Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 29 of 29

The next morning Sage opened her leather journal to plan more microclimates. She turned to the first page. There sat her earliest entry, the prism bloom she had written up months ago. She read it and frowned. The lines were short and rushed. She had noted the petal colors and the glow. Nothing more. No root depth. No soil it liked. No water it needed. She had scribbled it in a hurry and moved on. She pressed her hand flat against the page. If she meant to grow every plant from every world, she could not carry sloppy notes. The prism bloom fed the dye that kept Nephele tending her greenhouse. She needed to know it fully. She decided to start over. Sage carried the journal outside to the growing flower. The black myna hopped down to her shoulder, its yellow throat bright in the sun. "Start again," it chirped, echoing her own words back. She knelt at the bloom and looked closely. She counted the petals. She measured the stem against her fingers. She dug a careful ring around the base and studied how deep the roots ran. But she could not tell what soil the flower truly wanted, or how cold or warm it needed to be. She had grown it by luck and her own light. That was not knowledge she could write down. A slow step sounded at the fence. Terros stood there, the earth god who had woken her dead ground and given her the shifting stone the night before. He watched her scrape at the dirt. "You dig up a plant that already lives," he said. "Why?" "My first notes are useless," Sage said. "I wrote them fast. I want to know everything this flower needs." She sat back. "But some things I cannot see. The soil under it. The heat it wants." Terros crouched beside the bloom. He pushed two fingers into the earth around the roots. He was quiet a moment, reading the ground the way she read a page. "Cool soil," he said. "Loose, with old leaf in it. The roots run wide, not deep." He looked at her. "You channel earth through your hands now. Feel it yourself." Sage spread her palms over the dirt. She drew energy up the way he had taught her. Under her hands she felt it: the coolness the roots pulled, the soft crumb of soil they spread through, the steady warmth the petals soaked from the sun. She understood, at last, what the flower asked for. She filled the page. She wrote the root spread, the cool loose soil, the leaf mold, the sun the petals drank. She sketched the bloom and marked each part. By noon the entry ran three pages deep. But still it felt incomplete. Sage remembered the dye she had made from its petals and it was time to see what other properties this plant held.