Smoke in Autumn

*'…That darling little wretch had grown curious.'*

## Summary

Mosk Manytrees works as a cynical, tired nursery hand at a native plant nursery. When Augus Each Uisge turns up, looking for a rare kangaroo paw (a plant) not yet on the market, Mosk can’t wait to get rid of him. After all, the guy is in his fifties, and everything about that is just gross, right? But Mosk has to work much harder to convince himself of that, this time around.

## Character Bios

### Amaley Manytrees

#### Life

Mosk's mother. She died in the fire that took most of the Manytrees family. She had an experimental greenhouse she apparently ran with her husband, Imshiel, which was also destroyed in the fire.

### Augus Each Uisge

#### Appearance

'He was in his fifties, easily, with a long mane of once-black hair that now carried a lot of silver. When he was younger, he would have been an extremely attractive man, except he was probably a giant sleazebag even back then, too.' Mosk noted that he 'was still lean, a horribly good dresser.' 'He had freckles across his cheeks.' He's taller than Mosk.

#### Personality

Augus is very forward with Mosk. Mosk finds him exasperating. Augus noted that he likes plants, and was 'never that close' to his family, and made a habit of visiting botanical gardens first thing whenever he visited a new country.

#### Life

Augus is a customer at Mosk's nursery. They met for the first time earlier in the year. 'Augus Each Uisge was some big deal rich asshole who cared a lot about plants and botany, and was good friends with Patrick . . . He had some giant property out in the Swan Valley, kept it pretty lush, had been featured in magazines that Mosk didn’t give a single shit about, and always wanted to know about the recent new releases from the native nursery, so he could showcase plants that no one else had access to yet.'

After their first time together, Augus told Mosk that when Mosk got his destructive urges, to come to Augus.

#### Skills

Augus grows some plants from seed and sells them, but keeps the ones he likes best.

### Eran

#### Personality

'Eran liked [Mosk] to be a bit of a pillow princess'.

#### Life

Eran is an activist, and has a kind of 'on-again-off-again thing' with Mosk, which Mosk is 'kind of tired of'.

#### Skills

Mosk thinks rope work is Eran's 'way of unwinding.'

### Gwyn ap Nudd

#### Life

Gwyn still works as an arborist for Augus, and Augus called him, ‘A very handsome someone who actually enjoys my charms.’

### Imshiel Manytrees

#### Life

Mosk's father. He died in the fire that took most of the Manytrees family. He and Augus had known each other in passing, enough to talk shop. Imshiel had an experimental greenhouse he apparently ran with his wife, Amaley, which was also destroyed in the fire.

### Mosk Manytrees

#### Appearance

Mosk has mottled red and white scars on his torso, showing evidence of melting from the fire, and that he likely needed skin graft surgery at one point. He dyes his hair green, and has black eyebrows.

#### Personality

'He didn’t even like kangaroo paws, really, but they sold well. He wanted to work on Lechenaultia more, the flowers were so much more vibrant, but they didn’t live very long'. 'Mosk didn’t like to be thought of as an angry person, but he was certainly short-tempered and grumpy.' There's stigma around pillow princesses, so he believes most people wouldn't be interested in him as a partner. He also has insecurity about it, which Augus has exploited. 'He hated making friends, he hated ‘getting to know people,’ and he didn’t want all the ties that came with a relationship.' Augus noted that Mosk was 'uncomfortable with praise, who still craved it. Who – with only moments of vicious verbal protest – had let Augus do whatever he wanted'. Mosk assumes he is always doing the wrong thing and that he cannot make partners happy. He seems to hate himself and feel uncertain all the time, and has a history of self-destructive behavior in terms of partners, and doesn't believe in safewords.

#### Life

Mosk's family was wealthy. Supposedly Mosk started a fire by accident that took the lives of the rest of his family, and destroyed their experimental greenhouse, the family home, and most of the property. The fire made the newspapers, and it made Augus shocked that Mosk didn't change his last name. Mosk works as a senior nursery hand 'and [is] well-respected in the industry', but is supposedly going to be promoted to nursery manager. The 'blue kangaroo paw project [is] his baby, and he’d been working on it intensively for years.'

Mosk agreed to visit Augus in the future when he was feeling self-destructive.

### Patrick ("Pat")

#### Personality

He seemingly told Augus that 'if they don’t promote [Mosk], it will be because of attitude problems.’ 'Patrick was pragmatic, and more likely to say something like: ‘Fuckin’ nice flower, mate, make it hardier.’ His praise came in the form of a clap on the back and an announcement that it was time for a beer.'[2] Patrick 'was low-key homophobic even though he told everyone he had a gay employee and was nice enough to Mosk, because Mosk didn’t seem to threaten his masculinity.'

#### Life

Patrick is the nursery manager, and Mosk's boss. Patrick doesn't pay Mosk for some or all of his work.

