Ruby Petal's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Three mornings passed before Ruby found the watering can moved. It sat upright near the boundary arch, no longer at the wild bush's base. She landed beside it and peered inside. Rich, dark soil filled it to the brim, packed with fragments of bark and something that smelled like rain after lightning. Ruby carried the soil back to her workshop and built a wooden frame test bed with compartments on either side. In one, she placed the wild roses' soil. In the other, her own carefully amended earth. She planted cuttings from her healthiest roses in both sections, then stepped back to watch. By sunset, the roses in the wild soil had already begun to droop, their leaves curling inward as if trying to escape. By morning, they had withered completely, their stems blackened and brittle. She lifted the dead cutting with trembling fingers and carried it inside. Between two panes of glass, she pressed what remained of the red petals, then framed them in twisted twigs. The memorial sat on her workshop shelf, a reminder that some roses belonged to gentle ground, and some to places far harsher. Her legendary garden would need more than beauty. It would need roses that could survive in soil where her tended ones couldn't even take root. Ruby flew to the wild bush at dawn with the empty watering can. She set it down again at the base of the thorned branches, this time with a question she whispered to the fierce blooms above. Could they teach her which of her roses might learn their strength? The branches swayed, and she thought she heard an answer in the rustle. But this time, she didn't fly away. She sat in the shadow of the wild roses and waited, ready to learn what she'd never needed to know before.