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Frisk is going to plant a garden, they decide.
Sure, they’ve never done anything like that in their whole entire life, and sure, they are, like, really bad at everything they try, but they’ve got a feeling it’ll work out this time. It just will.
It just will.
Sure, you could say something about how Frisk’s trying this so they can feel like they’re creating life or Frisk is so tired of everything dying around them or Frisk needs something to occupy their hands so they don’t do something they regret or whatever, but Frisk doesn’t care what Chara or Asriel or anyone has to say, okay?
They are going to plant a garden. And it’s going to live.
It’s right around that time where summer is bleeding into fall, which is, coincidentally, according to Google, the perfect time to start a garden.
Great. This is already going swimmingly, isn’t it? Everything will continue to go swimmingly, until this is perfect and great and Frisk will have actually done something good with their life, instead of listening to what that little voice in their head told them, the voice that got bored after resetting fifty million times, and deciding to relinquish control, ever so slowly, and–
Garden.
Chara has their driver’s license already, so they drive Frisk to the store and they don’t know which seeds to buy so they just buy all of them. The names sound fun. Golden poppy. Echinacea. Sage. Mother of Millions.
They’re not going to plant any golden flowers.
Frisk doesn’t really trust Google for everything, but they also don’t really trust themself either, so Siri is currently reading an article about gardening for beginners while they plop themselves down on the dirty ground.
First thing. Weeding. There are, like, a ton of weeds out here. A ton. That’s fine. Frisk is good at killing things. The article recommends that they use gloves to handle the rogue plants, but Frisk doesn’t have gloves, so their bare hands will have to do.
It’s hard, at first. The roots are deep (and that’s symbolic, maybe) and they take their little shovel they found in Asriel’s garage (it’s made for building sandcastles, not gardening, and Asriel won’t tell them why he has it) and they stab the ground like a madman but it works, somehow, so take that, stupid weeds.
There is dirt under their fingernails and they decide, like a four-year-old (instead of the real adult they are, at a whole thirteen years old) to taste it. It’s not bad. Tastes a little like chocolate, inexplicably. Maybe they should introduce soil into their daily 2000 calories. How about that, FDA? What’s the nutritional content of dirt?
There’s a worm. There’s a worm, under this weed that smells like lemon that has roots that go twelve freaking inches straight down. Frisk asks Siri what you’re supposed to do with worms and Siri says that worms are good for gardening. Someone on Reddit says to just chuck it to a different part of the garden, and it’ll be alright, and so that’s what Frisk does. They take this weird squishy life form and they chuck it as far as they can and there’s something comforting about that, about the fact that they can use all of their strength and this little tiny thing will still be alive, still be thriving, still be eating and pooping out of the same hole.
Worms aren’t so bad, actually. They’re cute, when they wriggle around.
There’s a whole bunch of worms, here. Frisk chucks them all into the same corner. Be free, worms! Experience this brief moment of flying before you go back into the ground, never to see the light of day again!
It takes days, to weed this garden. There’s so many. They just keep growing. But Frisk finds they don’t really mind, anyway. They go to school and then they kneel on this soil, soiling their school uniform (and yes, pun fully intended) and their knees get rocks embedded in them and they get more dirt under their fingernails (delicious, delicious dirt) and they pull and pull and stab with their stupid sandcastle shovel and they work.
Two weeks later, the garden is fully cleared of weeds.
Finally.
Say what you want about Frisk, but they’ve got the feeling that this is going to teach them some (much-needed, according to Chara) patience.
Siri tells them in her British accent (that was a choice, and Frisk smiles every time they hear it. It’s so goofy) that they are supposed to make little rows, lines in the soil for the seeds to go into.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
It’s so stupid but it’s also kind of funny, because all of Frisk’s gardening tools are literally meant for seven-year-olds building sandcastles on the beach, but Asriel had them in his garage and he watches them, sometimes, working on the garden, and he gets this smile in his eyes. It looks like nostalgia. Not that Frisk is like, perceptive, or anything. They don’t really care about trying to figure out what other people are feeling. They can’t even figure out what they’re feeling, half the time, and they are hearing every single stupid thought that passes through their head.
The seed packets sound like maracas when they shake it by their ear. So Frisk just sits there, for a little while, knees on the dirt, shaking the bag next to their ear. The day is nice. It’s cooler than it was two weeks ago, and it’s sunny but the wind is ruffling their hair just a little (it’s grown, from when they took fabric scissors and cut it all off a few months ago. They’re not really sure why they did that, and their social worker certainly didn’t, but Asriel looked at them with something that looked like a smile and said that he understood. But anyway. Whatever.) The seeds make a really nice sound.
They kind of want to eat one.
They do.
It tastes, unremarkably, like a seed.
They scatter seeds in rows plowed with sandcastle building tools and they spin around while they do it because that’s just fun, you know, and sometimes Frisk deserves to have a little fun. It wasn’t all their fault, what happened, and it technically never really happened anyway, since they’re kind of a god, apparently, full control over the time stream and all that. It was…it was a bad thing to do, but they undid it. They’re still making up for it.
They cover the seeds up. They don’t have a watering can so they go into Asriel’s house (that’s where this is, after all, it’s Asriel’s garden. Frisk’s not supposed to be around their government-mandated stupid little family and house, anyway. The adults there don’t like them very much, and that’s just fine by Frisk.) They get one of his cups and fill it up at the sink and then go all the way back outside and put the water on the seeds. It’s an arduous process. The garden is kind of big, and the cup is pretty small, and it takes a lot of time, but Frisk is starting to find they don’t mind, as much, not anymore.
