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 and inner thoughts in italics.
V: Sprout
"Is it dead?"
A disconsolate Finn hovered just over the Harvest God's glowing shoulder as the deity bent over the apple sapling. The sprite had gone bawling to Sephia when he had seen the damage to Molly's tree, and Sephia had called Ignis down from his mountain to see what could be done.
The apple tree was indeed in bad shape. It had been growing steadily for weeks and had shot up to nearly three feet in height, springy and spongy and able to withstand high winds and rain, but the storm had brought down branches from trees much larger than it. One of these branches had happened to land on the sapling where its own first branches, leaves just beginning to bud, had grown from its trunk. Ignis, cradling the broken half in his hand, mused over it silently as Finn bawled himself to hysterics above him.
"I should have covered it," Finn lamented, "I should have b-been out here with it. Now it's dead, and it's all m-my fault!"
Ignis grimaced as he felt the tiny drops of Finn's tears land on his shoulder. "Don't be ridiculous," he said stiffly. "You would have been blown away. Instead, you should have thought of protecting this tree before you took shelter. Fortunately," he added over Finn's rising sobs, "while this break is unfortunate, it is not beyond repair."
Finn hiccupped, his hat slipping down over his eyes. "R-really? You're sure?"
Ignis felt the sapling breathing, living, as surely as he would if he were holding a sparrow. Beyond what he felt, though, he saw what Molly would have seen: the new wood within the broken bark still showing green and moist, the branches in his hands still supple, the budding leaves still firmly attached. It could be saved, and it wouldn't take an act of god to do so.
"I need twine," he said, trying to remember. "And softened beeswax, and a knife."
Finn rushed off towards the farmhouse, flying in through one of the broken windows. Ignis listened to him rustling around in Molly's toolbox before returning, laden with a clean ball of twine, Molly's candle-making wax in a small jar, and a half-open pocket knife. His flight path was as erratic as a drunk bumblebee's.
Ignis carefully trimmed away the ragged slivers of bark around the edges with the knife before pressing the two broken sections together. With expert hands he guided the twine around the break, spacing each pass evenly apart and tying the twine tightly when he had finished. He wrapped another length of twine over the break again, this time starting farther down the trunk to provide more support.
"It looks like a bandage," Finn noted as Ignis dipped his fingers into the beeswax. With gentle strokes, he coated the wax on the parts of the break that showed between the rows of twine. Grow, he thought. Live and grow.
"Wow, Harvest God," Finn breathed as Ignis stood to review his handiwork. "I didn't know you knew how to do stuff like that."
The red-haired deity scowled at him. "Impertinent little firefly. What use was there in asking for my help, if you doubted your lord?"
Finn grabbed the edges of his hat and cowered behind a leaf. "N-no, I didn't mean it like that! I meant that I didn't think you'd bother with the old fashioned way of doing things."
Ignis looked down, feeling the weight of the pocket knife in his hand. The paint on the handle was wearing off, the blade a little rusted. His fingertips were slick with beeswax.
"It looks better already, doesn't it?" Finn buzzed around the sapling, giggling. The wind breathed through its branches and it shivered, but the twine held firm and the wax remained sealed over the seam in the wood. Soon enough it would grow together again, and nothing would remain of the break but a tiny scar.
Despite himself, Ignis was pleased.
Perhaps he had been a farmer after all.
Dressed in the only formal dress she owned, Molly sat behind the buffet table that she'd helped set up for Toby's and Renee's wedding feast, her chin propped up on her hands and her elbows resting on her knees. The tiled courtyard in front of Celesta Church was filled with people singing, dancing, drinking and eating. Strings of clear bulbs that had been hung from one light pole to the next cast a warm golden glow on the celebration. Nearly everyone in town had come to see the moon-haired fisherman and the gentle farmer girl say their vows to each other, including Molly, who had brought bouillabaisse by the gallon and fresh herb tea. On the tables next to hers were steaming platters of vegetable fried rice from Marimba Farm and coolers full of mint ice cream from Horn Ranch. The air smelled of delicious food and fresh salt wind off the ocean, and was filled with music and laughter.
