Aggy's Last Day with Kruin

"Why don't you just heal yourself?  You are a priest."

Agamemnon moaned and shook his head.  "No, that feels too much like cheating."  He rubbed his hands gingerly with salve that a farmer had provided him, blew cool breath on his calloused hands, and picked up the hoe again.

Kruin shook her head vigorously.  "How is it cheating?  What is the point of being a priest if you do not heal yourself?"

"It's not about pragmatism, Kruin."  Agamemnon looked out over the once-dead island, seeing the afternoon sun glinting hotly off the sea spray as it struck the shimmering shore.  "It's about sincerity.  Honesty."

"I sincerely want these plants planted before the season ends."  Kruin bent down and started wrenching weeds out from the rocky ground.  "You said you wanted to help."

"These farmers, though.  They have a contact with the land, with nature, something that only comes from interacting with the world with your own hands.  Touching it, feeling it."

"Stop touching the land and pull shit out of it so that we can plant."

"Divine magic, it lets you commune with the essence of nature, but while completely sidestepping the reality of it."

"Look," said Kruin, angrily standing up, dusting her hands on her slacks, and striding in that quick, purposeful, not-quite-straight lurch towards the half-orc.  "Give me your hands.  I will heal them if you won't."

"You ... er ... Actually, you know what?  They're feeling a lot better now.  Look!"  He held up his only slightly red palms to show her.  "See?  I'll be fine."

"Fine," said Kruin, digging into her satchel and slapping a bundle of seeds into the cleric's hand, not noticing, or not caring, as he winced and then tried to cover it by coughing.  "Here.  Plant.  Or leave.  We don't have much time."

Agamemnon nodded.  "I know what you mean."

"Do you?"  Kruin was bending over and tossing rocks haphazardly away from the area she was working.  "I don't think you know what I mean."

Agamemnon watched the thin, light clouds flitting vanishingly across the sky.  "You're worried about your people.  We may be gone soon, and they may have to continue on without us."

Kruin snorted.  "Why would I be worried about these people?  They are tough, and they know what they are doing."  She looked sideways at Agamemnon while wrenching a particularly stubborn rock out of the soil.  "And if they do not, then they die.  If these rocks are stronger -" she grunted as she finally wrenched the slab loose, "then they win.  If not, we win.  Strongest goes on."

It was hard not to feel melancholic with the light breeze and the watercolour sky and the stark, barren landscape only starting to come back to life, maybe just in time to die again.  He lent on his hoe.  It was like being in the Pale Lady's realm.  All this potential energy, but none of it going anywhere because there was nowhere to go.  Not unless they succeeded in stopping Orcus.

He started from his reverie as he felt Kruin's hand on his shoulder.  "Aggy.  From little things, big things grow.  You just have to plant them and they'll grow."

Agamemnon looked at Kruin, realisation dawning, and smiled.  "This is all a metaphor, isn't it?  You're a very wise woman, Kruin, you know that?"

Kruin looked puzzled.  "This is not wisdom.  This is just how things are."

The priest nodded.  "Yes indeed it is, my friend.  That is exactly how things are.  We plant them, and they will grow."  He looked down at the packet of seeds in his hand, and laughed.  "And we sure did plant them, didn't we?"

~~~~~

As Agamemnon walked off into the evening, his hoe balanced on his shoulder, he could still hear the words of his friend, still calling out behind him:

"It's not a metaphor!  They're seeds!  I gave you seeds!  You have to plant them you stupid man!  Put them in the soil!  It's not a metaphor!"