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Caduceus circles the garden, a hand on each grave as he passes. A respectful pat and a check-in — Hey, how is your yarrow growing?
It’s the second or maybe third or fourth time he’s wandered his route through the graves, just to catch anything he’s missed. Anything… Well, anything untoward. Anything strangling or swallowing, starving other plants of nutrients or damaging the gravestones. He carries a sickle on his hip, and a fork and trowel in a hardy hemp bag tied around his waist. There’s a little more nettle to harvest. Some crocosmia to tidy. And then he’s back to where he began, and still not feeling quite right.
So he circles the garden again. Fifty-odd respectful pats. Yellow slime mould scraped from an engraved name. The witch hazel trembling in the wind. A tilting stone righted. And then he’s back at the front of the temple.
He should stop, have something to drink. His visions starry from all the crouching and standing again. This time, at least, he’s a little closer to satisfied, dusting off his hands on his trousers. Mostly. He steps towards a bothersome headstone before drawing back, shaking his head at himself. No, he should go check on the fence.
Caduceus spends the afternoon on it —walking the perimeter, surveying the innermost fence, the forest pressing against it. It can’t hurt to make sure. Protecting the temple is what he was made for, after all.
He searches for any greyish discolouration, strange roots or rot, because the fence and the old wall is where it creeps in first. Roots like arteries prying between stone, always slowly advancing. Sometimes it feels like they’ll get into everything.
In the evening Caduceus undoes and redoes his braid. His tangled hair turn it into more than a little trouble, knots pulling at his scalp. He’s just too worn out to look for his comb.
After, he stands shakily on the doorstep and smiles to himself at the smell of the incense he’s set alight. Deep inhale. He stands over the smouldering cone in it’s dish on the floor and cleanses himself with smoke. His hands are cleansed by spring water and rosemary oil soap. His insides purified by the cup of tea he drinks in bed.
In the dark, under furs and quilts, something keeps on gnawing at him — a wrongness. He’s too tired to figure out what it is. He’ll be awake again soon enough anyway, pacing around, halfway in his body. So he sleeps.
꩜
Until Caleb wakes him for last watch.
Caduceus sits in the centre of the dome. Orange glow above, nest of sleeping bodies surrounding. Caduceus sits in the centre of the dome with a sore shoulder and breathes against the familiar not-right-ness that itches through his fingers. He quietly clears his throat, though it doesn’t seem to right it.
It’s a little like his empty home he’s left behind, the quiet there — And then he’s worrying about how swallowed the garden has gotten, and if there’s anything sacred left at all.
Has the groundwater become undrinkable? Is his bed full of rot?
He taps twice on his armour, right above his sternum.
And he’s worrying where his family — No. He should wait for the Wildmother to speak.
Caduceus taps twice on his armour again. He breathes through it — closes his eyes and inhales. Except, he’s on watch. So he opens his eyes and stares past the glow of the dome into the black, drizzly sky. He lifts his ears, flicks one back, straining to hear through the damp night-sounds.
He taps twice on his armour.
From where he sits he can see Jester's chest rise and fall beneath her bedding. Beside her, from beneath dark fur, he can hear Yasha's soft snore made loud by her bruised nose. Then Beau’s grumbling, her sniffing, as she sleeps on her back, wrist splinted. By her feet, Caleb and Nott are nestled together, bandaged and curled inwards towards each other — both twitching, both muttering. Fjord is to Caduceus’ side, bandaged head by Jester’s ribs, face all tense. Caduceus hovers a hand by his nose and waits for a huff of warmth against his palm. He gets several, and he breathes too. Alright. Okay.
He exhales a big exhale and taps his armour twice.
With his eyes closed he searches through the night-sounds of drizzle and owls and shuffling grass, and finds an empty space. A hollow where a sound might emerge. He listens harder and finds nothing there.
Eventually, rain fills it.
Alright.
Okay.
Surrounding him: Jester’s chest rises and falls. Yasha snores. Beau grumbles, struggles against her bandaged arm. Caleb mutters and Nott twitches and kicks. Fjord says something Caduceus doesn’t quite catch and readjusts his legs. No-one will be happy if he wakes them up to check if they’re alright. So Caduceus starts again.
