Introductions (Prequel)

3E

Tevah

I'm the laughingstock of my class. It had quickly become common knowledge that I couldn't Grow plants like the others could. I have spent every day, every moment that I could, dedicated to practicing and reaching toward the life of a plant.

At six years of age, a child is taught to touch a plant and reach toward its life. At six, the child is able to double the growth rate of said plant. Well, most children.

I, unfortunately, am still stuck at a six-year-old's ability, only difference being I can quadruple the growth rate. I am still unable to reach toward a plant without touching it. I am still unable to conjure a plant from nothing. And it is unbelievably infuriating.

My parents, split when I was born, don't know how to help. They had agreed to ask the best instructor in the village to 'tutor' me any chance she got. Being her first sole pupil, she took the offer extremely serious. However, it had soon become clear that I am a disappointment to her, and our tribe.

I'm not sure how much more of this tutoring I can take. At this rate, I will never be able to Grow plants like every one else. Nature has not been kind to me, and although nature is what drives us as a clan and that the people nurture and worship it, I don't feel that I can be kind to it either. If I, a born Earth girl, cannot reach toward and nurture the Nature's life by using the one it has given me, why am I here in the first place?

These are all traitorous thoughts, though. As my hands graze the tree trunks that threaten to squish against each other, I can feel their life source. That part has never changed. I can feel the life that is there, but even as I reach for it, it stays out of reach.

This angers me even more.

My anger makes me want to tear through more shrubs, rip plants from their roots, and dig them from the ground, but I cannot bear it. Not again. After the first time, when I had ripped that fern from the ground, I had felt the life die in my hand, had felt it shrivel up, peter out, and vanish, and I had been mortified. Horrified that I had done something of such sacrilege.

To witness death firsthand, not only physically, but to feel it in my brain and watch die it in my mind's eye was something I never wanted to encounter again. Even though plants die on their own, this was different. This was murder. This was taking something that didn't belong to you, and being unable to give it back.

I need to work harder so that I may pay my respects to Nature and be able to pay my debt. That I may help her grow is the greatest honor and I must remember that.

The fern did not deserve what I did, and I need to give the life back, or it will haunt me for the rest of my life.