Gabby the Gardener's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Gabby watched the mound for three hours from the cottage window. It didn't move. She made tea and drank it cold, still watching. The rabbit slept in her lap. By noon, the mound was still just a pile of dirt sitting between her ruined tomatoes and her competition carrots. She grabbed her shovel from the shed and walked out to the carrot rows. The carrots were perfect — five plants in a straight line, their green tops full and bright, their shoulders just showing above the soil. She'd measured the spacing three times when she planted them. She'd watered them every morning at dawn. These were supposed to prove she could grow something better than anyone else in Garden World. Now the mound sat eight feet away, rounded and still, with fresh cracks already forming along its base. Gabby drove the shovel into the ground between the mound and the carrots. She dug a trench two feet deep, throwing the dirt behind her. The rabbit watched from the edge of the plot. She worked for an hour, carving a line across the garden until her hands burned and the trench stretched from one fence post to the other. Whatever was moving underground would have to cross empty space to reach the carrots. She leaned on the shovel and waited. The mound shifted. Not toward the trench — away from it. The dirt rippled and flowed backward, piling higher as it retreated toward the ruined tomato plot. Gabby stepped forward, shovel raised, but the movement stopped. The mound sat still again, smaller now, compressed into a tighter shape. She stared at it. The thing underneath wasn't mindless. It had seen what she built and changed direction. That meant it could think. That meant she wasn't fighting dirt — she was fighting something that understood barriers and knew how to go around them.