Previous Chapter 2
The sun was going down as I parked my car and climbed the stairs to my apartment. It wasn’t much: a small, one-bedroom place, and the neighbors could get a little loud on weekends and sports nights, but it was mine. I hung my keys and purse on the hat rack by the entrance, shut the door, and dropped onto the couch. On the rare occasions that people visited, they always remarked on how empty the main room looked. Next to the door was a small shoe rack and a couch, a small tv on an end table stood on the wall opposite, the computer desk was tucked into the corner by the kitchen, and a catch-all project table with storage underneath it occupied the wall on the far side of the front door. That left the majority of the floor space empty, meaning I had plenty of room for me to pull out a project, work on it, and then put it away, leaving the place clean and open once again.
I pulled my
shoes off and put them on the shoe rack, then sat back on the couch and let
myself relax. As much as I had enjoyed talking with Bast, being around
high-energy people is always draining, and I needed some quiet time.
Thankfully, the neighbors seemed to agree; I couldn’t hear any parties or
sports games going on, so it would probably be a decently quiet night.
After a few
minutes, I got up and walked over to the sole plant in my apartment, sitting on
the window ledge by the tv. It was a philodendron I’d named Frank, taken as a
clipping from the first plant I ever spoke to when I was a kid. It’s amazingly
easy to judge when to repot and when to cut a plant back when it can tell you exactly
what and when it needs, so the vines growing out of the pot covered every inch
of the window sill beside the tv.
“Hey Frank.
How’s it going?” I said. We had ‘spoken’ with each other for so many years that
we had gotten used to speaking-style thought patterns; I didn’t have to focus
as much to chat with him unless there were a lot of distractions nearby. This
time, though, all I got was silence. I frowned. We hadn’t had a disagreement lately
– yes, thank you, you can have a disagreement with a plant – so I wasn’t sure
why I didn’t get a response. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and dropped
into the deeper communication mode I used with unfamiliar plants.
“Frank? Everything ok?” I queried. I caught snatches of a distant conversation, then, almost as if he were shouting from far away, came, “Yes, hang on, I’ll be with you in a moment!” and the conversation continued.
How
bizarre. I hadn’t known that plants could communicate other than through their roots
and short stretches of earth – or water, in the case of aquatic plants. Every
time I’d met a potted plant, they seemed isolated, cut off from the
communication network. So how on earth – pardon the pun – was Frank talking to
someone else? And how could he sound far away when his body, for lack of a
better word, was right here? I sat on the floor and leaned back against the
wall under the window to wait. ‘A moment,’ in plant speak, could be anything
from a few seconds to a few hours, but Frank was a usually pretty fast thinker.
Sure
enough, I had just gotten comfortable when the distant noises stopped. There
were a few seconds of silence, then a suspiciously cheerful, “Hello! How are
you? How was your day?” from Frank. I craned my head back to raise an eyebrow
at him, knowing he’d pick up on the accompanying sense of questioning,
mentally, and replied “I’m well… Had a bit of an odd day, but not too bad. How
are you?”
“Doing
well, doing well, thank you, although of course I wouldn’t say no to some
misting. The sun was pretty bright today, in these long summer afternoons.” All
plants love water, but Frank had a particular infatuation with being misted. He
claims it was from his heritage as a tropical plant in the jungle, but I
suspect he simply likes the reflections of the drops in sunlight. I sighed, got
up, grabbed the mister from under the kitchen sink, and misted him thoroughly
as he made little exclamations of delight the entire time. My part in this
ritual took less than a minute, but he made me wait until the last rays of
sunlight faded and the shadows began collecting under the trees before he
stopped admiring himself and spoke again.
“Mm, thank
you. I always feel better when you do that, as if I’m back in my native
habitat,” he said.
“Frank,” I responded flatly, “you’ve
never been to your native habitat.
Wait, no, hold up, I’m not getting into that argument again.” We’d gone round
and round that topic many times, and I knew it would take up the entire evening
if he got me started.
“What were you doing when I got
home?” I asked instead. “Who were you talking to? How were you talking to anyone? I thought the pot made that impossible.”
Frank gave off a sense of embarrassment;
if he were human, he’d be shuffling his feet and avoiding eye contact. “Well…
it’s not that it’s impossible, per se… just very, very difficult. It’s kind of
like what you humans would call having an out-of-body experience, as I
understand it.”
My eyebrows shot upward. Frank had
picked up a lot of human habits, due to us speaking so frequently, but this was
new. I didn’t get into the metaphysical, much, since I had the plants and my
work to ground me, so where had he gotten that information from?
