Some years later…


    A garden, Arthur had found, was a series of sufferings leading to different kinds of success. The early part was pain in the most literal of senses. It combined the bumps and bruises of manual labor with most-used-surface general-applicability blisters of shovel work. It hurt while he did it, kept hurting for at least a while once he was done, and then led into another kind of pain before a single benefit was seen.


    Once the seeds were scattered, the next kind of hurt started. It was the most real and most annoying of the several sufferings for Arthur, but the one that was least easily explained to others. It was, simply put, the pain of waiting. He had done all the work and everything in his primitive Earthling ape-brain was telling him that, as a hunter-gatherer, it was time to sit and enjoy the profits of his day’s finds. Instead, he was hit with a long wait, something none of the primitive parts of his mind was prepared to either understand or take sitting down. Weeks or months would pass before his seeds germinated or, in the case of plants that were already in existence, new growth became visible.


    And with that waiting came a tower-defense kind of weeding, one that took constant watching and tending lest the invader plants from beyond the garden managed to breach friendly territory and cause crop casualties. This wasn’t pain, exactly, Arthur had to admit that. But he didn’t like it.


    And then, finally, after all the waiting, came the reward. He got to harvest the literal fruits of his planting, picking leaves and plucking berries, until he had a basket full of the benefits of his own work. He was then able to feed the raw materials through different kinds of processing, take them to different kinds of classes who would preserve them, or he could even eat some of them right then and there. There was almost nothing bad about this stage, and if everything ended there, the balance between good and costs would be much easier for Arthur to feel good about.


    But then, at the last, there were decisions to be made. The plants were, in a lot of ways, Arthur’s friends. Or at least allies, things he had been able to rely on that had done their damnedest to support him in his efforts. At the end of the process, he was always presented with dilemmas. Sitting next to his garden now, he had hard decisions about which of his friends to sacrifice in the name of garden-progress, and he just couldn’t make them.


    “You don’t look happy, pop.”


    Lily strolled up, tall, slender, and ever more graceful at each stage of her growth spurts. It had been more than a year since she had passed the period of time when most people gained their class, but the combination of having her hand in almost every part of the construction of a town and the sheer amount of energy she had thrown into everything she did in the past few years meant she was far beyond that in actual progress. So far, actually, that she was finally forced to slow down.


    Arthur shook his head. “I’m not not-happy. It’s just time to reorganize my garden. There’s not enough room to plant the new hybrids that came in from the capital, and I don’t know what to cut.”


    “Is this your inventory sheet?” Lily slid a piece of paper out from under a rock on Arthur’s worktable, panning her eyes back and forth over the text. “It’s current?”


    “Yeah.”


    “Then cut the sourweed, the king’s scepter, and the roil-briar. That will make enough room.”


    “The sourweed? Really? There’s barely any in inventory.”


    “And you barely use it. The two blends you put it into didn’t work, remember? You only need enough to experiment with, and harvesting the plants you have now will give you more than enough for that.”


    Arthur didn’t argue with that. Lily’s Long-Term Planner skill was still low-leveled, but she already knew about Arthur’s stock and business off the top of her head than he did unless he referenced his notes.


    It was one of the many, many ways she was more impressive than him these days.


    “What about you?” Arthur asked. “Are you happy?”


    “I am. The year off was the best idea you ever had. I just laid in the sun most of the time. Skal’s been teaching me how to fish. I can almost catch things now.” She smiled. “And every once in a while I’ll be baiting a hook or looking at a pretty flower, and my class would grow a little. I really needed the rest.”


    “Good,” Arthur said. “I wish you’d take the time fully off though. I still see you out there working.”This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Lily’s class had grown into something completely different than the help-by-sitting-around configuration she had started out with. She still gifted majicka to people she was working with just by being around them, but the parts of her class that made her more effective the more she knew about an individual job had grown until they were the star performers of her loadout.


    Any given day, Arthur would walk by some job site and see Lily hard at work side-by-side with some specialist, hands-on as she helped them do whatever they were doing. It didn’t work as well if it was something Lily didn’t understand, but almost nothing fit that description anymore.


    She was a grown up now. At least as grown up as Arthur had been when he arrived at the demon world, and even older and more experienced in a lot of ways.


    “Well, I can’t help it. I tried doing real, actual nothing and I was going crazy. There’s only so many hours a day I can spend drinking tea and telling boys I’m not interested,” Lily complained.


    “Is that still happening? I guess it would be. I was hoping it would… I don’t know. Slow down,” Arthur said.


