeted. "It…it might need help."
Ignis shook his head. "I cannot do what you are asking. I cannot tamper nature's design."
"You don't have to tamper," Finn said quickly, "but you could help. We usually plant them out here when they're already seedlings, you know, when they've sprouted. I mean, I know you know what a seedling is. It's just that I don't want it to die because I can't take care of it very well. I mean, I won't not take care of it, but I've got so much to do around here, and I might forget, and just—"
Relenting, perhaps, because of the pitiful look on Finn's face, or because the heaviness in his chest was becoming painful, Ignis gently placed one hand over the little mound of dirt. "Just a little," he said, eyes flashing, summoning his immeasurable strength to do something as insignificant and pointless and heartbreaking as helping Molly's seed to grow.
"Not too much," Finn agreed, fluttering his wings and watching the light beneath Ignis's palm grow in intensity. "I don't think she'd like it if she knew you helped it too much."
Between his fingers, a tiny green sprout poked up from the soil, growing rapidly. When two perfect, teardrop shaped leaves sprouted on either side of the stem, Ignis lifted his hand.
"You're going to love it," she had told him with a beaming smile. "Just do me one favor and take care of it for me."
"I will come tomorrow," he said, in a strangely strangled voice, and disappeared in a flash of light.
A.N. Two of seven. Somehow, my Molly became a pretty harsh person. Haha.
I know Edge's bell is referred to as the "Heart" bell, but that made me think too much of Captain Planet, and I don't need to be giggling while writing an angst fic. Also, I love alliteration. :3 (Although, a story where Molly rings the five bells and summons Captain Planet instead of the Harvest King would make for an excellent crack fic.)
My writing tends to have tons of "ands" and commas. Commas and semicolons. It's a very clunky style, so please forgive it. :)