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icechippies · 26 days

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This is just a silly little fic that I wrote over a year ago now that I feel like would do better now given some of the themes I’ve been seeing in other people’s works recently. Also there are no comments, y’all know what to do. In my mixing crack into everything writing era.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Ghost (Sweden Band) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Papa Emeritus I, Nameless Ghoul(s), Copia's ghouls, Era I Ghouls (Ghost), Era IV Ghouls (Ghost) Additional Tags: Gardening, Primo's garden, The ghouls find a toad, not all ghouls have lines but they are all there, I tried doing research about Era I ghouls to no avail, they are all called their elements, I wrote in a reason for that, Toads, Mountain makes a friend, Old man Primo, some crack towards the end, Copia is mentioned but he's not actually in it Series: Part 1 of The boys are Alive Timeline Summary:

Copia's ghouls get voluntold to give Primo and his ghouls a helping hand in the garden.

"They all crowded around the small creature, crouched, tails flicking with excitement as they stared down, watching as it sat there oblivious, with a look like it’s only brain cell was too busy contemplating its own imminent mortality to do anything about it."

It was a perfect spring day. The sun was shining high in the sky with the occasional puffy white cloud making an appearance. It was a perfect 72 degrees out, warm enough to bask in the gentle sun but cool enough to avoid overheating. A light breeze shook the fruit trees and buckeyes which had just started to grow fresh green leaves last week. The buckeyes were even starting to sprout buds which would later bring beautiful pink flowers that the hummingbirds would love.

The garden was always neat and organized with sections dedicated to vegetables, medicinal herbs, and fruit trees, with flower beds mixed in throughout, there was even a koi pond and a greenhouse. All of it surrounded a grassy field with two ancient oak trees and a couple of apiaries. Farther behind the back line of fruit trees there was a chicken coop and a pig pen filled with animals that the siblings took care of. Even farther back was a small vineyard that produced the finest red wines for miles around.

Primo was out with his five ghouls, Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Quintessence, dressed in their white hooded robes, which kept surprisingly cool in the sun. They were all helping him clear weeds and rake leaves in the vegetable section of the garden.

His own health had declined while he was Papa, probably from the extra stress and responsibilities that came with the role, leaving him dependent on a cane and unable to do much gardening himself. Though his relaxing retirement had been helping him recover a little, he felt much less frail these days. For the foreseeable future, however, his ghouls would be helping him.

Earth and Air already helped out in the garden on a regular basis so they knew what and what not to do. There was a little bit of a learning curve with the rest though. Fire once incinerated a small carrot patch in frustration over snails. Water was the cause of some major root rot in the flower beds that resulted in needing to replace most of the soil. Quintessence never had any huge issues, they were merely easily distractible and once just straight up fell asleep while spreading out mulch. It had taken the rest of the group nearly half an hour to realize that they had fallen asleep on top of the warm pile of wood chips.

Primo was always grateful for the help and gave tips and pointers where he saw fit, but his ghouls could tell he was disappointed that he couldn’t do much for his beloved garden. They always made sure to let him toss out seeds and pick the first of a crop, it always brought him so much joy to be able to help care for something beautiful.

Because of the fair weather there were many other ghouls running amok. Primo couldn’t tell them all apart but he recognized most of Terzo’s ghouls and a couple of Secondo’s. Even Copia’s ghouls, who were on a break from their tours, had all shown up to enjoy the pleasant day. Each group of demons mostly stuck with their pack mates as they all relaxed in their own ways.

The two of Secondo’s ghouls were sitting under the oak tree closest to the apiaries, one was reading a book while the other was talking and animatedly waving their hands around telling some sort of story. They were probably thankful for the shade of the old tree as their black masks and uniforms looked like they got hot quickly. Four of Terzo’s ghouls were around, two were basking in the sun on their stomachs in the grass, tails flicking lazily behind them while the others ran around finding wildflowers and clovers to sneakily place on their backs. Neither of the dozing ghouls seemed to notice yet, despite being nearly completely covered. The only ghouls that Primo was worried about causing a scene were Copia’s, they were exploring out by the herb garden and were getting closer and closer to noticing the koi pond. Younger ghouls and small prey animals were rarely something that should be mixed.

His ghouls noticed him staring. Water stood up, brushing their dirty claws off on their white robes. “Want me to take care of them?”

That sounded ominous, Primo was pretty sure they just meant escorting the chaotic ghouls out of the garden though. But they technically hadn’t done anything wrong yet and they had just as much a right to be there as the other, more well behaved ghouls. Primo sighed, “no, that’s not necessary, please bring Air and ask them to come over here.”

