voidtreckerexpress | Greening up the Greenhouse

Entry tags:

Greening up the Greenhouse

Who: Persephone (Open)
Where: Greenhouse mostly
When: Month Egret. Day 21
What: Perse has a bad morning and decides to be productive to make herself feel better
Warnings: None so far

OOC: Feel free to reply to any part of this, in the cabin or before she starts planting

She's spent longer on this train now than she'd been in Olympus. It doesn't really feel possible that it all happened in such a short time. It feels even less possible that she could be here months. Years? She stays curled up in her bunk that morning, staring at the wall. Crying maybe. A little. She's already had her birthday on here. What more is she missing at home? Nothing, because time doesn't move there like everyone said, or has Artemis been looking for her desperately. Would she have told her mom? Would Hades notice if she stoppped showing up to the internship?

Generally speaking, it's a bad morning. She drifts to a late breakfast and finally ends up in the greenhouse. There's a long moment where she wants to tear it all down. Her fists clench at the sight of her inane roses, her eyes fill red at the reminder that the greenhouse came with her arrival. She wants to break the walls, tear down the roses, claw up the burgeoning growth, destroy the smells and sights that remind her of her home, of her dreams. But she takes a deep breath. Hands relax, her eyes clear. Put into work. Wrath isn't helping anyone.

She sifts through the seeds, picking out ones for vegetables and fruits, leaving the ones for more decorative things to the side. Plenty of people have used this place for flowers. Herself included. Carefully, she trails one set of seeds in a thin line along the edge of a raised bed and covered them with soil. With a hand to the soil, she takes a deep breath and with a soft pink glow, plants curl up and out, unwinding leaves and blossoming. It continues until the blossoms fall and red strawberries hang fat and glistening. She picks one and holds it in her teeth as she stands to start the process all over.

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"That sounds like a nightmare. Why don't your climates make sense?"

She's leaving him to stew in his rose prison for a while. Time to conjure up some herbs.

"Those DO make sense!" What kind of a question was that? And no, he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of complaining about the roses (at this precise second). "It's a Netherworld."

"We don't have a Netherworld. And our climates tend be fairly uniform throughout. You know, changing depending on where they are."

She pokes a finger into the dirt and ponders. Then pulls back to show off a few quickly growing bunches of parsley. They sway as she stops, still moving with the sudden weight and effort of new growth.

"Even in the mortal world. We have an Underworld, where mortal go when they die."

Hmm. She's a vegetarian, isn't she? Zetta had to ponder that -- was that actually weird, when her powers focused on growing plants?

"Oh, there's one SOMEWHERE in your universe. Universes are pretty big things after all. I'm not surprised Seedle's got his fingers in your place, though."

"I am almost positive there isn't. If there was, the Titans or the gods would have found something somewhere. It wouldn't be unknown."

She pulls back quickly enough that nothing goes to flower yet, but there's a few buds forming. It'll go to seed in a few weeks.

"Who's Seedle?"

Okay, minus points for not believing the Netherworld exists. "Ruler of the Underworld. Kind of sucks." No real acrimony in that, Zetta just thought Seedle wasn't any fun at all.

"Not in my world. Hades is King of the Underworld and he certainly doesn't suck."

Defensive Persephone is defensive. She sits back on her heels and gives him a Look.

"Some things are not universal, y'know."

"...Huh. Hades is another name for the Underworld Seedle's in charge of. Something's weird here."

Zetta considered that for a moment, then metaphorically shrugged it off. "Well, I've seen weirder. More points to you guys if someone's in charge of your dead that isn't also aspiring to be Overlord Turd of Jerk Mountain."

"Some mortals get it mixed up. Between him and the world he rules."

Persephone looks over at him and waves her hand to part the rose bush and free him.

"He's a good king. And a bit of a dork. Jerk, he is not."

Oh, phew. He had to admit, hanging out in there wasn't his idea of a good time. Not that it really imprisoned him too badly, since being a book he couldn't exactly zip around anyway unless he had a minion to help, but the affront to his dignity stung!

"I'm guessing he didn't get the position by kicking so much ass they made him the boss, either."

"...I mean, yes and no? His brothers and him, along with my mother, Hestia and Hera overthrew the Titans and the brothers became kings. Split the kingdoms among them. So--sort of."

She shrugs, "But that was a long time ago. So I don't really know any of the details. I'm only 19--20 now. And that happened thousands of years ago." She frowns. "Wish I knew."

