Blackwood Grove, Fandom, Wednesday Morning

[witchoftheflesh]

It had taken awhile to get everything ready, especially with the break in the middle to go to Quebec, but Adrian and Boston had been working like mad to finish getting the stones ready. He wanted to make sure everything was done by the time the ground froze - which, sure, might not be as much or as soon as he was used to in Massachusetts, but neither witch nor familiar were keen on taking chances and the rocks still had to settle into their new locations. It had been several days of intense labor, hoisting rocks and digging ditches, moving in patterns that left beautiful markings on the ground wherever they went. Or, at least, he thought they were beautiful and that was what mattered. Some of the stones had been put flat into the earth, creating large stone spirals like the one in front of his house. Others were standing stones, dotted around his grove. There were a few more rocks to place, these ones nearly Adrian's own height, and a large hunk of natural quartz he'd found, but these were the last, getting placed not far from his garden.

"Proper circle or elliptical?" he asked Boston, using the bottom hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat and grime from his face before peeling it off entirely. There was a definite chill in the air, but he'd be working too hard to notice it soon enough.

Boston hopped down from the tree he'd been perched on, and wandered around the planned location, then began drawing a spiral pattern in the dirt with a claw. "Circle," he declared. "Make the radius bigger than the last one, though. Between the garden, greenhouse, and your heart tree, this will end up handling a lot of magic and the less we need to diffuse through the spiral--"

"--The better off we'll be in the long run," Adrian finished. "At least we got good rocks. I was worried we'd be working with shale."

"So you've said," Boston noted. "You've got the markers, right?" Adrian held up a fistful of long, wooden stakes. "Excellent. Let's mark out the proper places and then you can start digging."

"And then hauling. And then more digging," Adrian said, though he sounded happy about it, rather than complaining. "Let's get this done then, huh? After lunch, there's vegetables to harvest in the garden and the tomatoes should be done simmering by the time I'm done with that, and that'll leave us the evening to bottle more potions..."

"Less talking about things on your to-do list, more actually doing them," Boston said. "Get to work."

[Open! Conversation about Natasha NFB, please!]

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[witchoftheflesh]

He would appreciate that consideration as soon as he realized it!

"Huh?" Adrian glanced up from his shoveling and grinned at Pam. "Hi! And nah, I'd never joke about something as important as rocks," he teased. "But hey, welcome! You mind if I keep working while we talk? Or is there something that needs my full attention...?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Sure, there's a terrible commercial emergency," Pam said dryly, her gaze running across the area. Taking in the grove. "Of course it's fine, Adrian. I'm even happy to help, if you'd like."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Hey, maybe you were coming to tell me that you were declaring the shop a coffee-free zone and you came to me to break it gently," he laughed. "And no, please, hang on, let me get you a seat and something to drink. Your first time here, you're a guest!"

"And you don't have a second shovel," Boston added. Very helpfully.

Adrian sighed. "And I don't have a second shovel," he admitted.

[joan_of_bark]

There was a certain level of amusement involved in that, "I have hands," but Pam was in a good mood, and it came with nothing heavier than an arch of her brow.

She strode a little further into the grove as she spoke. "But I'll survive sitting."

[witchoftheflesh]

Adrian flushed slightly since he had done his fair share of digging by hand - including the excavation down to his heart tree's roots. So he could have easily offered Pam the shovel, but he'd been thrown a bit by the offer.

He didn't entertain much.

But Pam was rolling with it, which he appreciated. "Chair or ground?" he asked, reaching for his discarded shirt to tug back on. "And you want some water, or a fruit beer, or...?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Ground and water is fine."

Adrian seemed a touch off balance. A funny piece of insight, Pam reflected, as she looked for a good place to sit.

[witchoftheflesh]

He wasn't used to hosting!

His home had been placed in a clearing in the near-center of his grove, which meant that there was a carpet of soft ground cover for her to sit on, as well as several of the outermost rocks of the spiral. His lush garden also had a layer of stones around it, though they were more to demarcate 'garden' versus 'not-garden.'

Adrian did flash her a smile before heading back into his house, though it was several minutes before he returned, clan hands holding a sturdy wooden tray with a pitcher of water and two glasses, a loaf of tangy sourdough bread, a small crock of herbed butter, and a plate full of chopped vegetables: cucumbers, bell peppers, carrots, and chunks of a sweet onion.

"Here you go," he said, setting the tray down next to wherever Pam had settled. "The butter is from a farmer's market near the Blackwood, it's delicious."

[joan_of_bark]

By then, Pam had made herself at home on one of the rocks. Her feet extended to touch the soil, even if said feet were currently wrapped in shoes - the contact was always a comfort.

"You didn't need to go all-out," she said, halfway between amused and, perhaps, a little touched. "I'm just passing by. I wanted to see what you've been working on."

[witchoftheflesh]

"This isn't all out," he assured her with a grin. "I'm not baking. Hells, I didn't even make sandwiches."

Then he gestured to the grove around them, encompassing the garden, his greenhouse, the clearing, everything. "I'm very pleased with how it's going," he said. "I'm scrambling a bit to make sure everything's done before the frost, but things are settling in nicely. I should at least get a few more holes dug, but if you want a tour, I'd be happy to show you around. And, of course, you're free to wander the grove itself. He smiled warmly. "It likes you. Wary, but it likes you."

[joan_of_bark]

"Well, I am full of fungal spores," Pam said wryly. "It's probably right to be wary."

(And other things; she could hear the trees speaking, and underneath all that, unconsciously, her being still reached out to the Green.)