The other ghoul stood up and they both bowed slightly before walking across the field to Copia’s little monsters. Primo watched his ghouls approach and stand before them.They visibly tensed as Air and Water delivered their messages, the smaller of the male ones looked like he was thinking about making a run for it before the broad shouldered one started walking forward and the rest followed. Primo chuckled to himself and heard his ghouls do the same, he could be intimidating, sure, but the ghoul’s fear of him was ridiculously overblown. He didn’t have the papal title or makeup anymore, he was all bark and no bite.

The younger ghouls finally made their way over and stood in front of him. They shuffled in place a little, unsure of what to do. Finally the tall and thin one talked, “You called for us, your dark majesty?”

He heard his own ghouls stifle laughs again behind him, nobody called him “Dark Majesty” anymore. “Yes, I was hoping you could assist me with preparing this garden.” His ghouls stopped laughing, they didn’t like to share.

There was a groan from one of Copia’s ghouls that was immediately silenced by a swift elbowing from another with a loud whisper of “Shut up!”

Primo chose to ignore that, “what are your names, ghouls?” He had made the mistake of not asking for his own ghouls names. He had assumed that they would name themselves and tell him when they were ready while his ghouls had been waiting for Primo to name them. In the end he had just called them by their elements and it stuck.

A ghoulette stepped forward and started pointing at her pack mates, “This is Mountain, Swiss, Sunshine, Dewdrop, Aether, Rain, and Cumulus.”

“And she’s Cirrus!” Piped up the water ghoul, Rain. Or was it Dewdrop? Are there two water ghouls, those are both watery names? If they weren’t all wearing the same clothes Primo could probably remember. Unfortunately they all look pretty much identical to him so their names just went in one pointed ear and out the other.

“You will be helping us clear the beds and till the soil. I have prepared seedlings in the greenhouse for when you finish.”

His own ghouls were lashing their tails in annoyance and scooting around to make room for the new arrivals. It wasn’t that they had anything against Copia’s ghouls, they had never really interacted, they were just having a lovely time gossiping about the latest ministry news and they were rather rudely interrupted. Imperator and Nihil had a loud argument last night and it was the source of many new theories about their relationship and what Copia has to do with it. Obviously discussing that with his ghouls probably wouldn’t go over well.

They all got down and started to pull weeds. The only one who seemed to be truly excited about this turn of events was Mountain, who was crawling through the garden like a gremlin, executing weeds with grim efficiency. No grass or dandelion was safe from his grasp, any weed that was within his reach was quickly pulled and added to an ever increasing pile on the stone path in between the garden beds.

Primo’s ghouls had to admit, the guy sure could garden. When Primo was young and his knees didn’t creek so much he would weed in a very similar way. He claimed that it helped him stay close to the plants while giving him plenty of mobility. It was quite a scene back in the day, siblings of sin were caught staring all the time.

Their thoughts were interrupted by a piercing shriek of joy.

“Guys! Guys! Come see this!” Cirrus was sitting by a particularly tall patch of grass, tail swishing excitedly, smacking Swiss, who was next to her and only pretending to pull out weeds. She pushed the grass aside to reveal a large, bumpy toad.

Primo, who was leaning on his cane watching this all go down, noticed a change in the demeanor of every ghoul there, his own ghouls included. They all crowded around the small creature, crouched, tails flicking with excitement as they stared down, watching as it sat there oblivious, with a look like it’s only brain cell was too busy contemplating its own imminent mortality to do anything about it. The ghouls were like cats, alert and focused. Primo was worried that the toad wouldn't make it out of this encounter unscathed.

Sunshine was the first to pounce, rushing forward and grabbing it. Instead of tearing it to pieces like Primo thought she would, she stood up remarkably calmly, holding it under its arms and facing towards her at eye level, “It’s got an ugly sort of adorableness to it.” She started swinging it around a little bit. The toad didn’t even struggle, it was still stuck on the fact that it had been discovered.

The old fire ghoul got up and gently took the toad from her, careful to keep it away from his white robes, and held it up so that it was aligned with Primo in his vision for a clear comparison of the two, “Same vibe.” Was all he said before passing it to the ghoul to his right, the other ghouls in white all nodded and made sounds of general agreement and support of his conclusion.

Dewdrop happened to be on Fire’s right and took the toad with some reluctance, he was not the biggest fan of anything that could be considered a creepy crawly. Snakes, spiders, and other small creatures gave him the creeps, “I mean, I guess it’s kinda cute?” the toad stared at him, blank and unblinking, “yeah, no, bye.” He told the animal as he passed it on to Swiss.

