Phoenix Zhang
21 May 2025, 04:29
Service of the Soil
Phoenix wasn't volunteering for this. She hadn't volunteered, hadn't stepped forward with the you-can-tell-I'm-a-total-team-player expression on her face. Actually, she'd stood back a ways from the others lining up around the greenhouses, arms crossed, face carefully neutral. Backing off like that was generally enough to discourage other people from trying to engage her in conversation.
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Typically
But the professor never asked Phoenix anything. She simply approached, extending the small crumpled seed packet covered in dirt-stained paper and the scent of crushed leaves. No words — merely gazed at Phoenix, fingers passing the packet into her hand, then moving on to the next student. No words, no directions. Something Phoenix did not need.
She looked down at the packet in front of her. No mark. No sign of what would bloom. Just an unknown packet of small specks, fresh from the greenhouse and the heat of Toussaint's palm. She considered going back. Passing it along to another. Acting as if she'd never seen it.
But she didn't. She just kept it.
Phoenix left the group and quietly exited down the back of the distant greenhouse, where the sound began to recede and the grass beneath the sole of her boots was rough. She would do it alone if she were going to do it, no conversation, no group, no fake smile.
The package whispered softly in the palm of her hand as she walked. It was curiously reassuring in the sound, such as wind rustling through leaves. It wasn't something she trusted, not at all. It wasn't the worst work in the world, however.
Simply plant some seeds. Silently. By yourself.
She could do that.─────
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Phoenix Zhang
21 May 2025, 04:32
Service of the Soil
The location she found was ordinary. Shallow depression in the ground sloping gently under the leaning trees, half shaded, half covered in moss and dead roots. The terrain was soft enough to give under the weight of her boots, and damp in the way it would hold water — not too dry, not too sterile. Still. Hidden.
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Good enough.
Phoenix plopped down on her knee in an unladylike manner, clasping the packet of seed in the bend between knee and robe as she dug in the robes' inner pocket for the trowel. It was not fancy — merely something she'd recovered from an old Herbology lesson, slightly corroded along the edges and smoothed down with use. First-rate gear was unnecessary here.
She carefully opened the packet, tearing straight along the top. In it were seeds in all shapes, all sizes. Some were spherical, some flat, some small enough that they clung to the tips of her fingers. There were no labels, no tags. Only a handful of subdued possibility. Maybe that was for the best.
She began, hesitantly, scooping out small depressions in the soil, each one in succession. Her hands already sported smears of soil and she wasn't concerned with cleanliness. She scattered the seeds onto the soil in small clumps, covered them, then pushed the soil flat with the heel of the palm. No lines. No symmetry. Random, still. The moss that covered them seemed to welcome the disruption, loose and sprawling, as if it recognized that earth lay in waiting. Phoenix uttered not a peep. There was no need. Her fingers just kept moving — rhythmic, measured movements, the rhythm of one who was used to being alone.
She didn't need visibility. She only desired the work itself to speak for itself.─────
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Phoenix Zhang
21 May 2025, 04:35
Service of the Soil
The last seed was minuscule, almost impossible to discern among the soil in the palm of her hand. Phoenix resisted planting it in — not from sentimental reasons, but because it felt wrong to give the last seed the designation that the others had: Something to be planted and forgotten. It rolled once in the palm of her hand, then was placed in the soil and covered over with pressed-down dirt.
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And that was it.
She leaned back onto the balls of her heels, brushing the dirt from between them onto the already dirty robe hem. Her kneecaps were tender from being bent, and the acrid odor of mud and moss clung to the sleeves. It wasn't important. It was honest work. Unobtrusive work. Nothing flashy about it.
She looked down at the patch she'd made. Uneven, unlabeled, barely visible. Scattered ripples in the ground, in a half-circle beneath the trees. Nothing sensational. Nothing anyone passing would realize. But if it worked — if any of it grew — then something interesting would emerge from this forgotten area of soil.
Maybe not. Maybe it would not matter.
But she'd come back. To look.
Phoenix got up slowly, protesting joints, fingers still dark-stained. She didn't try cleaning it all off. She didn't try smoothing it out. Leave it messy. Leave it real.
She stood there for an instant, still among the trees, listening closely to the wind in the leaves. Turning, she walked back the route she'd traveled, seed packet now vacant, fists in the robe pockets.
She wasn't speaking. She wasn't smiling.
Yet there was an odd lightness in her chest that she couldn't quite identify.
And that was enough.─────
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| 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉: @ | 𝑴𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈: @ |
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