Blackwood Grove, Saturday Afternoon

[witchoftheflesh]

Adrian turned in a slow circle, examining his Grove from every angle, his brows drawing together and his shoulders slumping. The damage was...extensive. Not catastrophic, thank the Forest, but not far off, either. 'Devastated' might be about right.

Naked branches clawed at the sky. Tree trunks were withered and twisted. The grass was dried and yellow under his feet, crumbling to dust wherever he stepped. The soil was thin and powdery and several of his reservoir rocks had split or shattered. Even the air felt thin here. He laid a hand on his heart tree, the acorns all paper-thin husks scattered across the ground.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to the great oak, which seemed a little diminished under his touch. "I was a poor steward to you. You are my responsibility and I failed. I'm sorry. I'll do better, I swear. Just..." He looked around again. He wasn't even sure where to begin to fix the damage he'd caused. "Just keep going. I'll swear, you'll be strong and healthy again."

"Adrian!" A yowl as a black blur streaked from the cabin to his side. "Adrian, what happened? How did this happen? What did you do?"

Adrian looked down at the accusatory face of his familiar and winced a bit. "C'mon," he said, holding his arms out to Boston. "I'll explain inside. We've got a lot of work to do."

[Open, though Pam's thread is canonically last!]

Comments

[mustbeawitch]

Lydia was looking rather pointedly around the Grove, in fact. Of course you had to do this to your poor Grove when autumn began the downhill slope toward winter, Adrian. Of course. "I suppose that's something," she said. "Are you well?"

'What am I supposed to do with your cat if your Grove doesn't make it through the winter in this condition?' was apparently a little too blunt even for Lydia.

[witchoftheflesh]

"I'm..." The way he trailed off before he found a word was probably telling. As was his pallor, more pronounced today than it had been the night before. "...coping?"

So did making it into a question, most likely.

[mustbeawitch]

"Where is Mr. Boston?" Lydia demanded, because he clearly hadn't yelled at Adrian enough. "And you should probably be sitting down. I'll make you tea." Because English. Also, because witch.

So much for getting any filming done today.

[witchoftheflesh]

"He's in the cabin," Adrian sighed. "He told me that I could start clearing out the dead vegetation by myself, like I'd made all the other decisions about this."

Boston was very not best pleased with his witch.

He wanted to protest sitting down, but he could feel his energy flagging already. "A short break," he conceded.

[mustbeawitch]

"And tea," Lydia resolved.

Tea with a restorative spell on it. It was fine! She didn't need the ability to dance at the homecoming dance tonight. It wasn't as if they'd do any of the dances she was familiar with anyway.

"You know, he and Kitty could really--well, no, they probably shouldn't." Get started complaining about their witches making important decisions without them, she meant, as if Kitty could talk, going off and getting engaged without even telling Lydia. (Granted, Kitty had not been Lydia's familiar at the time, but that hardly signified!)

[witchoftheflesh]

"And tea," he agreed, because fighting with Lydia was a chancy proposition at his best. Which was clearly not today.

"Yeah, Boston and Kitty doing anything together sounds like a recipe for disaster. Or at least several more weeks of caterwauling."

[mustbeawitch]

"I do hope Kitty will be able to come visit next year for Parent's Weekend," Lydia said, because she could do inane chatter to fill an awkward silence with the absolute best of them, thank you very much. "Not least because I would love to see her, of course, but I fear Mr. Boston shall become intolerable. I already had to threaten him with your mother this year."

[witchoftheflesh]

"Wait, you threatened him with my mother?" Adrian asked. "He didn't say anything about that to me."

This may, uh. Not be the best time to talk to Boston about not mentioning something, though.

[mustbeawitch]

"Well, he was making the most awful racket outside my window, as toms are wont to do, of course, and you weren't answering your phone," Lydia explained as she chivvied him in the direction of the house.

Speaking of things Adrian probably didn't want to talk about right now.

[witchoftheflesh]

"Oh damn it all, my phone," he groaned.

He was pretty sure it was at the bottom of the swamp somewhere.

[mustbeawitch]

You could have just sacrificed your phone if you were going to chuck it down a swamp anyway. Lydia's whole modern life was in hers, she was reasonably sure it was worth a fairly large amount of magic.

"Your phone?" she echoed, because she couldn't read narrative.

[witchoftheflesh]

"I'm pretty sure it's still in Slaughter Swamp," he groaned. "I was tearing through my pockets to find something to fight the zombies with and I'm pretty sure one of the things I tossed away was my phone."

[mustbeawitch]

Lot to unpack there, Adrian!

"And did your phone do a useful amount of damage to the...zombies?" Lydia was guessing no.

[witchoftheflesh]

That was barely even the surface of it!

"No, just dropped it, I think," Adrian said. "I was using exploding acorns and magic stones to fight off the zombies. To middling effect, really. There were just so many, converging on us."

Well, Pam. And Fluoride Guy.