“I’m surprised, Dew, I thought you loved anything you could get high off of?”

“I’m not going to lick a toad! That's worse than Papa holding his rats up to his face!” Dew managed a face of utter disgust through his mask.

“Lost opportunities is all I'm saying.”

“You have lost toad privileges.” Aether quickly snatched the toad before Swiss could bring it anywhere near his mouth.

“I wasn’t going to!”

“You were going to try it the moment he looked away.” Cumulus chimed in.

“Ok, that’s probably true.”

Aether was walking the toad over to the rest of Primo’s ghouls when it decided to make a break for it. Jumping from nearly five feet up onto the stones below with a hearty thwack. Every ghoul froze, looking at the amphibian as it laid there, stunned. A sigh of relief echoed through the group when it resituated itself and started hopping away.

“I think the poor creature has been through enough.” Primo stepped in as the ghouls started after it. They all looked from Primo to the toad and back before reluctantly returning to their gardening duties.

With three times the normal amount of helpers and the extra incentive of possibly finding small woodland creatures, the weeding was finished within an hour and a half. In that time the group had managed to find and capture two more toads, a gecko, and a very angry garden snake. Which, despite its hissy protests, was quite cute. Primo held that one for a while before wandering over and setting it down on a honeysuckle vine that was crawling up an old wooden pergola near the entrance to the garden. He smiled as the snake wound itself around the bare vines and started to make its way back to the ground.

After the weeds were pulled each ghoul went to grab a hoe, pitchfork, or a three pronged rake from behind the greenhouse. Tilling the soil took no more than 15 minutes with so many helpers. It almost went by without a hitch until Dew unearthed a massive hissing orange centipede.

“Shit, man! What the fuck!” He immediately screeched, dropping the hoe and jumping back. “Holy hell!” He reached back for his farm tool with the goal of utterly obliterating the offending creature.

Ignoring him, Primo quickly stooped down, leaning heavily on his cane, (He was going to feel that maneuver later) and picked the centipede up in his gloved hand. Dew was horrified, Cirrus was horrified, Swiss was horrified, they were all horrified. Even his own ghouls stood there in shock. Except for Earth and Air who had seen him pull this kind of bullshit many times before and were watching in amusement.

He let the centipede crawl, moving his hands so that it never got too far up his wrist, “All pest eating creatures are welcome in my garden, even if you find them unpleasant.” He brought it close to his face to get a better look at it, smiling as it reached out towards him with flicking orange antennae.

The younger ghouls were greatly reminded of Copia and his habit of bringing rats up to his face. They had once watched him do the same thing Primo was doing with the centipede with a random rat they had found outside of a bar, he ended up putting it in his pocket and taking it home to give it a bath and a meal before setting it back loose where they found it. They really hoped Primo wasn’t going to put the centipede in his pocket.

Primo did not, in fact, put the centipede in his pocket, instead he walked over to grass and kneeled down to let it loose, smiling as it found its way under the cover of wildflowers. However, getting down low twice in such a short amount of time proved a little too much for his aged joints and he was left struggling against his cane trying to pull himself back into a standing position.

Water and Rain noticed Primo laboring to stand and rushed over to help him up.

“Thank you, ghouls. I suppose I have a bad habit of forgetting my own limits.”

Copia’s ghouls felt a collective glow of respect for the weird old man, in many ways he was just like their own weird old man. Weirdly obsessed with niche things, kind in a creepy sort of way, and caring towards small creatures that most people look at with disgust. Primo towards the critters in his garden and Copia to his rats.

“You have all been such wonderful garden helpers. There is just one last step before the job is done.” He led them all over to the greenhouse and opened the door. Inside was warm and beautiful, with many different plants hanging down from pots on the shelves, pothos and donkey tails covered much of the glass in a sort of green hanging curtain but still left enough sunlight to provide for the rest of the plant in the building. There was enough room for them all to stand without being uncomfortably crowded.

“Ah, here we are.” Primo pulled out a couple of racks on a shelf full of seedlings and handed them off to Dew, Quintessence, Aether, and Air, “We will be planting these, Earth and Air will show you how far apart to plant them and how deeply the roots need to be set.”

Most of the ghouls went ahead back to the garden beds at their full pace except for Mountain walked slowly alongside Primo, subconsciously slouching to be closer to the old man’s height, “What kind of things are we planting?” His voice was filled with poorly-hidden excitement. He was a shy ghoul and didn’t often speak to people outside of Copia and his pack, especially about something he was so interested in. He didn’t want to get over excited and accidentally scare him off or offend him in some way.

