AN: Sorry for the dey! I lost track of the days ><

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  =Huh? What’s wrong, Chief?=

  Hey, I didn’t even do anything scary this time! Why are you freaking out now?! And stop being so rough with those pretty flowers!!!

  Wow, even that Oren kid is looking at them skeptically… What, is it because I said they attract animals? Well, okay, now that I think of it, humans probably aren’t terribly thrilled about the possibility of getting overrun by a bunch of completely mad animals, huh? But they’re good eating! You’d be able to feed everyone in the town if you handled it right! And the trade with other nearby towns would go through the roof!

  Okay, but that’s only if the flowers were activated with my magic, though, which they totally and completely aren’t.

  Right now they’re just basic, useless flowers.

  Pretty as heck flowers, mind you… but still useless.

  =Look, you don’t have to be so weird about this; Those flowers aren’t activated, so they shouldn’t be doing anything.=

  The Chief didn’t really seem to buy what I was saying, but Oren did I think, since he just started looking a bit sad.

  “...They really don’t do anything…?”

  =Yup! Unless I use my magic on them, they’re not gonna do anything but look pretty!=

  “Oh…”

  Um… Why does he still look sad? What, did he want them to do something?

  [You forget, child; They believed that your camellias would keep them safe, that they were proof of my protection and love.]

  Oh what, that’s right! But if protection is what they want, then camellias aren’t gonna cut it! Let’s see, I don’t really know what would-

  Oh… Maybe if I…

  I pulled off a frond of my crown, offering it to the small sad boy to take from me.

  =If you want protection then these are the flowers you want! And look, they’re still super pretty too!=

  Oren’s eyes and mouth opened wide as he stared at the frond of bleeding heart flowers that were being delicately cupped in his palms. The Chief also leaned down to take a look at them, his face making a simir expression to his grandson’s.

  Wow, they really must be reted to be able to make the exact same face like that~!

  “Pardon, Miss, er… M-Mellily, was it?”

  =Yes~?=

  The Chief looked up at me like he was afraid to make eye contact with me, all while carefully taking the frond away from Oren.

  “What might… What might this flower do, exactly?”

  Oh, I guess me just saying it could ‘protect’ them wasn’t really enough information, was it? For all he knew, it might just blow up or something if someone got too close! No wonder he took those flowers away from the kid too, hehe!

  =These bleeding heart flowers are used to summon more of my kind! And those ones are activated, unlike the camellias, so if you take one off the vine and put it in the ground, it should immediately make a corpse pnt to come and help you guys!=

  The boy looked absolutely delighted, which was totally touching to see, really… but the Chief looked like he might have a heart attack at the thought of it. Maybe he wasn’t too thrilled to be summoning up monsters into the town, even if they were meant to be protecting the pce. Honestly, I can’t even bme him for feeling that way at all~! But those are the kind of risks you gotta take sometimes to keep a pce safe, you know? It’s not so different from him taking in mom’s people to protect the people here, in a way!

  Oh hey, but now that I mention it, I’m still curious why they needed them for protection in the first pce-!

  “W-will the, um, the ‘corpse pnts’ attack us afterwards, or will they be kind to us?”

  “Can we grow this one too? Huh? Can we?!”

  Gentlemen please! One at a time! I’m trying to think over here!

  Oh man, their eyes are really intense for completely different reasons! Ummm... I’d like to answer their questions, but, uh…. D-do you know the answer, Spirit?

  [Yes, well, as far as your summons go, it should be fine. The pnts you grow are subjugated to you, so by extension they’re much easier to control than the children I’ve naturally created. Just as I can direct Trig off in the Wind’s nds, I should be able to properly lead the pnt that’s summoned here. …In fact, I have in mind just the right one for the job.]

