#me remembering when i was in the pits of my college depression desperatelt trying to grow a jalapeno plant

[heirbane]

Gaius has a soft spot for gardening.

During his prime years as the Wolf, van Baelsar became intimately familiar with the Galvus' palace - and all of the little glass rooms that peppered the sprawling building. When one has seen the world - as Solus had in his past lives - and is forced into dreary, sad gray, one improvises to the best of their ability.

With engineers and biologists at his disposal, Solus wanted for nothing. All throughout the palace stand small greenhouses: a world within a world, acting as interior windows and scenery when the weather is not keen on playing nice.

Gaius calls them small. Compared to their original landscapes, they are: but in the palace they seem just the right size, biomes from across the world able to be explored and enjoyed, window after window after window.

He came to use them as an artist would a sketchbook or an author a scroll of parchment. As a war lord, Gaius is often caught in the simulated midsts of his land: planning. Practicing. Pretending, if he were so truthful.

When he cannot be on the frontlines or in a war meeting in his claimed territory, Gaius improvises. The microscopic Ala Mhigo serves to remind him of their weather patterns, their greenery, their natural landscaping he could use for weal or woe.

In them, he can close his eyes and imagine the explosives he could hide in clay sand. In them, he can learn that the smell of a specific plant causes wheezing and another is a false sense of hope on wounds.

As he curates and takes care of his battlefield and it's soldiers, he begins to do just so in the glass box that holds a sample of his world. It would not due for weeds to disturb his planned treks, or for native Garlean insects to make their nest inside by happenstance.

After it all - after the fall of his Emperors and himself - he remembers the solace sought in false lands. The bubbles of existance simply perish without working technology to regulate the humidity and temperature; without the bioengineers to code and perfect a seasonal cycle, it falls apart.

And so does he.

But he remembers how it felt to prune and pick at plants until they could grow to their full potential. He remembers the fruit borne from false Ala Mhigan lands, and the sounds of their insects, and the proof that land and nature would persist even under a soldier's boot crushes it all.

In his Terncliff home, the native plants run amok. He is no engineer or biologist or botanist, even. He simply tries, planting pumpkins and squash, peppers and herbs, and is as meticulous with their care as he is with his gunblade...

And, eventually, himself.