Picking up on my curiosity, Frank
elaborated. “Remember those new neighbors that moved in a few months ago? You
said they looked a little hippie-ish? They’re big into meditation and trances
and stuff; turns out I can hear them when they do that, so I’ve been getting a veritable
education from eavesdropping as they search for the ‘source of the universe’ or
whatnot.” He sounded highly amused, not only at his discovery, but also at
being able to surprise me.
“Frank!” I exclaimed, aghast. “Please
tell me you didn’t talk back to them…?” If they’d heard something in a trance
state, who knows what might happen. I didn’t need Frank playing god to a couple
of hippies trying to explore the universe. Thankfully, he laughed in response.
“Heh, no, I didn’t, although it was
extremely tempting a few times,” he admitted.
“They sound like they’ll believe anything you tell them when they’re in that
state.”
I shook my head, both relieved and
amused. “Well, please continue to restrain yourself. Anyway, back to the main
topic. So you can, what, step out of your… self? And travel to talk to someone
else?” I once again got the sense that he was embarrassed and had hoped to
sidetrack the conversation from this topic, although I still had no idea why.
“Yeah, something like that. I just…
I’ve been staring out this window for what, years, now, with no one to talk to
other than you. No offense,” he added, when I raised an eyebrow at that,
“you’re a great person, for a human, but, you know… I miss talking to other
plants. So one day, after listening to the other humans drone on about ‘a
higher consciousness,’ I figured I’d give it a try, and it worked. I was a
little scared at first, because, you know, I couldn’t feel my leaves, but I
popped in and out a few times to make sure I had it down, then moved around the
house, then through the window, then down to the ground so I could chat with
the bushes.”
“How… How did you move?” I asked.
Humans are used to the concept of self-movement, but plants didn’t really have propulsion
skills, so I was curious how he’d have known to move around.
Frank chuckled. “Think you’ve got
the corner on moving, do you?” I blushed – apparently that thought hadn’t been
as private as I’d expected. “You animals all move fast, but you don’t know the
pleasure of calculating where the sun shines the most and sending a new leaf
out to take advantage of that. Ever see what happens when a tree falls in a
forest? There’s a race to see who can fill its old spot first and get all that
sunlight. It might be slower than you animals move, but it’s still a race. This
was kind of the same: I saw where I wanted to be, and somehow was there.” He sent a sense of grudging
respect, and added, “I have to say, it’s pretty addicting, moving that fast. Imagine
how large I could grow if I could move my vines that quickly…”
I laughed, briefly envisioning my
entire apartment building covered in vines. “Probably for the best. Speed tends
to engender greed, and I’d have to repot you constantly if you could grow that
fast. Anyway, wow. I have never heard of plants being able to do that, have
you?”
“Nope,” Frank replied, “I’ve been
going down to talk to the trees and bushes for a while now, and they agreed
it’s new. Since they’re connected to the underground, they sent the query out,
and haven’t heard anything back about another plant being able to do it.” He
sounded rather proud of himself, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Well, congratulations at being
awesome!” I told him. “Did any of them… I don’t know… treat you differently?
Like you weren’t ‘normal’?” I layered my spoken question with memories of being
teased as a kid, and the sense of having to keep part of yourself hidden.
Frank had heard me complain about
that enough to know what I was getting at, first in college, then in the
workplace. “Thankfully, no.” He snickered, then added, “Although you should
have heard the bushes when I first said hello. They had no idea what was going
on and almost dropped all their leaves. It was quite hilarious.” I raised my
eyebrows – pranks were fairly unheard-of in the plant world, since movement is
slow. “But by the time I got to talk to the trees, the bushes had let everyone
know what was going on. Oh, well.”
“So is that who you were talking
to? The trees? It felt like you were far away,” I asked, looking out the
window. Dusk was almost complete, but I could still see the shadow of the trees
across the parking lot, easily forty feet away. I rarely tried to talk to a
plant more than five feet away, but if Frank was right and this was a new
skill, distance could be immaterial.
“Yeah, I was just, you know…
generally catching up on things since I’ve been potted for so long,” Frank
answered, a little too casually.
“Catching up on ‘things’?” I
repeated, skeptical. “What sort of ‘things’?”
“Well, I mean, I’ve never
introduced myself, so I’m technically new in town,” he elaborated. “I had to
introduce myself, learn who everyone is, ask about the soil and weather
patterns. The trees are about twenty-five to thirty years old, so it’s a little
slow, but not too bad.”
“Anyway, enough about me, how was
your day? Didn’t you have new clients today?” He asked, trying to feel curious,
but I could sense a thread of discomfort underneath it. I narrowed my eyes at
him and waited a moment before responding.