She yawned. The party was still in full swing, even though they'd started just after noon and the cloudless sky was purpling into twilight above them. She'd have loved to join the festivities if she'd had any energy to do so. Harvest season was fast approaching, along with innumerable festivals and birthdays to prepare for. She had a field full of bluemist flowers to harvest and two of her cows were pregnant. On top of that, Molly's new special project was taking up more time than she liked to admit to herself. Even thinking about it made her shoulders and back ache. She told herself it was for a good cause and looked for a distraction to take her mind off of her creeping exhaustion.
Her eyes scanned the crowd, tracing over Jin and Anissa sharing a plate of food on the bench at the overlook, Julius trying to coax a cocktail into a flush-faced Candace, and the two dancing newlyweds, resplendent in traditional wedding garb, dancing in the middle of a throng of clapping townsfolk. Molly swallowed hard. She hadn't known that Toby knew how to dance so well.
"Hey, girlie! Can we get some chow?"
Kathy's cheerful voice interrupted her thoughts before they could turn gloomy. She sat up straighter to see the blonde equestrian running up to the table with her husband Owen in tow. Kathy had braided her ponytail and Owen's dark red hair had been slicked back.
"I've been smelling this stuff all night and I've been starving for it," Kathy told her, grabbing a bowl and filling it with bouillabaisse, "but I couldn't peel this oaf away from the dance floor long enough to get any. Good thing he hates line dances or we never would've made it over here."
Owen bumped her with his hip. "What can I say? I can't get enough of watching your ass move in those jeans." He laughed at her embarrassed blush, playfully smacked her on the rump, and stole the bowl out of her hands. "I'll be waiting at our table. Later, Molly!"
They watched him wind back through the crowd. Kathy laughed sheepishly, tugging at her pants. "I mean, I wore them so he'd notice, but—"
"Don't act like you don't like it," Molly said, grinning. "He cleans up pretty nicely, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, and the bad thing is that he knows it." Kathy said. "Anyway, I meant to ask, are you feeling well? You look like you're about to keel over. You sick or something?"
"Me? Oh, no." Molly yawned again and stretched. "I'm just beat. Stuff at the farm has been keeping me pretty busy. I'm probably going to head out soon."
"Oh, but the fun's just getting started! Ah, well, I don't blame you. It's brutal out there." Kathy ladled stew into another bowl. "If the band doesn't play a waltz soon I'm going to drop dead." She picked a scallop out of the broth and popped it into her mouth. "Man, that's good. Thanks again, Molly. You sure you're okay?"
Molly was about to answer when she caught a glimpse of Toby and Renee walking over to them. Her heart clenched when she saw the way he was leading her by the hand. He was so very kind, and so very sweet, and so very easy to fall in love with. She couldn't blame Renee for that when she had done so herself.
She had just enough time to straighten up and plaster a smile on her face before they reached the table. "Enjoying the party?" she asked starry-eyed Renee, flawless in her white dress.
"It's like a dream," Renee gushed, clasping Toby's hands in both of hers. "I'm so happy everyone's having so much fun. We wanted to thank everyone personally for spending this special day with us."
"The food alone makes it totally worth it," Kathy said, winking at Molly. Toby noticed Kathy's bowl and turned surprised blue eyes to Molly.
"You made this stew?" he asked wonderingly. "Molly, you're too kind. I absolutely love bouillabaisse."
"I know," she said quietly. Toby, not quite hearing her over the music and laughter behind them, beamed an overjoyed smile at her. Despite herself, she smiled back. "You two must be hungry. Let me get you some."
It never would have worked out, she thought, watching Toby and his bride walk away with Kathy, all of them balancing overflowing bowls in their hands. We're too different. We've got very, very little in common. He's a fisherman with his head in the clouds. I've got a farm to run, and animals to take care of, and apples to grow.
She stayed long enough to say goodbye to everyone and then left the church grounds, her pink silk dress swishing against her knees as she walked down Harmonica's vacant streets. The wedding music followed her all the way back to the farm, and before she opened the door to her house, she had to swallow the lump of tears in her throat.
I didn't cry at the wedding, she told herself doggedly. That's all that matters. I made it. It's over.
