Someone cries a lot.
I don't know how long I sat there crying.
But by the time my tears stopped spilling onto the Earth, the sun was starting to slowly dip down the horizon. With the last of my tears drying up, I wiped them away with my hands.
Even after letting out all my tears, I found myself leaning on the tree for several more minutes. I watched the birds in the distance, the colors of the setting sun, and felt the breeze touching my skin. The air around me was quiet, peaceful even. Very unnatural in a city full of high-end technology.
As I took in deep breaths, I realized this was the last of fresh air my lungs were ever going to breathe in. With the flowers gone, the air would soon be contaminated with chemicals, smoke, and other science junk.
Shakily, I slowly got up from the ground, brushing the mud off my butt. I couldn't stay here forever and do nothing. What was done was done. Now I had to learn to live with it. Somehow...
As I started to walk back inside, I decided to take another detour around the fake garden. The fake flowers were still happily smiling, blossoms pointing toward the sky as if the sun was still up there.
A burst of anger flashed through me at the sight. I kicked the flowers, damaging a few of its stems and crushing some petals. A big dent now appeared where I had kicked the flowers. Why would it matter? It was fake anyways.
Just like the world around us.
I was about to continue walking back when I noticed a shiny white object in the corner of my eye. It was tiny, about the size of a pebble or loose gravel bits (like the ones found in ruins of old cities from 2020). I squatted down, low on the ground.
It was... a white little rock. With a weird black speck. How amazing.
I sighed and got up from the ground and continued on my way back inside the house. The sun had already set, it was cold, and I was hungry. Soon it would be time to sleep.
Whatever has happened today with my parents, the garden, I'll deal with tomorrow.
***
Turns out my parents had replaced the garden and sold all our natural flowers away when I was sleeping. At 4am in the morning. What kind of person would be up at 4am selling natural flowers for money? That's something criminals would do, not scientists!
Although considering my parents, both of them are starting to feel the same...
As I headed back outside once again, I came across the same pebble from yesterday. It hadn't moved at all since nightfall.
I kneeled down and looked at it again. With more light, I noticed the white rock was oddly shaped, almost like a tooth. A small black hole dented the side of the "tooth".
Whose tooth was lying in the middle of my backyard?
It wasn't mine, I stopped losing teeth about a year or so ago. Definitely none of my neighbors, none of them even talk to us, much less glance at our garden. I don't think they're even allowed to look at it (because of some contract they had to sign before living here.)
Taking one of the ruined fake flowers, I brought the stem of it to the tooth, not wanting to touch the contaminated thing with my hands.
But as my hand moved closer to the thing... I felt a tiny pulse. Really miniscule, but very much alive. It was almost like the pulse of a... plant.
Even when the stem touched the outside of the "tooth", the outside felt flaky. Hard, but the outer skin was really thin and breaking apart at the slightest touch.
But I've never seen anything like this. I've seen all types of plants and their seeds. I've memorized literally all of them. Yet this "tooth" wasn't familiar at all.
Which could only mean one thing.
This wasn't a tooth. This was a seed.
A seed of a new plant species.
YOU ARE READING
The Protector of Plants (UIC 2023)
Ficção GeralXeni has lived with the garden for as long as she could remember. It was the one place she truly felt alive. She could talk to flowers and lived with one of the only gardens remaining in the world. Everything was perfect. However, the paradise didn'...