  Oooh, that sounds ominous! Well, I won’t ask and spoil the surprise, but I am worried about where the power for this corpse minion is going to come from. I’ve already put enough magic in to cover the cost of them getting summoned, but as far as them actually continuing to exist afterwards, well… Considering I’m going off to the Fire-y nds after this, I don’t know that I want to suddenly have another pnt draining away at me, you know? It’d be absolutely terrible if I got low on resources for whatever reason and then start getting screwed over by something getting summoned here.

  [You’ve put enough power inside of those flowers that they should st for at least an hour after being summoned. Should they require more to continue to defend against whatever threat, then they will simply have to summon another pnt when the timer runs out.]

  Okay, alright, I see what you’re getting at. But that frond that I handed to the kid only has like three flowers on it! They’ll be absolute sitting ducks if they use all of those up! Do you think I could maybe grow some more or something for them, like the kid asked?

  [Hmm, well… It’s possible that you could link the newly grown bush to me, but it would require a rge amount of power to make it work. Any subsequently grown bushes would hold no power, but that shouldn’t matter so long as they keep the bush protected and cared for, just as they have with your camellia bush.]

  So you’re saying the only way it would work is if we made it run off of your power instead of my resources? I’m completely fine with putting a chunk of my magic in to make that happen, but are you okay with it, Spirit? I mean, I’m the one who decred all that stuff about wanting to help these people and protect them and everything, not you.

  [As you’ve pointed out to me before, I do have quite a fondness for humans. I don’t mind putting a portion of my power towards helping them if they so ardently wish for it. And, just as you do, I too wish to look out for Cythia’s people in her stead. Also…]

  Also?

  [...Now that you’re here, I feel I no longer need to stockpile the power I was keeping for creating future corpse pnts. Instead, I wish to pour it all towards you, Mellily, and towards the humans we wish to protect.]

  Bawwww! Gosh Spirit, that’s so sweet of you to say! You believe in me, you really believe in me!!! I-

  “...Miss Mellily? Hello?”

  Oh right, these two have been waiting for me to respond this entire time!

  ~~~

  After expining things, the Chief and Oren led me to the back of their house, where they had a small secluded garden of their own growing. The chief super smartly said that pnting the bleeding heart bush in the shrine with the other one would be dangerous, since people went in there unsupervised to pray all the time and might try to steal some of the activated bleeding hearts and pnt them who knows where. He also mentioned that it wouldn’t be good to give the people who’d been so seriously worshiping my camellia pnt a reason to believe they’d wasted all that prayer, worship, and time on the completely wrong bush, which I think is totally the right call! I mean, what if you thought you were praying to a god of protection the whole time, when you were really praying to the god of hunting or whatever? I’m sure anyone would be pissed! Or at least very very disappointed!

  So yeah, we picked a nice little spot in his garden to pnt it.

  Maybe one day a clipping of it will get its own little spot in the shrine, who knows?

  While I stood there admiring my handiwork and reeling a little bit from how much magic it super-sucked out of me, the question I’d been wanting to ask finally popped back up into my head.

  =Hey, by the way! I’ve been meaning to ask; What is it that you guys need protection from so badly anyways? Do you guys just get a bunch of bandits all the time, or do you have some kind of pest problem or something, or-=

  “Oh… Have you… not heard? About the thieves, I mean.”

  =Hmm, no? Do you guys have a thievery problem in this town?=

  That kinda doesn’t make any sense to me, though? Like I said before, it doesn’t seem like there’s very much to steal from this town except flowers (and maybe an outfit or two), and they’re so friendly here that they’d probably just hand over whatever somebody really needed anyways. And besides, who takes in a whole camp of refugees to protect them against stealing, you know? My corpse minions are pretty amazing and all, but I doubt anyone’s gonna commit such a huge amount of theft that someone’s gonna need to get one of ‘em sicced onto them!

  Who’s praying to a bush to end kleptomania?!

  The Chief looked off into the distance, pulling a face like he was remembering something really awful, all while my disrespectful thoughts were continuing on.

  “Yes, the thieves… They try to come here and steal our people sometimes.”