Thorny situation

There were basically 2 places Emile could be seen at this point, his room, which he usually kept closed unless he was leaving to help air the room out... Or the grove. It was easy enough to not be forced to socialize here, he could just slip away behind a tree or a shrub if someone got too close and the grove had a lot of plants, his windowsill garden had grown since they'd claimed the grove. But today he had something else on his mind, not transplanting anything for his personal garden but rather the maintenance of the grove.

Some of the shrubs had bloomed explosively, and with the new pups running around he had concerns that some of the more prickly plants could do some serious damage, not to mention some of the branches were covering other precious herbs or even blooms on their own shrub and it would be important to let it flower as best as it could, a non-flowering branch was less important than something that might produce fruits or berries. So that's what Emile was doing, he was pruning. Right now his focus was on a particularly thorny bush, its new shoots exploding out in all directions and Emile had to carefully observe each branch to figure out where he could gently remove them without hurting himself. It was slow work that took a lot more of his attention than he might otherwise give, it was no doubt he'd be easy to sneak up on right now.


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