Huh. He thought godhood automatically came with a wacky lifespan, but apparently she was aging along human terms? Oh well, at least she wasn't, like, fifteen or something, like everyone else seemed to be...

"Knowing things is overrated. It just complicates everything."

"Well you're not wrong about that. It would complicate things. I still want to know."

She abruptly changes the subject, her voice lilting in forced cheer.

"So how old are you? Are Overlords also immortal? Or at least long-lived? Not that I know how long a mortal lives but it can't be that long. They seem to be in such a hurry all the time."

"Me... huh, good question. I kind of lost track of time when I got stuck on the Far Shore, but..." Think, think. His ruminations looked all the more alien because he didn't have visible ocular structures that could move around. "35,001," he finally said. "Probably. Demons normally go about a hundred to one as far as humans go, but when you get strong enough Death can't touch you because you'll just kick its ass if it tries, so we powerful Overlords live much longer."

"That is very specific for your best guess."

She's a little taken aback. Who knew the worlds could be so old. The Titans, who knew how old they were. But the gods were rarely more than two thousand.

"Do you stop aging? I assume you must at some point. I doubt you're a wizened old man in your proper form."

"It gets REALLY slow. Dragon Overlord Babylon's old, but he's been around for eternities. I don't think even HE knows how old he is. And he isn't at the top of his game any more, so likely he's only slipping because of that." Theoretically, a strong enough demon could probably preside over the heat death of existence.

"Interesting. Different. We stop aging at some point. I think I stopped aging earlier this year. I think it'd be weird for mortals. Gods looking different ages when they're actually much similar."

It's a little weird for gods sometime, but people usually had some vague idea of the ages of other gods. And after some point, it stopped mattering.

"None of us are as old as you Overlords. I guess the world is younger."

"That's pretty likely. Overlords work on the cosmic scale, after all."

Zetta was about to make a perverted comment about her looking 19 forever... but, by some miracle, he actually thought about that for a moment, in the context of what she'd said. Did that mean she'd always be looked at as a kid? Demon society understood how little looks meant in terms of power, but did hers? Hmm. That might suck for her.

"I have no idea how old the Titans are. And I certainly wouldn't dare to ask, even if I met one. They're kind of..." She taps her chin uncertainly, "More. Defeated and all, but I don't know. Tall as mountains, powerful enough to create the gods, but brought low. And not happy about it, I think? So yea--probably pretty old. They're more...cosmic themselves."

"Hmph. I bet they didn't get turned into books." Which was less a complaint and more a comment that hitting bottom meant you just had to climb back up.

"They would end up very big books."

If the size of a normal person versus a book makes any difference. They were hundreds of times her size. Like a person holding a mouse. She imagines a book a hundred times his size and crosses her arms.

"How tall were you? Does the size of a person correlate to the size of a book?"

"I was pretty tall! Like a tall human, let's say." That'd provide an easy reference. "But the Sacred Tome was this size when I bound my soul to it, so that didn't change. It was a stupidly large book to begin with."

"Interesting. I wonder why it doesn't change. But I guess it doesn't really matter. I've turned into a butterfly before. And I know for a fact our kings have turned into an animal or two in his time. Maybe it's about power? Or--it just all shrinks down to fit whatever the container is?"

She's gotten far too into this problem. She's sketching something in the dirt, then wipes it away.

"I just--wonder how things work in other worlds, is all. If it's the same."

"It's... just my soul in here. My mana power is enough to reflect on that in some ways, what with the talking and seeing things and all, but in the end I don't actually have a physical existence that can influence it. Plus it's a cosmic keystone and all, it's pretty damn 'solid' as these things go.

"I... can answer questions, maybe?" A surprisingly subdued offer, since Zetta never considered himself any sort of scholar or anything like that. But he had to admit he'd been exposed to a few new things in the past year or two.

Ah well, that makes sense. For a given definition of sense. She doesn't have anything like a cosmic keystone, though she can understand what it means in this case. Who he is is enough to influence it, but not change it. Probably. See, this whole not knowing the most basic things about other worlds is enough to send her frustration flaring again.

"...Well. Do you know why other world's mortals have magic? Is that normal? I'm fairly sure to get any blessing like that, you need to be related to the gods and some of them seem to have fairly extensive powers. As if they're related to several. Then again, I appear to exist in some form in a whole other world. Under the name of Lady Vana. And I'm married? Or her version of me is--but I'm supposed to--I just...I hate looking foolish and I feel like the longer I interact with everyone, the more foolish and behind I feel."

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badassfreakingoverlord - 2020-05-25 16:51 (UTC) - Expand

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