[Video]

[maddest]

I'm setting up communal clotheslines here, for anyone whose bedding is waterlogged. Bring as much strong wire or string as you can if you can find it.

We work best when we aid one another.

[x,y]

Comments

[thelightbringer]

Oh I can't promise anything, Xerxes.

[That's his version of teasing: threatening to poison you.]

Give it a day or so. I want to see if my brothers remember it.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Lucifer, try. What's the worst thing that'll happen? It'll take a little too much like melon?

[Nudging him with an elbow.]

I want to try it. I haven't eaten.

[thelightbringer]

[It shouldn't come as any surprise to learn that Lucifer is a perfectionist, in the strictest sense of the word. But he also knows he paid more attention to the plants back then than his brothers did; it wouldn't help to ask their opinions.

He sighs, and as he exhales a deep green leaf big enough to cover both their laps appears. In its center, growing up from a pale green stem, is a white berry the size of Break's fist.]

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

[He holds out his hand- can't see it, obviously, waiting for Lucifer to give it to him.

He doesn't bother to keep up the act around him any more, staring straight ahead rather than keeping his face angled towards him.]

[thelightbringer]

[Lucifer twists it deftly off the stem, and sets it in Break's palm.]

Its skin doesn't seem thick. Just bite.

[And once bitten into, the fruit tastes of apricot nectar and watermelon, with its own cedar undertones, the way young mango tastes vaguely woody.]

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

[He breaks it in half with a twist, smiling as the juice slides down his fingers, and offers one of the pieces to Lucifer, before taking a bite of his own.]

[thelightbringer]

[His first thought is a sort of mash up of incoherent pleasure. His second is that he needn't have worried, it's the plant. An exact version of it, plucked from Creation and not his memory.]

Well. It's nice to know I haven't lost my touch.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[Break almost laughs, trying to catch the juice on his chin.]

[thelightbringer]

[Lucifer is more finicky, but no less messy for it. The fruit is stickier than a peach.]

Well? was it worth it? I remember a cautionary tale or two about meddling with extinct lives.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

I didn't think you were that good.

[thelightbringer]

At what?

[He'd sound affronted if he weren't distracted by his fruit]

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

I'm teasing.

[Listening to him enjoy himself.]

Don't worry.

[thelightbringer]

Not too much melon?

[Also teasing, or trying his hand at it.]

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

It's perfect.

You must have seen and known so much.

[thelightbringer]

Things were different then. It was easy to be swept up in it.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Were you very young?

[thelightbringer]

Very. It was when things first began to grow on the earth. Little single-celled creatures at first...

I know what it is to get older, mentally. To learn things, to adapt. What is it like to age?

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

I'm the wrong person to ask. My memories of those years are fragmented.

[thelightbringer]

[He leans back on his hands]

What would you do in order to be able to leave here?

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Right now? Nothing.

[thelightbringer]

You like it that much, huh?

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

In this moment... it doesn't hurt so much to breathe.

[thelightbringer]

[Lucifer flexes, stretches, as if testing the idea.]

...No, it doesn't.

[mister-hatter.livejournal.com]

Mm.

Lucifer?

[thelightbringer]

Yes?