Similitude of Ashes and Feathers

Chapter 9: Greenhouse

When they got to the greenhouse Aaron was much slower to walk around, Alex did his best to be patient with him given they only went there because of the demon's interest in plants and it was entertaining to see his bewildered or in awe expressions over simple things like flora and foliage.

"There are so many," Aaron sounded mystified. "Is this every kind?" He looked at Alex expectantly but instead of letting him answer the demon narrowed his eyes and asked a second question, "what are you doing?"

Alex had grabbed an apple from the tree he was standing by and took a bite out of it. He couldn't help but smirk at not being allowed to answer Aaron's first question. "I'm eating. I'm pretty sure you know what eating looks like." The prince grabbed a second apple and offered it to his companion, "it's called an apple, which is a fruit. It's one of the fruits that can grow on certain trees—eh, apple trees to be more specific. Those are trees that only grow this specific fruit."

Hesitantly, Aaron took the fruit offered and even more hesitantly had he taken a bite of it. He got startled by it... leaking? He didn't know a way to describe what had happened. Confused and shocked, he dropped it and spat out the chunk in his mouth. "Why is it wet?!"

Alexander had not been expecting that reaction but maybe he should have. "It's called juice," his voice was tainted with laughter, "It's supposed to do that. It's good." He cleared his throat to remove the rest of his laughter yet couldn't wipe the smile from his face. "Sometimes we squeeze the fruits specifically for their juice, it's a nice drink. Did you not like the taste or did you spit it out because it surprised you?"

"..." Aaron felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment. "Uh, I was just surprised I guess. I didn't really... I didn't really taste much... in my defense we don't exactly have things like this in Hell." He fidgeted with the ends of his sleeves, he liked sleeves very much now that he had them and they were so nice and warm.

Aaron looked down at the apple and Alex immediately said, "don't even think about picking it back up. There's plenty more, you can have one that hasn't touched the dirt." The prince grabbed another apple and offered it to the demon once more, "it won't even kill you. I promise."

He pursed his lips before taking the apple once more. "I wasn't going to pick it up off the ground," he mumbled because he was lying. It wasn't uncommon to eat things that had touched the ground where he was from, they would eat rocks at times if they had to, if he weren't a demon he probably wouldn't have teeth anymore. He told Alex of that occasional choice, that's the only reason the angel had assumed that Aaron planned on picking the fruit back up.

The demon once more bit into the apple, mentally prepared this time for the strange texture and juice. He didn't necessarily dislike the taste, but it certainly was weird. Aaron had never tried anything like it before. Looking at the bite mark he left in the Apple he looked to Alex's own. Even their bite marks were different, that was to be expected given the demon had fangs but it felt like yet another reminder he didn't belong there, that always made him disappointed and a bit nervous.

Alexander caught on that Aaron was feeling down, he was unsure why the apples made him feel like that but he didn't want the other boy to carry on feeling out of place like he'd seen him look before. "Hey," he spoke up and went on to continue their conversation, "there are plenty of other fruits to try if you're interested. Pears, apricots, oranges and much more. Although we don't have nearly as many as the humans do. They have plenty of fruits and berries that we don't have. Those are pretty good too although I don't like all of them. I'm sure you wouldn't either."

"Alexander, I don't know what berries are. I'm assuming those are probably also plants but what are berries? I understand it's hard to remember that I don't know these things when you've had them your whole life, but..." Aaron sighed, he knew it was hard to explain something everyone around the angel clearly knew, but Aaron wasn't an angel. He would never be an angel and it was becoming apparent he would never feel comfortable there, no matter how much nicer it was or how much he had already grown to love the differences.