In the morning Caduceus moves in a circle, checking all their almost-healed injuries, and offering more healing because he didn't have quite enough left last night.
He presses a hand to Beau's swollen wrist and she hisses, scrunching up her face as lichen grows from Caduceus’ fingertips and encircles the fracture like a bracelet. It glows, dims, and crumbles away.
Beau sweeps it off her trousers. "Thanks, Caddyshack."
He nods with a smile, and decides to get started on tea. Ginger tea and making breakfast and keeping everyone fed — that’ll feel right. Jester huddles besides him as he does, still wrapped in a blanket.
"Oh, you look so sleepy, Caduceus," she says, nuzzling her face against his shoulder while he stirs oats and hot water into porridge.
He yawns. "A lot going on," he replies.
"Can I stir it?" Jester asks.
Caduceus pauses a moment, suddenly blank. ”Oh. Sure."
He sits back and lets her take over stirring. His fingers itch without the spoon in his hand. He traces spirals over the lichen that grows across his clothes.
When the porridge is ready Caduceus digs out the carefully wrapped cups from his pack and kneels by his teapot. He pours tea for everyone, closing his eyes as steam ghosts his face, inhaling the earthy scent, and it — huh. It just doesn’t feel right. He stares down at the cups as everyone takes theirs in their cold hands. He itches.
“What’s up, Ducey?” Fjord asks.
“Huh? Oh.” Now that he thinks about it, his brow is all furrowed. “Just… Just, something feels a little off is all.”
“Like, here?” Beau asks, looking over her shoulder and back at him.
“No…” Caduceus says. He considers it a moment, the not-right-ness, the writhing, prickling in his palms. Could the rot have come with him? Are there spores in the weave of his clothes? “I don’t think I steeped the tea right.”
Beau sips from her cup and shrugs. “Tastes fine to me.”
Everyone else sips their own tea and make agreeing sounds. Caduceus feels stranger. He drinks anyway.
꩜
Alone, he wakes up and circles the garden. It’s quiet — all sounds dampened by mist.
One pass: greeting the graves, rubbing lavender between his fingers.
A second: weeding.
On his third, with a bundle of bog myrtle in hand, he spots something. In the sphagnum by a sinking grave — There is rot inside the wall, dark grey threaded through green moss. He bends to prod it with the end of his trowel. The discoloured moss slumps, slippery and coming apart like an ink-cap. It clings to the trowel, unthreading itself from the green that surrounds it.
Caduceus’ heart leaps. His throat tightens. He doesn’t know how he missed it before.
He feels sort of sick, and taps twice, firmly, on his sternum.
He nods to himself, before hurrying away to find his gloves and a bucket.
On his hands and knees, he peers into the moss, parting it in sections to search for where the forest crept in and for where it ends. He traces it a short way back to the fence, and no further inward than the rotting mass. Carefully, Caduceus digs out the rot, scraping it into the bucket besides him. He digs down further and pulls out a dark mass that has grown through the sphagnum, removing as much he can without damaging the grave or the creeping juniper that grows from it. Single threads of moss at a time, unravelling from each other.
Eventually, all that’s left is bright sulphur-green sphagnum, grass and sundews growing through it. Caduceus stands shakily, chest heaving, skin crawling. He’s sure he can feel the slippery dying moss through his gloves. Something rancid between his fingers.
He takes the bucket and stumbles across the garden, to where he can climb up onto a stack of decaying old logs and chuck the contents over the fence — back to where it came from.
He sort of wants to chuck the whole bucket over with it, but then he won’t have a bucket. So… So. He leaves it hanging on the fence and returns to the mess he’s made.
The deep patch of moss is ragged. Not dissimilar from his picked-at fur.
He tidies the moss best he can, patting it back into place. And, after, he cleanses the depression with incense smoke and with herbs he chews and chews and spits into the moss. It helps a little. He flattens his palm over the warm herb pulp, pressing his fingers into soft earth. Between them, pale spindles of fungus sprouts. Followed by the beginnings of wolf lichen and woolly milkcaps. Slowly — as he taps on his sternum — the humming lingering wrongness is quieted by the glow of the Wildmother. Caduceus mumbles an old Sylvan prayer and feels steadier, calmer.