“Hello, Helkas, you alright?”
Helkas floated awkwardly, not sure how Phovos, the resident Life Goddess of Savepoint, had spotted him.
“I… I guess… How did you know I was here?”
“You have a specific scent. Everyone does.” Phovos didn’t look up from what she was doing. She was leaning over several plant pots, concentrating on something, moving her fingers weirdly.
“What is my scent like?”
“Yours is oddly sweet. The nicer sides of the scent of death. The smell of freshly cut grass and of leaf litter. Arkay smells similarly but further down the scent of death, with a hint of paint strimmer and old blood. Elkay lacks those scents though because he was never a god of death, but he has an odd mixture of scents.”
“Huh…” Helkas floated closer. He was quite a small person, and he naturally floated all the time. “So I smell bad?”
“No, not bad. These are just scents I pick up because I was always a master tracker and a master hunter, my sense of smell is very good. Most people don’t notice these things.”
“Oh…” Helkas frowned. “That is… I never realised… But… like, what are you doing right now?”
Phovos straightened herself out, then glanced at the band on her wrist. “Oops. Lost track of time. Also, I thought you had lessons right now?”
“No. I have three hours of free time because the other guys are doing the time exam.”
“Hah!” Phovos snorted. “I know the exact exam you mean. I had to do that one twice. I think a lot of us did. So you get to chill for a bit! That’s always good.”
“I guess. But I wanted to learn stuff. And I don’t want to bother mister Arkay. Also, where is your Voidborn friend?”
Phovos glanced around briefly, then smiled. “Phovos is helping Galyn and Itaviir. They want to make some unique armour for their wedding, and Phovos is assisting by producing and shaping pieces of metal for them.”
“I thought her name was Phovoula?”
“It was. Phovos is trying to change herself into himself. It’s a delicate process, one that he’s struggling with. After all, when Phovos was alive, young and inside a universe, his kind were taught that changing gender was wrong. On top of that, Phovos was female for most of his life, it takes time to change your mindset, to become comfortable with who you want to be. In the mean time, I’m assisting Phovos as much as I can by using his new preferred genders and his requested name.”
“Oh… So… don’t call Voidborn Phovos Phovoula any more… got it…” Helkas made a mental note, then turned back to Phovos. “So what are you doing? Are you making flowers? I want to learn how to make flowers.”
Phovos glanced at the plant pots, then picked one up and moved it to one side. “I dunno if I can teach you how to make flowers in one go, but we can make a start? It’s… a tricky process, and I admittedly only manage it because I literally manipulate reality around myself. Also, why do you want to make flowers?”
“What do you mean?” Helkas asked back.
“I’m a Life Goddess. Intent and desire are how I create things. And intent affects how things come out.”
Helkas frowned. “I just want to make something pretty. I feel… ugly and weird and… deadly at times. And one of my goals after I become a Decay Lord is to travel to floating rocks and make pretty places like you make Savepoint pretty.”
“Aw, that’s sweet!” Phovos smiled. “Well, I’ll try and teach you the basics. But just so you know, we won’t be able to make flowers in one sitting. It took me a very long time to make plants myself, and even then, I started off with basically green stems. It’s harder than it looks. Are you okay in knowing that you’ll mess up at first?”
“I don’t mind messing up! I just want to learn!”
“Wonderful! Alright, come here.”
Phovos pulled a single flower pot to one side and placed it in front of Helkas, then placed Helkas between the pot and herself, putting her hands on the back of Helkas’s hands.
“Now, this may be a little awkward, but the first thing you need is to get into the feel of things. Making things, creating things, it’s its own mood. You need to be in the right head space and you need to be comfortable, steady and know what you want, but you also need to be gentle.”
“Okay… so what do I do?”
“We need to imagine first. After all, the flower is actually the adult stage of a plant. It’s the sexy bit, as my sister would say. So we have to start from, well, the start. From the seed.”
“I have to make a seed?”
Phovos nodded.
“How… how do I do that?” Helkas blinked.
“Think of it more like… like a very tiny egg. You are making an egg that turns into a root that turns into a sprout.”
“Huh…”
Phovos took Helkas’s hands, then pressed them into the soft soil inside the pot.
“Think about what you want to do. Cell to cell, step by step, into a single blade of grass. You are in control of reality. Reality does as you please. Close your eyes, breathe deep and make what you want.”
Helkas hesitated, then did as he was told to do. He concentrated as hard as he could, muttering under his breath that he wanted to make a bean sprout. After a few seconds though, Helkas pulled away.
“It… it didn’t work…”
Phovos moved Helkas’s hands to one side, then inspected the pot. While there were no blades of grass, no new shoots or roots, she did notice one thing. A single seed, for a blade of grass.
“It didn’t work exactly how you wanted, but you did the very first thing. You created a seed!”
“Is that… is that good? Also… why do I feel weak?”
“You feel weak because you’re not a Life Goddess, you’re mimicking me, and because you’re not used to it, you didn’t instantly replace the energy you spent making that seed. But this is the first step.”
“You… think I will be able to make plants one day?”
Phovos nodded and put an arm around Helkas. “You definitely will. Now, let’s go get you some sugar. You need to refuel.”
Helkas smiled a tiny bit. “Thank you, Phovos.”
“No worries, Helkas.”