“Yeeeeesssss, I did.” I said
suspiciously, then relented, making a mental note to come back to the topic
later. “Thankfully, it was a quick case.” I gave him a rundown of the day, from
the initial meeting at my office through meeting Bast and closing both of our
cases. “So, all in all, a good day. Got paid, found someone else with
communication skills, and have new leads on more opportunities to get paid. Not
bad, eh?” I concluded, feeling satisfied with the day’s work.
Frank was silent, which was not
unusual when I told him about my days. Even with his long-term exposure to me,
he’s still a plant, and they take a while to get used to new things. The
silence stretched longer than usual, though, enough that I reached out and
touched his leaves. It was a human gesture – plants have no need of touch – but
it had been an odd day, and now Frank was acting strangely, and I needed that
sense of connection.
“Frank? Still there?” I sent out.
“Yeah, sorry, still here,” he
finally responded. “Just… thinking. You said you tried to listen when this guy
was talking to the bird? And you heard something?” He seemed concerned and
distracted at the same time.
“Ye-es?” I answered, remembering
the unnerving feeling of all of the trees silently focusing on me at the time.
“It wasn’t like talking to you, and I didn’t understand it, but I definitely
heard something. Is that… wrong?”
Plants generally follow the rule of nature, insofar as survival mode applies to
plants, and the only sort of moral code or belief system I’d run across was
“humans that damage plants needlessly are bad/ humans that tend to plants are
good,” so I wasn’t sure where this was going.
More silence from Frank. The sun
was fully down by now. Many plants slow down after dark, but this was
ridiculous. After a few more minutes of silence, Frank responded again.
“No… not wrong… but that’s…
interesting. I need to think about this. You mind if I call it a night?” He
definitely felt distracted now, so I decided to let him off the hook.
“Sure thing. Sleep well when you
get there.” I replied, my usual sign-off from conversation. I got an offhand
sense of acknowledgement from him, and that was the end of that.
I sighed, grateful that the day was
effectively over and probably wouldn’t hold any more surprises. Usually, once I
made it home, I would make dinner, play a game or read a book, and then turn
in. People would occasionally try to convince me to go out and be social, but I
never felt the need for it. Between Frank and my work, I felt I had enough
interaction with others, why go somewhere loud and exhausting after all that?
I walked the short distance to the
kitchen and made a fruit salad to go with some leftover lemon garlic chicken
from the night before. While I was not the greatest cook, I had a couple
recipes under my belt, and I tended to batch cook and reheat dishes for a
couple days at a time. I mooched around online while eating, checking the
various webcomics and newsfeeds I follow. The food was good, but I still felt
odd. I was used to a certain level of strangeness in my life, but today had
gone way past that, and I needed to feel… normal.
The best way to feel normal, I’d
found, was online gaming. Once I logged in, I was just another face in the
crowd. Everyone online had secrets; we were all pretending to be heroes as a
break from whatever reality we had to deal with, so no one asked prying
questions. I had my group of friends that I played with all around the world,
and all they knew was that I was a dang good healer – no questions, no fuss, simply
log in, say hi, and get pulled into dungeon runs.
“Hey Mana!” That’s my online
moniker. “How are you?”
“Up for keeping us alive tonight?”
“Heck yeah,” I replied. “It’s been
a weird day, and I need something normal for a bit. Saving you guys from giant
monsters sounds pretty darn good.”
“You think your day was weird? One of the prisoners on my watch shanked
another one with a sharpened toothbrush. Don’t even ask where he’d hidden it!”
“Hah, listen to what one of my
students said in class today…”
“Hey guys, you gonna talk or kill
these mobs?”
“Don’t worry - you keep ‘em off of
us, and we’ll get ‘em down!”
“Alright, pulling in 3… 2… 1…”
Being able to forget everything
else and sink into my role online felt comfortable and relaxing. Not easy, mind
you; some of the egos in the group would suggest competitions that made my job
as a healer harder, but it was a nice, normal challenge. Nothing weird, no
secrets, no forced interactions, simply being part of a team that accepted you
and kept on going.
A couple hours later, I was yawning so hard my eyes were starting to water, and we’d lost some members of our group to family dinners or needing to put the kids to sleep. Despite the usual “oh come on, one more?!” requests, I decided it was time to turn in, said good night and logged off, feeling much more at ease. I double-checked the front door, set out clothes for the next day, and followed the usual ‘shower, brush teeth, hop in bed’ routine. I thought I heard a faint “good night” from the living as I was falling asleep, but I was probably only imagining things.
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