Prayer

Talathion’s garden was Zane’s idea of the perfect ever after. Flowers bloomed both day and night, colours painting the sea of green leaves in an endless spray that felt so out of place against the dismal gloom of Ashenport. A biolumiscent clung to the petals of some, shining stars that guided Zane back here whenever he closed his eyes.
They weren’t just beautiful flora meant to briefly bloom before withering away that most gardens in the western half had become. Each and every one was put there for a specific purpose, cultivated by caring hands that ensure nothing but the perfect conditions for their ‘groeth’. The antrictus grass with its spined stems and pale thistle-like tip made for a strong anti-inflammatory that was best served in tea with plenty of honey. The shine of the ballus flower’s petals could be boiled into a naturally pink syrup to soothe the throat in the harsh winter chill.
Silver leaves of the fallen star would be dried and powdered to form a paste when required to smother burns and stop the worst of the initial pain. Zane could go on and on about each and every property that Talathion had told him when he’d first come to visit all those full moons ago. It kept Tal busy, and endless list of chores to complete day in and day out, but a list that was worth it in the end.
It became easier once Zane knew how to best help, whether it was watering the needier plants, or pruning the dead pieces. Then it became less of a chore and more of a reason for the two of them to spend time together without anyone else becoming curious as to why Zane spent endless afternoons awat from the apothecary.
Research was an easier medicine to swallow than Zane trying to put a name to whatever warm feeling spread through his chest at the thought of Tal. Friendship wasn’t really right, not that Zane really knew what it felt like to begin with. But he’d watched Merrin with his friends, and it just wasn’t the same. Zane felt it more similar to the excitement of new research, the patter in his chest when he thought of all the things to explore. His mind would race with all the concepts and branches of thoughts to explore. But when he thought of Tal there was nothing.
It wasn’t a bad silence, like that which fell whenever he entered a room of people talking. It was the silence of his room at nightfall, the flicker of a candle illuminating the last page he would read as he drifted to sleep. Comfortable, he supposed.
‘Zane?’ Tal asked from beneath the mess of ferns he was attempting to clear with nothing but his hands. ‘You still breathing?’
‘Hmm?’ Zane asked, before realising that Tal had called for him multiple times already. His mind was just so quiet. ‘Yeah.’
‘What’s the time?’ Tal asked.
Zane looked across to the sundial paved into the masonry beneath one of the four statues segmenting the garden. The shadow stretched long towards numbers worn down by the rain and patter of feet.
‘Just after four?’ Zane guessed as Tal emerged from the greenery.
‘Good, I’m giving up for today,’ he flexed his fingers and half-heartedly brushed dirt from his palms. ‘Just one more thing and we can have some tea and cake.’
It wasn’t said as an invitiation, like it once had, Zane needn’t be invited to anything pertaining to Tal anymore. He was always invited, whatever Tal would do Zane could as well without the need for double-checking. Well, almost always.
There was one thing that Zane would never intrude upon, and it was the last thing Tal did before he left the garden.
Rinsing his hands in the freshwater basin beneath one of the statues, Tal closed his eyes and knelt on the divot before the statue. Whatever words he said meant nothing to Zane, but it was the same every single day. A prayer that Zane probably should have known, but there were so many of the things that it all blurred into one mess that he’d never have the time to sort them into meaningful sections.
It wasn’t that Zane didn’t believe in the Gods, it was hard not to when they would so often meddle in mortal affairs for their own enjoyment. It was just that it all felt so…meaningless. He’d tried praying to anyone and everyone, hoping that one of them would listen to him, to help him when he actually needed it. It was the night of his seventeenth birthday that he’d given up entirely.
He and Merrin had spent another day alone, and he was hungry, so, so hungry. He remembered the smell of Merrin’s burning flesh after he’d tried to make them something out of nothing once more. Bones cracked open for the marrow inside, too-ripe apples stolen from the closest orchard that still had trees with fruit, a handful of oats from the remnants of a sack lifted from a cart outside the gates. All of it cooked slowly in the one pot they had with the only piece of firewood that was dry enough to coax a flame.
A meal just enough for one child, a pittance for two near-grown men.
No one was coming to help them, that had stopped the first year after their mother disappeared, they were just thirteen but Merrin was old enough to help down at the docks. It was nothing more than collecting whatever washed up on the shore. Zane knew it wasn’t a real job, just something to do because he’d asked the Dockmaster so kindly; those puppy-dog eyes Merrin used to conjure up so easily that Zane could never quite master. He was allowed to keep some of it, a small bonus on top of the two clinking coins that would be dropped into his hand at the end of the week. Enough to survive, not enough to live.
When their father stopped responding to his letters, Zane knew they were alone for good. He couldn’t even remember how old they were when the last letter came in, sixteen maybe? For a while it sat unread on the kitchen table, neither of them wanting to be the one to read the news they’d anticipated. The tale of most ship captains ended the same, in an endless watery grave.
Zane had opened it when he couldn’t take it anymore, but it wasn’t the news he’d fretted over so constatnly. He stared at his father’s handwriting as he learnt of how little he cared for his sons. That a voyage over the boundless ocean to warmer land was more important than even knowing they were alright. He didn’t care, and Merrin had been right, he never had. His love was hinged on a promise to their mother, and with her gone for long enough to believe the inevitable, there’d be no repurcusions to a promise broken so.
He would’ve been lying if he didn’t pray for the sea to swallow him whole, but even the more despicable Gods had ignored his plea.
Talathion had never asked him his reasoning, just accepted it when Zane had said ‘no’ to the first and only invitation to pray with him. It could’ve been the way Zane had said it, too harsh to not stand out against his usual tone, or maybe Zane’s face had twisted in such a way that his distaste was obvious. Whatever it was, Zane was grateful.
Sometimes when he watched Tal pray he felt left out. There was a tranquility that washed over him, shoulders relaxing as he clasped his hands together. On odd days Tal would hold something between his hands, nothing but a chain visible, and then it would disappear into a pocket and Zane wouldn’t see it leave. But there was nothing that the God of Harvest could provide him that Tal couldn’t, though maybe She provided him with Tal. Would that even work? Was that how the God’s worked?
No, this was no act of God. Tal was just so normal. A wood elf, a druid, a botanist. Perfectly normal things, not some God sent being to answer all of Zane’s prayers he’d pleaded for so long ago.