The Gardener (part two)

A lot's happened in my life since my last post -- I got a job, I moved, I started that job... okay, three things have happened if I really push it. So that's why The Gardener is so far a massive cliffhanger. But hey, let's try writing a continuation!

So, in summary: a dead world, dry, hot in daylight and cold at night, with little or no life except the depraved people living in it. A man finds a seed, cherishes and buries it. It rains for the first time in his life, he freaks out and finds the seed to have grown. Good summary? Good. 

So what happens next?

The Gardener has never seen a tree wasn't burnt, wasn't hacked to rough chunks. He sits there, in the rain and the thunder, watching the tree sway, fearlessly. He can't believe it exists. He sits, and waits out the storm underneath the tree. Slowly, the thunder fades, the rain slows, and a dawn comes, softly. When the sun rises, the man sits in the tree's shade, still in disbelief. 

So, he has to share it, this vision, with someone to prove that it's real, this fantastic new thing, this GREEN. So we have to introduce a new character. But who? Is this guy married? No, this is a place without happiness, hope, or lifelong relationships (insert marriage joke here). What about a friend? Nope, same reason.

So who does this guy have to talk to? What's sad? What's depressing?

He reaches up, plucks one spot of GREEN, one leaf, and he takes it to the marketplace. He wasn't planning on selling it, don't worry! He had no idea how he would describe something so soft, so strong, so aggressive and loving as the color GREEN. So he had to bring it with.

As with the seed and the tree itself, the man protects and cherishes his leaf. He holds it gingerly in his hands until he finally arrives, muddy, dirty, and soggy at the marketplace. Everybody's selling brown, burnt and broken junk. That's all they've got because, remember, this place sucks. Seriously, the Gardener walks right up to his regular salesman -- as close as he gets to a friend -- and the guy tries to sell him a bucket with a hole in it. The hole is on the side -- it kinda works.

The Gardener shakes him off, and while the guy goes on to try and bark down people to buy the bucket from him, the Gardener tries telling him about the stone -- the seed -- and the storm and the tree! The salesman nods and pretends to listen, all while hawking broken plates like they're the best thing known to mankind.

The Gardener, frustrated, holds up the leaf of GREEN in his hand. The world stops. The salesman reaches out, briefly touches the leaf. "Everything," he says. "I'll give you everything I have for that." People swarm, and bid, but the gardener leads them away. He brings them to the tree, swaying gently in the sunlight and taller than it was before. Much taller, it towers over the crowd.

In that moment, each person stands and sees that the world does not have to be like it is for them, brown, burnt and broken.

So how do they respond?

That'll be next time.

For tonight, follow me -- don't bother clicking ads; I wanna build an army and take over the world!

The Gardener (Part One)

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.

Click the ads and share! My self-esteem depends on it!