Title: Foraging
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Sentenced to Be a Hero
Characters: Xylo and Teoritta.
Setting: General.
Rating: G.
Length: 862 words.
Summary: Sometimes a compromise is a perfectly acceptable apology.
Notes: Long time no post! I had an inspiration while cooking that just happened to fit the prompt, so here's an opportunistic last-minute submission.


Teoritta was pouting again.

Although, to be fair, Xylo had to admit that she might not have been unjustified in this case. After a long hard march through mountainous terrain, the Hero Unit had at last found a suitable place to make camp: a small meadow, green with spring growth, through which a brook of fresh cold water flowed down from the high icy peaks. Once their tents were pitched, Xylo asked for a volunteer to make dinner; but Dotta couldn’t even be trusted not to stuff food in his pockets, Jayce was busy fawning over Neely, cooking was beneath a royal personage like Nargalle, Venetim was still gasping from the altitude as if he would die, and Tatsuya was… well, Tatsuya. In the end, it fell to Xylo himself—as usual—to start preparing a stew of the rabbit meat they’d been able to hunt along the way.

He was still grumbling over the utter uselessness of his comrades when Teoritta bounced up to him, begging him to come look at all the lovely flowers.

Of course, Xylo knew he shouldn’t have lost his temper. Even if he was less than pleased to be caught up in a pact with another goddess, Teoritta herself was nothing but innocence: absurdly patient with his aversion, uncomplaining about the harsh conditions she endured with the Hero Unit, desiring only to serve and uplift her chosen knight. Nevertheless, it was her cheerful childishness that had finally strained his last nerve. …Perhaps, once again, it was really that the nerve she struck was one all too deeply rooted in his past.

Whatever his excuse, he had snapped at her coldly over his shoulder, telling her to go pick flowers on her own; and even without looking up at her face, he somehow felt the blow of hurt fall in the brief moment before she turned and slunk away.

…It’s the damned pact. It’s not me.

It can’t be me. Not this time.—Not again.

Slowly, furtively, he glanced up from the embers he was trying to coax along to full flame in the mountain breeze. Teoritta was now sitting on a rocky outcropping a distance away. Her back was turned to him, but by the stiffness in her small shoulders and the downward tilt of her head, he could tell she wasn’t even looking at the scattered patches of wildflowers that had so excited her. Even the flames flickering through her golden hair had dimmed to a mere spark.

Heaving a sigh, the hero stood and strode toward her.

“Hey. Teoritta.”

The goddess turned at the summons, and in her ruby eyes, there was only alert curiosity. Of reproach for his earlier behavior, there was not a trace.

Xylo really hated that.

“I want to show you something,” he announced, in a neutral tone that was perplexingly difficult to take on. “Come here.”

Her interest clearly piqued, Teoritta slid off the rocks and followed him as he moved across the grassy expanse, his sharp golden eyes scanning the ground. It took him only a few moments to spot what he was looking for: between the floral eruptions of white and pink and yellow that carpeted the landscape, there were taller, thin green blades that jutted upward in tight clumps.

“See this? It’s wild onion.” A steel-clawed gauntlet wrapped around a cluster of the greens and carefully pulled, bringing up from the soil a short white stem with a small but familiar bulb at its root. “It would be a nice addition to liven up the stew. …Would you help me gather some?”

It was almost too predictable, the way the diminutive goddess’ flames flared bright and her eyes widened with eager interest.

“Certainly!” she crowed, and quickly grasped at a second onion plant in imitation of him—only to flush with embarrassment as the greens merely tore free in her hand, without giving up the buried bulb.

Xylo couldn’t quite help the low chuckle that escaped him before he guided her hand to the next one. He showed her how to grip the onion greens low to the ground, to pull slowly and with care, to ease the roots out of the soil; and as he watched her excitedly proceed to get her hands dirty with onion-harvesting, he felt the stress coiled around his bones inexplicably loosen its grip.

Just a little bit. Just for a little while.

His gaze drifted farther across the meadow, appraising the flowers and plants that flourished in the cold runoff from the mountain peaks’ snow. Dandelion and chickweed were rich in nutrients. Yarrow was serviceable as a seasoning, and it even had medicinal properties to stop bleeding. He decided he would teach her how to gather these too.

…Merely as something incidentally useful to keep her busy, of course. That was purpose enough for the teaching to be time well spent.

“Over here, Teoritta. Come look at this one…”

In the end, dinner was served quite late that night. However, much to Xylo’s bemusement, the other heroes only gave him stifled grins instead of complaints.

And from that day onward, flowers were not the only growing things that fascinated Teoritta.

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© 2026 Jordanna Morgan