Patience is a virtue.
And they do it the same way, every day after that. They grab a cup, they fill it up in the sink, and they pour it on the seeds outside. It takes, like, an hour. Every day. But it’s good. It’s good. Frisk is creating life. Frisk is learning patience. Frisk is doing something good.
It takes a long time. It takes a really long time. The plants aren’t supposed to grow until spring. But Frisk is still supposed to water them.
Why aren’t they blooming yet! They exclaim, once, frustrated, the day before the first snow comes. They have traded their bare knees for wool stockings, but there is still dirt staining the white. Their sweater sleeves have dirt all over them, and most of the time Frisk doesn’t bother to wash them. Asriel is out here with them today, drinking tea. Want some chamomile? He asks, in response to their outburst.
No! Frisk yells. I want to create something that is living! I want to stop being such a mess-up!
Hmm, Asriel hums, I think you’re basing too much self-worth on these plants. They’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to, aren’t they? They’ll bloom.
You don’t understand, Frisk whines. You don’t understand.
Have some tea, Asriel invites, and then Frisk kicks some dirt and wonders how the worms are doing and stomps over to him and has some tea.
Frisk has to stop gardening for a while, during the winter. Their afternoons are suddenly a lot more free, and they really don’t know what to do. They hang around Asriel’s anyway, like a stupid sad sack, laying on his floor and taking up his couch and watching the snow-blanketed garden through the window and yearning.
Get up, Asriel says, once, and grabs Frisk’s hand and hauls them up off the floor. You want something to do?
I want to stop being a sad sack.
Then come with me. You’re going to help me make tea.
He doesn’t let go of their hand until they get to the kitchen, and he pulls out a container of what looks like dried leaves. These are dead, he says, looking right at them. But we can still make something out of them.
Why do you like tea so much, Frisk asks.
Because I just do. Look. Let’s heat up the water.
Frisk once read on the internet that British people thought Americans were stupid because they heated their water up in the microwave rather than making it on the stove or with a kettle. Frisk thinks British people are stupid, because that’s not what Asriel is doing at all (although, they supposed, he probably learned this from his parents). He turns the dial on the stove and the gas clicks a few times and Frisk is nervous, only for a moment, because they still worry about the time Undyne’s house burned down.
A blue flame flickers to life and it is hot hot hot, and Asriel gently guides Frisk’s face away from the flame, because the tip of their nose was like, three inches from it and that was probably a bad idea.
One of the plants you’re growing is echinacea, right? He asks, conversationally, while he puts the water on the stove. Yes, Frisk answers, watching raptly. They do like learning things. And Asriel is big and old, even more of an adult. He is sixteen (really, he is more like one-hundred-and-sixteen, and maybe even older than that, with all the RESETs he lived through.) He knows things.
This is dried echinacea. You can make tea with it.
Really? That’s so cool!
As Frisk watches Asriel make the tea, they decide that they cannot wait until their echinacea has grown and they can present it to Asriel, dirt and everything, and he can make tea with it and it will all be amazing because Frisk will have done something good.
Winter melts away like the condensation on the outside of the kettle. Their breath, which fogged in the air like steam rising out of the mug, stops appearing in the frigid air, so white and thick.
The dirt is wet most of the time because it rains so much, and Frisk doesn’t need to do their water runs with the little cup.
Except, except. There’s too much rain. There is entirely too much rain, and it storms and lightning strikes and there’s so much wind and when Frisk goes out to their garden the next day, the soil is all disturbed and the tiny tiny leaves that were sprouting out of the ground are strewn all over and that’s it, the universe has killed their plants and this is a sign that they were right, they’re just a mess-up and they can’t do anything right. They can’t do anything but kill stuff, or the universe will kill their stuff by proxy.
Asriel gives them some tea and they throw the mug on the ground and it breaks and ceramic gets into their bare feet and they don’t even care, okay, they don’t care.
Asriel doesn’t get mad. He doesn’t get mad and Frisk doesn’t understand why.
Frisk doesn’t go to the garden for a whole entire week. What’s the point? What’s the point of looking at their failure? They don’t need to see that. They don’t need to see that bleak barren soil, dusty and wet like the ashes of monsters as they sprinkled into the ponds and puddles of Waterfall, sodden and dead and murdered by their own hand (or their hand as the proxy of that voice in their head? They never were sure.)
All because the voice was bored and they were starting to get a little bored too and they listened, they listened, and they have never regretted anything more as they regret this.
Chara picks them up from school on Monday, even though Frisk doesn’t want to go to Asriel’s house, not today, not ever again, but Chara is begging Frisk to come and so they do, they do, and they close their eyes when the car pulls into Asriel’s driveway until Chara grabs their hand and guides them out and begs them to open their eyes.
They do.
The soil’s not barren.
Huh?
You didn’t kill anything, Asriel says. It was just a storm. It was just the first of the bunch that was blown aside.
There’s the echinacea. Over there, that's the Mother of Millions. And there, there’s the beginnings of the golden poppy, and the sage.
Nothing is dead. It’s all thriving.
Can we help you tend to them, Chara asks, softly, and they’re always always soft with Frisk, and they don’t understand why.
Yeah. I think that’s alright.
And Chara and Asriel and Frisk kneel on the wet soil and get stains on their clothing and dirt under their nails, and it’s symbolic, maybe.