She picked up a glass and filled it with water. She took a sip. "I would like a tour, though. If it doesn't interrupt your plans too much."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Happy to," he said, picking up his shovel again. "You'll love my greenhouse. Well. I love my greenhouse, but I'm biased."

He cleared another foot or so of space in the hole he was digging and asked, "So how was your week here? Not too boring with everyone gone?"

[joan_of_bark]

"I found ways to keep myself occupied," Pam said easily. (She'd already roped - intentionally or not - two people into this. She'd like to keep Adrian out of it for the time being.) "The island is beautiful when it's quiet."

[witchoftheflesh]

And when Adrian turned to literal ecoterrorism - that was, terrorizing people with the ecosystem - in the battle against the warlocks, everyone would know where he got it from.

"I would say you missed an equally beautiful trip, but I think you would have spent the entire trip seething." Nothing said 'capitalism on display' more than a tourist town, unless it was a wealthy tourist town. "I spent a lot of time handwavily hiking and exploring the green spaces. And there were a couple of sustainable restaurants I had to try. One of them had a garden on the roof...beautiful."

[joan_of_bark]

Pam sipped her water, letting the chattering of the forest wash past her. "That's the thing about cities," she said. "People always find little ways to make up for all the concrete and the glass."

[witchoftheflesh]

"I don't think people can really be whole without it," Adrian said. "At least in my world, it's a reminder that they can't sense about what they should have been given. But still, it fills a part of them."

A pause.

"Mind you, that's entirely conjecture and I've barely been out of the woods so..."

[joan_of_bark]

"I've spent most of my life in cities," Pam offered. She took a bite of bread to go along with her water. "Gotham, especially. It can be oppressive, but there's so much life in them at the same time."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Little rooftop gardens and green spaces?" he asked. "Or live in totality - humans, rats, pigeons, the never ending cycle of life and death?"

[joan_of_bark]

"The latter," Pam said. Another bite. Then she set the bread aside. "Sometimes it's easy to forget we're all part of the same ecosystem. That we're all little things that grow in symbiosis with our world."

[witchoftheflesh]

Adrian smiled over his shoulder at her. "That's magic," he said. "At least, my magic. The cycles of life, the world. That's why forests are so powerful. So many cycles crossing over one another."

[joan_of_bark]

"Sometimes I think the city has its own cycles," Pam said. She set her glass aside, and rose to her feet. "We just don't think to look to find them."

[witchoftheflesh]

"It does," Adrian said, then amends, "it should." He couldn't speak with authority on the matter, of course. "All magic comes from the great cycles. Life, death, the seasons, the weather, the phases of the moon, the orbits of the earth and sun - they all turn and spiral through each other, and that movement creates magic. Why should a city be any different? If cities can thrive and if cities can die, I can't believe that don't have cycles."

[joan_of_bark]

"It saved my life," Pam said.

She strode towards him, hands in the pockets of her overalls. "Realizing that even within all that concrete, if you reach out-- find the life playing across the skin of a million human beings-- there is boundless renewal."

She thought about Gotham. About Queen Ivy. How she'd shared some of that story with a stranger, but not with Adrian, yet. Should she?

She wondered if he'd think less of her.

[witchoftheflesh]

Well, he hadn't thought less of Yelena when she admitted she'd been an assassin, so...Who knew?

"Not to mention the dandelion growing up through the cracks in the concrete, the mushrooms growing anywhere they can take hold, the poison ivy reclaiming abandoned areas. They're still there. Cockroaches, bedbugs, mildew, mold. As people, we think of them as filth, something to be destroyed, but it's thriving life."

[joan_of_bark]

Did Pam's lips twitch a little at that 'poison ivy'? Well. Maybe.

"Exactly," she said. And then: "How about that tour?"

Still toying with a thought. Was it cowardice? More like caution.

[witchoftheflesh]

"Right!" Adrian said. "Here, we'll start with the house." He led her over to the snug wooden cottage that he'd brought with him from Massachusetts.

The front door they stepped through was intricately carved, and decorated, though that level of decoration did not seem to extend into the house proper. Here, simplicity and ruled, letting the craftsmanship speak for itself. Most of the space was taken up by a single vaulted room that seemed to be a combination kitchen and workshop. Where they weren't pierced with tall antique-glass windows, the wooden walls were covered with built-in shelves containing every sort of witchy ingredient from rosemary to dried snakes. One entire corner was dedicated to a fieldstone fireplace with a massive cauldron hanging from an iron chain at its center. The kitchen area beside it had a wood-fired iron stove along with a deep enameled sink and a spice cabinet the size of a wardrobe. Well-used copper pots and pans hung from an iron rack above the wooden island, which had a second cauldron stowed beneath it as well as rows of glass bottles in all different shapes and sizes. A small bedroom lay off to one side of the workshop, and a door out the back led to a glassed-in greenhouse patio that was already full of plants. The ceiling was steeply pointed and braced with massive oak beams, one of which supported a ladder-accessed loft that appeared to be Adrian's office. There were several bookcases up there along with a large circular window to let in the light, a comfy-looking pile of cushions for reading, and, oddly, a laptop computer. Other than that, nothing in the house seemed to use electricity.

"This is my home," Adrian said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and hooking it up to a portable solar charging panel, which he shimmied up the ladder to place under the loft's sunny window. "The greenhouse out back already has full rainwater capture and filtration, which means I won't have to worry about digging a well. I use a combination of aquaponics and compost for waste removal, so that takes care of septic and trash. Food scraps go to the garden - I will have to buy some real solar panels for the roof eventually, because those I couldn't make myself, but this should do for now."