The next few hours—or what felt like hours in the timeless bubble—were spent in a state of rapt, chaotic gardening.
My first task was The Grand Inspection. I started with the wheat. Kneeling in the ochre dust, I peered at the flickering stalk. Up close, the silver etchings weren't just lines; they were tiny, moving script, endlessly writing and erasing the same equation for despair-tolerant carbohydrates.
"Hello, wheat," I whispered. "You're very tall. For a baby."
I reached out, not to touch, but to gently stroke the air beside it. The sapling phased, its tip momentarily brushing my finger. A shock, cold and sweet as unripe grain, shot up my arm, followed by a phantom taste of ash. I yanked my hand back, giggling. "Tickles!"
Next, the Melon-Tree. I stood beneath its twisted branches, neck craned. The glowing orbs hung like forbidden Christmas decorations. I wanted to see one up close. I jumped, trying to grab a low-hanging fruit.
My fingers passed through it.
Not through empty space—through the fruit. It had the consistency of cold smoke and honey. A shimmering residue coated my fingertips, smelling overwhelmingly of a ripe cantaloupe left to rot in a sunbeam. The orb itself winked out of existence where I'd touched it and reappeared on a higher branch.
"Hey! No fair!" I pouted, wiping the sticky, scentless residue on my shorts. The tree, of course, did not respond. Its roots gurgled softly in the brine pool.
Frustrated but undeterred, I turned to the Water Cycle. Maybe I could help. The single, eternal droplet was forming, falling, evaporating. It seemed… lonely. I cupped my hands beneath the mist-ring, trying to catch the droplet to maybe plant it somewhere else.
The droplet hit my palms. And stayed. It didn't soak in. It beaded, a perfect, heavy sphere of condensed abyssal humidity. It was cold enough to hurt. I yelped and shook my hand. The droplet flew off, hit the soil, and instantly evaporated in a small puff of mist that smelled of damp cellar and regret. The cycle didn't falter. A new droplet was already forming.
My gardening was a catastrophe. I was bothering the wheat, scaring the melons, and throwing the water cycle's only child into the dirt.
I needed a tool. Or a plan.
I marched over to where my shrimp pajamas lay folded. I picked them up, shook off the amber-encrusted D- grades (they were stuck fast), and carried them to the edge of the soil. I laid one carapace-plated sleeve flat on the ground, like a ceremonial mat. This would be my gardening station.
"Proti," I called. "I need you."
The blob detached from its steadying hold on the wheat and oozed over. It formed a shallow, bowl-like depression in its center.
"Good," I said. "Now, we need to test the soil." I scooped up a handful of the ochre dust from the Basic Soil Layer. It was fine and dry, like powdered clay. I dumped it into Proti's bowl.
"Analyze, please."
Proti quivered. The dust in its bowl began to… swirl. Not from motion, but from within. Tiny, crystalline structures formed and dissolved in the particles. After a moment, Proti extruded a pseudopod and wrote in the air with bioluminescent mucus:
[COMPOSITION: FINELY GROUND MEMORY-SLAG. MINERAL CONTENT: NEGLIGIBLE. WATER RETENTION: POOR. EMOTIONAL NUTRIENT PROFILE: HIGH IN VAGUE LONGING, LOW IN CONCRETE HOPE.]
I nodded sagely, as if I understood. "Needs fertilizer."
I looked around. Fertilizer. What did I have? I had… me.
I sat on my pajama-sleeve mat, cross-legged. I focused. I thought about good soil. Rich, dark earth. The smell after rain. The way it clung to your fingers, full of worms and secrets and life. I poured that feeling, that memory of soil (though I'd never really touched it), into my hands, which I held over Proti's bowl.
For a moment, nothing. Then, from my palms, a fine, black grit began to sift out. It wasn't sweat. It was darker, finer, and smelled of petrichor and damp forests. Emotional Residue. It mixed with the ochre dust.
