The Green Planet

Chapter 7

 Cece watched with satisfaction as Clifton downed the rest of the bowl of soup and Leslie joined him. Stella came in a few minutes later and made herself a bowl and put a handful of cheese in the soup. She handed Cecelia a bowl and they all sat on the floor, laughing. Jokes and stories were passed around, even when they were done with their soup. A sense of happiness overcame Cecelia as she soaked up the scene.

An hour later, the sun sank below the horizon and the crickets began to play their night time songs. Leslie hopped up and ran over to the soup pot. Halfway there, she nearly tripped over Cooper but did some kind of jump at the last second to avoid him. She flew through the air and landed on her feet behind Cooper. Clifton's eyes were wide as he watched Leslie casually walk over to the pot as if nothing had happened. Cecelia glanced over at Clifton and stared at the scar over his left eye. Theories and thoughts wormed their way into her mind as she imagined what happened. It clearly wasn't from the mountain lion, the three scars already turned a dark red and were scabbed over. She smiled as every scenario became more and more unrealistic. Her imagination had started to take over.
Plants and animals of all kinds appeared and scratched his eye. Every time it was a different animal or plant. "Cecelia? Is there something on my face or something?" Clifton wiped around his mouth.
"Oh no sorry I was uh..." Cecelia looked around for an excuse, trying to look everywhere except his eye.

"Oh my eye?" Clifton smiled and blinked once. His left eye seemed to get even darker than it was before. "It happened a long time ago. So I was going back to my old house and I accidentally touched a vine. I still don't know what type it was and trust me, I've tried to find it too. Well as you can imagine, it fought back, fiercely. I haven't seen anything like it in my life. When one went at me and I fought it, two others would come out of nowhere. Bright orange flowers lined it up and down." He held out his hand and his fingertips touched, making a large circle. "It was this thick. What scratched me though was it's thorns. The vines were covered in thorns. It was hard to dodge them all but somehow I did, that is until a fourth vine came out of nowhere and clawed my eye."
  I thought for sure that I was going to be plant food but after that, the vines were done. They left me alone. I went back to my house, bandaged my eye and for weeks I couldn't see anything. At first I thought I was going to be blind in one eye but one morning I took off the bandage and I could see! A few days later, I was trying to find something but I couldn't quite see far enough so I tried as hard as I could to see it and after I blinked, my left eye could see whatever I wanted to see. After a few weeks I figured out how to turn it on and off and I tested to see how far I could see. The average human eye can see three miles in any direction they look but I could see up to fifteen miles." Clifton blinked again and his left eye went back to the dark blue it was before.

Cecelia's mouth hung open slightly as she pictured that all happening in her mind. She never realized he went through so much right after he was separated from his parents. She closed her mouth.

"How... How do you accept that? How do you not freak out about that every now or then?" Was it just her that carried this feeling?

"Well I mean it gave me a super power or whatever you want me to call it. And well my life has never been normal. I mean it hasn't been a plant apocalypse but I wasn't normal. So me being blind in my left eye, then getting super vision is probably the best thing to happen to me. Besides, I did freak out. At first I was angry, I almost died and was at the mercy of a plant! Then I was very depressed for a few days and laid in bed as I shouted and cried into my pillow." Cecelia looked down and played around with her soup.

"Do you still think it's... unfair?" She asked gently, quietly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leslie put her bowl of soup on the floor and hide behind her softly curled hair.