Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 22 of 29

Sage reached her garden at dusk, three days after leaving the lilac field. The bundle of wet cloth hung heavy against her chest. Inside it, the flower's roots still held their lilac grass. The petals shifted from pink to blue to gold, faint but alive. The black bird rode her shoulder, tired but silent for once. Her fox trotted out to meet her, tail high. She was home. Now she had to keep the bloom alive. She carried it into the greenhouse first. The flower needed the same tangled soil it had grown in, so she pressed the whole clump into an empty pot. She patted the lilac grass down around the stem. She set her hands on the pot and drew energy up from the earth, the way Aquaria had taught her. Warmth flowed through her palms into the roots. The petals brightened. The flower drank and settled. "Careful. Careful," the bird said, hopping to the pot's rim. "I know," Sage said. She smiled. "You taught me that." But settling the plant was only half her task. Aldric had given her a blank journal. He wanted every plant she found recorded, so the knowledge would outlast the flower itself. If the bloom died and she had written nothing, the journey meant nothing. She needed a place to study it. A proper workspace, close to the greenhouse. She cleared a patch of ground beside her garden. She gathered slender sticks and long grass and worked through the evening. She lashed the sticks into a workbench, weaving the tops tight until the surface held flat. Over it she raised a canopy of bent branches and layered leaves, to shade the flower from hard sun. Her hands ached, but the frame stood firm. She set the potted bloom on the bench. Then she opened the journal to its first blank page. She dipped her pen and began. She drew the flower's shape, the layered petals, the shifting colors. She wrote where she found it. She wrote that its roots could not live alone, that they fed on the lilac grass around them. She wrote how to lift it without tearing the roots. The bird watched each word. When she finished the page, she read it aloud. The bird bobbed and repeated the last line back to her, perfect and clear. Sage laughed. "You'll help me remember, then." She closed the journal. One entry done. One flower saved and named. The workspace stood ready for the next. But when she looked past the canopy, her eyes fell on the far stretch of ground. It was still bare, all cracked earth and grey stone, waiting for plants she did not yet have. One bloom filled a single pot. Her garden needed dozens more, each from places as distant as the lilac field. The compass still pointed outward. Her journal held one page, and hundreds waited empty.