Object Show Oneshots (Ships, Skits and Crackshots)

Meeting the Gardener (Grand Garden AU)

Grass fluttered in the autumn air, lemon and maple leaves fluttering from their branches like mini-coloured planes. Each cascaded into ever-growing piles, illuminated by the overhead afternoon sunlight through the ever-tall birch trees. The fog of early coming winter rolled around as several animals took shelter or packed food in trees and caverns for winter.

Coiny walked across the forest, not sure of where he could be headed. He did sometimes stick with his friends in the share house, but that had grown increasingly stale, what with Firery's love setup with Leafy of all people. A situation nobody, not even he could've seen coming given their distance and bad history from high school days. There was the option of Gelatine and, while he did sometimes help him with inventory stores and running and managing his many steak houses and their finance, he'd never been too close to him.

Winter always hit their town hard. If not for the strange ginormous boxes of huge supplies of food, coming in seemingly without any cost, many like him may have gone hungry. Several had theorised on what or who the food came from. Some said it was divine intervention at work. Others pointed to the possibility of a publicity stunt by some company or another. Usually, these types of proposals always looked at Alliance co, the baking company headed by Firery's older half sister, Match and her best freind, Pencil.

He didn't have much faith in this kind of option. The food always came round through the year, ramping up especially in winter by boat loads. If it were a publicity stunt, surely it would have bankrupted them by now. As for the first, Coiny had never believed strongly in any sort of divinity. Sure, the food did seem odd, but he didn't think it could be a god of some sort providing such resources. If it truly were, that same being would've tried to fix other problems such as poverty or sickness.

Maybe tonight would be another night under a shop awning, till he was made to scram. Or perhaps, he could see if those old "private" huts by the Goiky canal were absent. They usually were, barring the occasional rich celebrity geezer like Star Fruit. Times like this were when he longed to have had a home of his own. Not a place with others. But his own......home. A word he hadn't known since he was 5.

His foot steps echoed through his mind as the fog grew thicker. Coiny wiped his brow, the condensation thick and heavy as he realised something: he had wandered and didn't know his way back. The birch trees had a much more elegant shin to them, their stalks no longer spreading across the floor but diving straight in. The tops were bright green and covered the entire sky. He continued walking, the ground beneath much more soggy and course. 

Leaning against one of the "trees" he found it quite firm and stretchy, not unlike the rough bark he'd expected. It's surface was weirdly and familiarly smooth, with ridges going all the way up. "This feels like...." he mumbled, unsure of what it was that was so memorable about these strange plants.

Out of the corner of his eye, through the glimpse of light reflecting off a stalk, he saw a shadow. As he continued to walk, he heard a distant noise, like a crack of some kind. This was followed by a rustle as, through gaps in the canopy, he could see an entire "tree" uplifted, no roots in sight and carried higher then he could even fathom. Coiny' s heart raced as he realised that the tree looked like something he had seen once before but couldn't quite put a finger on. As well as that, with the quiet of the surrounding landscape, he also realised a second thing: something had uplifted the whole thing. Just. Like. That.

He heard rustling in the forests, his senses sharper then ever as he pulled from his rucksack the trusty grappling hook he'd borrowed from one Pen's friends, Blocky. That guy always had some kind of wacky outlandish gadget, and was always spewing talk of strange "monsters" in the woods. Everyone, including him had brushed it off, seeing as it was the kind of thing he'd joke about. Yet now, as he gripped the black plye helm and silver shone hook ends, each sharp and firm, he wondered if Blocky had truly lied.