    “Oh, it has. It was like they all started to go on the wife-hunt as soon as their classes hit level ten. Like it got them thinking about their future.”


    “And they all wanted to spend it with you.”


    “I guess?” Lily threw her hands up. “I don’t get it, but I guess.”


    If she really didn’t get it, Lily was the only one. She was a beautiful young lady who sometimes puffed herself up to look bigger and more intimidating. Arthur had seen her nearly kill some young demon man who was new to the town by doing it as he walked by, hitting him with both barrels of her cute-shotgun. It took him weeks to recover, at least according to the slightly older folks who helped him find his footing in the new town.


    The fact that she would also promote the speed at which anyone she was around was just icing on the cake. She was a popular girl, something she seemed to hate with every fiber of her being.


    “None of those guys is worth your time? There must have been dozens of them by now. Are they really all that bad?” Arthur asked.


    “Not all that bad. But nothing like… remember when you told me about how you met mom?”


    “I do. A lot of times, actually.”


    “You said that you were an idiot and could hardly talk. She said she was almost that way, but couldn’t help talking to you anyway because you were so inept. And both of you say you sort of knew right then.”


    “I don’t think I necessarily knew everything right at that moment.” Arthur tried to think back to how he had felt when he first met Mizu, and mostly remembered how incredibly hot his face had felt. “But basically, yes. I knew it was important.”


    “Well, that’s what I want,” Lily said. “I want to sort of know. Like you did.”


    “I don’t think everyone has the same experience as we did, Lily. Plenty of people are happy finding out they work over time.” Arthur gave her a light hug from the side. “You might have to compromise in favor of reasonable. At least someday.”


    “I don’t want reasonable.” Lily puffed slightly. “But I’ll think about it.”


    “I’m glad. And thanks for making the decision for me here. I might have been here all day, and I’ve got an appointment to keep.” Arthur let go of the hug and shook his head at his garden.


    “Who with?”


    “Your aunt. Spiky is thinking about finally moving forward with his idea for greenhouses, and I told him I’d speak to Rhodia about what that would look like in terms of glass. What about you?”


    “It’s about time for second-nap. Do you want me to pull those plants before I leave?”


    Arthur shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll just do it myself later. I’ll process them when they’re fresh.”


    “Got it.” Lily and Arthur began to walk from his garden back towards the town, taking the bridge that crossed the artificial stream in his backyard as they did. “Did mom change something with the river back here? It looks… green.”


    “It is green. Some kind of experimental enchantment. She says it will help the tea plants. They all pull water from this stream, you know.”


    “Is it working?”


    “Too soon to tell.” Arthur shrugged. “But it made your mother happy, and that makes me happy, so…”


    “I could just ask her how it works, I guess. Is she in?”


    “No, she’s out all day. Something about the brook needing her expertise, somewhere far out of town. I think Talca took her up there.”


    “Later, then, I guess. You okay on your own from here?”


    “Of course.” Arthur gave Lily a little hug before she left. “Love you.”


    “I love you too. See you later, dad.”


    <hr>


    Arthur took a quick shower to get the garden soil off himself, dressed, and walked towards the mouth of the canyon. These days, the protective walls that had once sealed off the canyon were long gone, replaced by layer after layer of Coldbrook spilling out of the canyon into the terrain beyond, housing thousands of demons and surrounded by newer, taller walls.


    That didn’t mean the entrance to the cliff-protected portion of town was completely unadorned. When Arthur stopped at his and Rhodia’s meeting place, it was in the shadow of a huge, iron statue. It stood like a sentinel watching the entire town, one wing extended nobly in front of it while holding a too-large smithing hammer.


    And at the base, on a huge plaque, the name of the person depicted was inscribed.


    MIlo Metalsmith Memorial Sculpture


    May his heroism always be remembered


    “This statue is so stupid.” Rhodia said. “It doesn’t even look like him, right?”


    “It looks a little like him. It’s a bird, at least.” Arthur looked up at the too-handsome, too-rugged face of the statue and winced at how far it missed the mark in some ways. “It could be worse. They might have depicted him reading.”


    “They should have never built this” Rhodia said. “You should have never allowed it.”


    “He didn’t have a choice, honey. I beat him in a footrace, fair and square,” Milo said.


    “People shouldn’t have memorial statues made of themselves before they die!”


    “I wanted to enjoy it.” Milo looked up and nodded in satisfaction at his own not-so-accurate depiction. “And I do. Sue me.”


    “Anyway,” Arthur said, changing the subject. “Lunch?”


    “Oh, yes, let’s.” Rhodia looked up at the town clock. “I still have at least an hour before I have to get back.”