## Locations

#### Augus' home

Augus' home is located in Swan Valley, Perth, Australia. Augus has a woodworking room and a kitchen, and one entrance to his home has doubled-doors and a knocker. In the garden, he has one area devoted entirely to red plants. Augus' bedroom 'had a sill broad enough to have some decorative cushions on it and served as a daybed during the times when Augus couldn’t concentrate on his work and needed to quieten his mind. Dark wooden floors, dark walls, a deep red quilt cover, and of course his display cabinets, filled with many of his woodworked beauties'.

Augus has a neighbor who raises chickens.

'Augus’ garden was lovely. . . . It was like Kings Park’s botanical displays, but personal and intimate . . . There were small walkways, stepping stones through garden beds, occasional bird baths – all of them filled with water. . . . [There was] flowering *Lechenaultia biloba,* the little shrubs made it to halfway up his shins in height, covered in a profusion of flowers so brightly blue that it almost hurt to look at them.' Augus also had '*Eucalyptus brandiana* . . . the flowers large, red, and stunning.'

#### Kings Park

Another nursery that announced their own variety of blue kangaroo paw - which they named the 'Masquerade' - first, 'which was mostly disease resistant, and it had taken the wind out of Mosk’s sails. Certainly his cultivar was – so far – a much deeper blue, but Kings Park got to the marketing of a rare ‘true blue’ flower first, and what Mosk thought would be a win for the nursery was now just a vanity breeding project.'

#### The Nursery

Mosk's workplace. There are rows of possibly trestle tables in the part where Mosk was working when Augus found him at the start of the story, and a number lock on an exit of the main building leading to a larger building in the back. After the entrance, 'to the left, a large pile of growing media for when Mosk couldn’t be bothered going outside to get it. To the right, rows of standards that were ready to be grafted and put back outside again. The building was humid, bright'. One of the plants is a 'new Grevillea', an 'as-yet-unnamed cultivar that Mosk had been working on for years was nearly ready for market. He’d kept a few inside, even though the bulk of them were happier outside. It was a delicate-looking, compact shrub-form Grevillea, with small, pale pink flowers. Mosk had developed a pale orange, and a cream as well, but the pink was special. It responded well to pruning, was disease resistant, and the leaves – unlike most Grevillea leaves – were small enough to look attractive in hedging.'

## Quotations

* Augus to Mosk: 'Everything’s a weapon to you, isn’t it?’
* ‘You don’t want me either,’ Augus said, smiling at him with a kind of sympathetic understanding. ‘But, point of fact, I *do* want you.'
* Mosk: 'Eran made no sense to him.'
* Mosk: ‘You’re a lech.’ Augus’ lips quirked. ‘I certainly can be. Would you like to see how much of a lech I can be, darling?’
* Augus to Mosk: ‘It is an unseemly habit, assuming you know what I want. Of course, I understand it, I doubt you saw a therapist after everything that happened to you, did you?’
* To Mosk: ‘I can bug you here instead,’ Augus said. ‘How considerate of you, to bring yourself to my home.’
* To Mosk: ‘You didn’t do it wrong,’ Augus said. ‘My darling, you endured that very well indeed.’
* Mosk to Augus: ‘I don’t know what would be best for me.’
* To Augus: ‘No one really likes me,’ Mosk said finally. ‘I don’t give anyone a reason to. But you seemed interested, at least.’
* 'Mosk could never really make a partner happy. . . . He understood plants better than he did people.'
* To Mosk: ‘Every time you listen to me,’ Augus said, almost like a teacher, ‘you’re doing better. Every time you answer a question without evading it, you’re doing exactly what I want.'

## Trivia

* Augus is 'largely vegan, sometimes vegetarian.'
* Augus sees a physiotherapist once a week. He has arthritis in his hands.
* Augus was in Wales when Mosk's family died.
* Mosk's family home was in Western Australia.
* Augus has called Mosk:
	+ Kitten/little stray feral kitten
	+ Love
	+ Pillow princess
	+ Brat
	+ Darling

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 not\_poignant. “Smoke in Autumn.” *Fae Tales - AUs, Oneshots and More.* *Archive of Our Own,* 7 April 2022. https://archiveofourown.org/works/35290591/chapters/95500051. Chapter 2.
2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 2.25 2.26 not\_poignant. “Smoke in Autumn.” *Fae Tales -AUs, Oneshots, and More.* *Archive of Our Own,* 23 November 2021. https://archiveofourown.org/works/35290591/chapters/87951370. Chapter 1.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 not\_poignant. “Smoke in Autumn.” *Fae Tales - AUs, Oneshots and More. Archive of Our Own,* 6 May 2022. https://archiveofourown.org/works/35290591/chapters/98788290. Chapter 4.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 not\_poignant. “Smoke in Autumn.” *Fae Tales - AUs, Oneshots and More. Archive of Our Own,* 4 June 2022. https://archiveofourown.org/works/35290591/chapters/98677332. Chapter 3.