Sweet Briar Roots

A useless plant

 "No. No, no, no, no!" Annie shrieked, falling to her knees and tearing at the dry, curled foliage before her. "Damn you! Absolutely worthless, cotton-pickin,' most ridiculous plant-" She cut off with a scream, slapping at the bush a final time, shoulders heaving, throat burning.

Dead. She left for two days and it up and died, breaking the root chain that surrounded the four foot pond beside it, leaving the water's surface useless. Without a bloom, there was no way to make a connection with another looking pond, especially not one halfway around the world.

Annie yanked the knife from her apron pocket. Ignoring the thorns in her palm, she sawed at the base of the bush until it snapped free, chucking it behind her with a snarl.

"Stupid tea roses. Don't last for nothin', even with a warding spell." She stabbed at the knotted rope in the dirt that had failed to do its duty.

Her glare swept the garden, eyeing the wind battered grasses, desert blooms, and hardy herbs, mentally weighing and sifting, a critical eye landing on a scruffy sweet brier rose.

"I don't care if it's mid-summer," she grumbled, pushing up and dusting off her skirts, boots stirring fine dust into the wind as she stomped to her hand wagon. "I need a bloomer, and you're what I've got. No more special orders, no more fussy hybrids. I ain't waitin' anymore." She scooped up a spade and pointed at the bush. "You're movin' today and you're gonna live. You hear me?"

The brier said nothing, and the only complaints were Annie's as the spade sliced into the rocky earth, a hot wind drying her sweat before it could drip, leaving a salty tang on her cracked lips.

"Tea roses make a better connection, my foot. Doesn't do no good if they die on the first hot day of summer." She hefted the root ball out of the ground, cool dirt crumbling around her fingers and rolling down her skirts as she wrangled it to the pond's edge.

It took an hour to get it settled in place, excruciating detail going into interweaving the roots with its neighbors before adding fresh compost and bark mulch, the knots of a new warding rope receiving the final remnants of her anger.

Finished, she leaned close, examining a tiny pink bud at nose level, the breeze turning barely sweeter and greener as it pulled through the branches. Her scowl softened.

"Please grow," she whispered to the bud. "A letter... it just ain't the same."

She glanced at the looking pond, a year's worth of unspoken words overgrown on her insides like wild alfalfa, weighing her down, powdery wings of old feelings fluttering through her chest again.

"Please. I need to see him. I need to tell him."