She went inside. Finn was flat on his back on her bed with his mouth wide open, his snores sounding like the creaking of tiny hinges. Smiling, she began to undress in the dark, but paused to inspect the plant growing in a pot underneath the window. It was barely a weed, really, tied to a Popsicle stick to keep it growing straight, but Molly had carefully filled the pot with her best soil and had been diligently tending to it for a few weeks now. Brushing her ungloved fingers over its glossy leaves, she thought of the god on the mountain.
"Bring me a red apple and I will eat it," he'd said to her. She'd taken the words to heart like a prayer. She just hoped the little seedling in the pot wouldn't disappoint him. After one last check of its leaves, she flopped down onto her bed, laying in the square of moonlight shining in through her window.
"Isn't it weird, Finn?" she whispered, too quietly to wake him. "Toby was the first friend I ever made. When we were practically starving and he gave me that fishing pole, I almost started crying and he just walked over and hugged me. Remember the moon watching festival, and our first New Year's Eve? He and I sat next to each other on the pier and I thought, I could do this every day for the rest of my life. I mean, I say that now, but I never told him so. I was always too busy with the farm to tell him anything. There were always sick animals and failing crops and sunny days where I couldn't take the time to walk to town and tell him everything that was on my heart. I guess I waited too long. That happens to everyone, doesn't it, Finn?"
Finn mumbled in his sleep and turned onto his side, drooling. Molly's voice became even lower.
"So, even though it hurts a little bit now, I've learned something. If I ever do fall in love again, I can't hide it. I've just gotta tell him. I gotta tell him."
The bonfire was glorious, blazing hot and giving off the light of a sunrise that made the very sand on the beach glitter, even though the night was black above them. Finn hid halfway behind a terracotta pot on the farmhouse porch, sniffing the woodsmoke and watching as Ignis's black silhouette threw the last of the branches from the fallen trees onto the pyramid of flames. It crackled and roared, leaping forty feet into the air and raining embers like stars onto the grass. It would take days for the whole thing to stop smoldering, days that would be spent repairing the barn roof and rebuilding the water tower and replanting new trees to replace the yawning spaces in the neat rows of the orchard. The sheer amount of work that faced him made Finn dizzy just thinking about it.
Ignis wiped his hands on his pristine robe, then folded his arms and regarded his work. The heat swirled like liquid around him, prickling his skin. He glowed even brighter than usual, his skin golden, his hair copper. Black dirt made half-moons under his fingernails and his palms were full of splinters.
When had it happened?
Truth be told, he could not remember when the change came. Perhaps it happened when he had watched the tender way Molly stroked the leaves of the apple seedling she had planted in the pot underneath her window. Perhaps it was when she was nodding off at the table at the wedding reception, alone under the stars even though the whole town was dancing before her. Maybe it was the loss in her voice when she spoke to a sleeping Finn.
Somehow, he had known that she was talking about him.
If he had been human, the knowledge would have broken his heart.
Is this what it felt like, Molly? he thought, watching the burning wood turn white. Did it burn as hotly as this? Tell me. I must know that you knew how to burn, too.
He remembered the way her snowy footsteps sounded when she crossed chasm stairs. The way her clothes would cling to her body with sweat, her scratchy voice raised in song as she worked her fields, her bright eyes flashing with anger at the slightest annoyance. He remembered meeting her on the mountaintop, her irreverence, her infuriating familiarity with Sephia. When he thought of Molly's lips brushing Sephia's ear as they whispered to each other, a pang stabbed through his heart.
Anger, he thought, or jealousy?
She had brought him an apple and planted a tree.
His jaw worked.
What were you thinking, trying to love me?
She'd gone to him, he who had been as friendly and approachable as this bonfire, and she'd offered him something he didn't know how to take. But something had made him try. It was the same thing that made him abandon his throne now and come down to earth and plant again, and work again, and get dirt under his fingernails and feel sweat pouring off of his back. Her love had dragged him down from godhood and turned him into a farmer, ages after he had planted his last crop, ages after he had swallowed his last sweet apple, ages after the heat of his passion had cooled.
How dare she set fire to him again?
AN: I made myself hungry describing the food in the wedding scene. I'm pathetic. D:
Also, sorry for all of the italics. When I first planned this story I didn't realize so much of it would be flashbacks. If I had, I would've formatted it all very differently.