“Some early season crops. Cabbages, kale, broccoli…”

“Onions and lettuce?” Mountain interrupted happily before he realized what he had done and shrank a little into himself, he never meant to interrupt, it just happened sometimes.

Primo seemed not to mind, “precisely! I started some new onions from seed this year, they should be ready by next fall. I believe they are in the tray your quintessence ghoul is carrying.”

Mountain was beaming, “Will you be planting garlic too?”

“Later in the season. I am going to try planting them in soiled hay this time. I read somewhere that it grows just as well but it’s easier to harvest.”

“Have you heard of hugelkultur?”

They talked and exchanged planting tips and ideas back and forward until they caught up with the others, who had already planted over half of the seedlings. Swiss and Cumulus waved over to Mountain. They had saved him a tray of baby plants, broccoli by the looks of it.

Primo watched fondly as the tall ghoul ran over to join his packmates. They were all interspersed with his own ghouls and talking happily. No doubt exchanging gossip about himself and Copia. He didn’t mind though, talking made his ghouls happy and he just found 8 new people for them to talk to. Not to mention he might have just found a regular helper for his garden who was just as passionate about plants as himself.

Soon the ghouls had finished their planting and were just sitting around talking. Aether and Swiss had brought a bench over so that Primo could join them.

“So then, under the assumption that nobody was around, he sneaks back to his room in nothing but the towel that Air had left out for me.” Earth explains, animatedly waving his arms around. “At the same time Nihil and Imperator are giving the cardinals from the North America sector a tour of the ministry…”

“No!” Sunshine exclaimed in disbelief

“It actually happened! I was helping out the tour group, this is all true!” Fire cut in.

“Anyway, he’s lucky the super glue held because Nhil was absolutely pissed. He chased him down the hall and out into the courtyard. Keep in mind this was probably 50 or so years ago.”

“54 years,” Quintessence corrected.

“Damn I guess we are that old.” Earth paused for a second, having lost his train of thought. The younger ghouls were all entranced by the tale. Primo considered interrupting the story to save his dignity, but honestly he couldn’t remember how it ended.

“And the barbecue sauce?” Swiss prodded, trying to get the older ghoul back to the tale.

“Ah, yes! His hair was absolutely covered in the stuff. He had long hair back then, long and blond.”

“And I looked good in it.” Primo cut in.

“Fabulous!” Air agreed.

“Stunning!” Added Water.

“I can’t picture it.” Said Dew

Earth ignored them, “So he was running outside, barefoot, towel still super glued to him, with barbecue sauce dripping from his head and Nihil chasing after him. He ended up climbing the old oak tree that’s out there and sitting in a branch nearly nine feet up. Nihil waited at the bottom of the tree until well after midnight. We only got him to leave by convincing him Imperator was waiting for him in his room.”

“What is this ‘we?’ I was the one who went out there to save him!” Said Air

“You were also the one who put out the towel on the bed and the sauce over the door.” Quintessence pointed out.

“Well I wouldn’t have if Earth hadn’t left water balloons in my bed.”

“In my defense I thought it was you who left the radio on all night.”

“Yeah, who did that?”

“I don’t think we ever figured it out.”

“Some things will always remain a mystery.” Primo cut in, determined to end the search for the real culprit before it started, “I believe there is still time to grab some lunch from the cafeteria.” he suggested.

His ghouls gave each other a knowing look. Primo was changing the subject on purpose and they knew it. For now though, they would ignore it, he paid for that sin long ago with the barbecue sauce incident

“Copia’s probably looking for us.” Said Rain, standing up.

“Yeah,” Aether agreed, “It was nice meeting you all.” He heartily shook Earth’s hand.

“The feeling is mutual.”

“Thank you all for your help, this has gone much faster with so many hands.” Said Primo.

“Anytime, your dark eminence!” Said Culumous, smiling and waving back at him. She was already nearly at the doors.

“Feel free to come back anytime, I would be happy to show you more of the garden.” Primo said to Mountain as he was walking off.

Mountain nodded and grinned at him, walking backwards to keep up with his packmates.

Primo’s own ghouls stuck by and walked with him at his own slow pace, enjoying the feeling of the wind on their face and the sun on their backs. Today was a good day.

#The band ghost #papa emeritus i #primo #era 1 ghouls #era 4 ghouls #aether ghoul #dewdrop ghoul #mountain ghoul #cirrus ghoulette #cumulus ghoulette #sunshine ghoulette #rain ghoul #swiss ghoul

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