Easter Flowerette's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Mrs. Robin finishes clearing the leaves and hops down into the soil at the base of the vase. Easter Flowerette watches her. The gardeners have drifted back toward the greenhouse, their voices small now behind the glass panels. Mrs. Robin scratches at the dirt near the fence post. Her claws catch on something hard. Easter Flowerette feels the tremor through her roots. Whatever is buried sits close to her own soil. Mrs. Robin scratches faster. Dirt sprays back against the weathered boards. A pale curve rises out of the ground. It is an egg. Porcelain, cream-colored, laced with fine cracks that run across its surface like old thread. Mrs. Robin tugs it free and rolls it onto the grass. She tilts her head at it, then at Easter Flowerette, as if asking what to do. Easter Flowerette looks at the cracks. Someone made this egg. Someone painted the thin lines and set it here, and then time did the rest. She thinks of the orchid the gardeners spoke of. She thinks of her own bloom in the dark. This egg was left too. It waited under the fence for someone to find it, and the waiting broke it, but it did not stop being an egg. Mrs. Robin nudges the egg closer to the vase. The shell knocks softly against the clay. Easter Flowerette understands the offering. Mrs. Robin is not asking her to bloom bigger or brighter. Mrs. Robin is showing her what she has already found by tending to something small. Easter Flowerette makes her decision. She has spent this whole life measuring what she owes and what she might fail to give. Mrs. Robin does not need a perfect flower. Mrs. Robin needs to know her work mattered. Easter Flowerette pushes upward. The green shoot at her center thickens. A bud lifts free of the leaves and opens, one petal, then another, until a full white bloom stands above the vase. It is not the grandest flower in Easter Corner. It will not join the eight stone memorials around the altar. But it is real, and it is hers, and it has opened while someone she loves is watching. Mrs. Robin goes still. She looks up at the petals. Then she hops onto the rim of the vase and presses her small head against the stem, the way she did in the greenhouse when the frost had passed. Easter Flowerette holds the bloom steady. The cracked egg rests in the grass below, uncovered now, waiting for whoever comes next. She has answered the only question she could answer today. The rest of Easter Corner, and whoever else might pass by the fence, will have to find her the way Mrs. Robin did.