Proti's analysis updated:
[ADDITIVE DETECTED: 'EARTH-NOSTALGIA' (SYNTHESIZED). NUTRIENT POTENTIAL: LOW BUT NON-ZERO.]
It was something. A start.
Elated, I turned to the flickering wheat. "You need food!" I took a pinch of the newly enriched soil and carefully sprinkled it around the base of the sapling.
The effect was immediate and violent.
The wheat stalk jerked. It didn't grow. It multiplied. For a split second, there were ten of it, all phased on top of each other, a blur of black and silver. Then it collapsed back to one, but now it was a foot taller, and three new, flickering shoots had erupted from the soil nearby. The original seed head now bore not just kernels, but tiny, shimmering husks that looked like they contained miniature, starry skies.
I gasped. "It works!"
I scrambled to the Melon-Tree. I tossed a whole handful of my special soil mix at its roots.
The brine pool boiled. The tree's roots thrashed. Two of the glowing honeydew orbs detached, not falling, but floating down. They didn't hit the ground. They hovered at my eye level, spinning slowly. Their translucent skins solidified slightly, becoming opalescent. Inside, the floating seeds now swirled in distinct, galaxy-like patterns.
I was a gardening genius!
I danced a little jig on my pajama mat, my feet kicking up puffs of ochre dust. "Mr. Fin! Did you see? I'm feeding them! They're growing!"
From across the chamber, a single, resonant thump echoed. Mr. Fin's tailfin had struck the floor. It wasn't applause. It was a punctuation mark. A period at the end of my sentence.
STAUST chose that moment to project a new, large screen into the center of the garden.
[HABITAT ENRICHMENT STATUS - 4 HOURS POST-INSTALLATION]
[SOIL LAYER: STABILIZING. UNEXPECTED EMOTIONAL CATALYST DETECTED (USER: CHIARI).]
[WATER CYCLE: NOMINAL. EFFICIENCY UNCHANGED.]
[ABYSSAL WHEAT COLONY: RAPID, UNSTABLE PROPAGATION DETECTED. POPULATION: 1 > 7. PREDICTED COLLAPSE WITHIN 12 HOURS.]
[MANGROVE MELON-TREE: FRUIT MATURATION ACCELERATED BY 400%. STABILITY QUESTIONABLE. PSYCHOACTIVE PROPERTIES CONFIRMED.]
[OVERALL BIOMASS: INCREASING. PREDICTED OXYGEN OUTPUT: 0.8% (MINOR IMPROVEMENT).]
[WARNING: UNREGULATED EMOTIONAL INPUT CREATING NON-LINEAR GROWTH PATTERNS. OUTCOME IS UNPREDICTABLE.]
I read the screen, my triumphant smile fading only slightly. Unstable? Questionable? Non-linear?
I looked at my seven flickering wheat stalks, a tiny, shimmering forest. I looked at the two opalescent melons hovering serenely by the tree.
They were beautiful. They were mine. So what if they were a little unpredictable?
I put my hands on my hips, facing STAUST's warning. "They're fine," I declared. "They just need love. And more fertilizer."
I sat back down on my mat, a determined glint in my eye. I had a garden to tend. Unreal, flickering, possibly psychoactive, and growing against all cosmic logic.
It was perfect.
Proti oozed back to the original wheat stalk, wrapping around it and its new siblings, trying to be a steadying influence. The flickering slowed to a gentle, rhythmic pulse, like a calm heartbeat.
The two hover-melons drifted gently on unseen currents, casting soft, honeyed light over the ochre soil.
High above, the judge-scars continued their slow, eternal weep, the brine now trickling in thin streams that were being subtly diverted by the new soil layer, creating glistening, fractal damp patches.
Mr. Fin was a silent, watching statue.
And in the center of it all, a girl in simple clothes sat cross-legged on a carapace-plate, making dirt from daydreams and teaching the abyss how to garden.