I think I'd like to turn this into an illustrated short story. I dunno, maybe childrens or tween fiction. Eh, it's more of an illustration than a legit story, but whatever; it's been on my mind for about a year, so I'll shoot it out!
:::
The Gardener
We live in a world with life everywhere and light to see it. There are trees of thousands of kinds, animals to live off them, and animals to live off those animals. There doesn't have to be green fields or deep, cool woods. There doesn't have to be life everywhere. The sun could just pour down on the earth without care or compassion, bleaching colors pale and scorching everything to ash.
Imagine there were people in that world.
People who had a thousand words for "brown" and "burnt" but not one for "green," because they never knew anything green. These people are tired and dry, but don't know they can be anything but tired and dry. The sun beats on them during the days, and the night steals their warmth and their breath.
Now, among those people, in that place, there's a gardener.
This gardener wouldn't know that he was a gardener, though. All his world would be the same as everybody else: all brown and thirsty. But, this person is a gardener, so he would be living his life while it feels like it belongs to someone else. He wouldn't fit, specifically because he belongs to a different world.
What happens when he finds a seed? Maybe he wouldn't recognize it. Maybe he would hold it in his hand like a little brown iota of magic. Maybe he would hold it every night, squeeze it, covet it. He would be afraid he would lose it, or it would be stolen. So of course he finds a field in the middle of nowhere, and he buries the seed. Day after day he would walk up to the charred stick that marked the seed's secret spot. He would be checking to be sure of its safety, to be sure that it was not taken, harmed, or lost, whatever it was to him.
What if it rained? What if this dry world was holding back a thunderstorm for centuries? And what if one day the gardener woke up in the middle of the night to the horrifying sound of lightning cracking a pitch sky?
Well, he wouldn't know what it was, but he would freak out. He would hide under his bed and wait for the rain and thunder and wind to stop. But it wouldn't. That night would stretch on for an eternity, and he would only recognize the dawn as a slight lightening of the sky. It would have gone from black to slate, still punctuated by sudden, aggressive bolts of light. His roof would leak, water would pour in through the cracks in his walls, and his door would rattle with the wind.
And finally, he would panic, grab his coat and his few valuables, and run into the storm. He would run through the wind, rain, and mud, falling over in terror with every crack of thunder, and cowering in flooding trenches. He would push, though, until he found his way to the secret spot in the middle of the field, marked with a burnt stick.
And he would freeze, in terror and elation.
Right there, in the middle of the most horrific storm of his life, in the middle of what he was so sure was going to be his last day alive, he would (for the first time in the history of his people) see green.
And that's the end of part one.
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:::
The Gardener
We live in a world with life everywhere and light to see it. There are trees of thousands of kinds, animals to live off them, and animals to live off those animals. There doesn't have to be green fields or deep, cool woods. There doesn't have to be life everywhere. The sun could just pour down on the earth without care or compassion, bleaching colors pale and scorching everything to ash.
Imagine there were people in that world.
People who had a thousand words for "brown" and "burnt" but not one for "green," because they never knew anything green. These people are tired and dry, but don't know they can be anything but tired and dry. The sun beats on them during the days, and the night steals their warmth and their breath.
Now, among those people, in that place, there's a gardener.
This gardener wouldn't know that he was a gardener, though. All his world would be the same as everybody else: all brown and thirsty. But, this person is a gardener, so he would be living his life while it feels like it belongs to someone else. He wouldn't fit, specifically because he belongs to a different world.
What happens when he finds a seed? Maybe he wouldn't recognize it. Maybe he would hold it in his hand like a little brown iota of magic. Maybe he would hold it every night, squeeze it, covet it. He would be afraid he would lose it, or it would be stolen. So of course he finds a field in the middle of nowhere, and he buries the seed. Day after day he would walk up to the charred stick that marked the seed's secret spot. He would be checking to be sure of its safety, to be sure that it was not taken, harmed, or lost, whatever it was to him.
What if it rained? What if this dry world was holding back a thunderstorm for centuries? And what if one day the gardener woke up in the middle of the night to the horrifying sound of lightning cracking a pitch sky?
Well, he wouldn't know what it was, but he would freak out. He would hide under his bed and wait for the rain and thunder and wind to stop. But it wouldn't. That night would stretch on for an eternity, and he would only recognize the dawn as a slight lightening of the sky. It would have gone from black to slate, still punctuated by sudden, aggressive bolts of light. His roof would leak, water would pour in through the cracks in his walls, and his door would rattle with the wind.
And finally, he would panic, grab his coat and his few valuables, and run into the storm. He would run through the wind, rain, and mud, falling over in terror with every crack of thunder, and cowering in flooding trenches. He would push, though, until he found his way to the secret spot in the middle of the field, marked with a burnt stick.
And he would freeze, in terror and elation.
Right there, in the middle of the most horrific storm of his life, in the middle of what he was so sure was going to be his last day alive, he would (for the first time in the history of his people) see green.
And that's the end of part one.
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Thanks for putting this up. It was fun to read!
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