Octavius slid out of his curling, bright-shelled home and crossed the sand to the small pond at the edge of his garden. Swirling blue water held floating petals, ringed by wildflowers that leaned in like curious neighbors. This was the patch he had cleared for the moonpetal, the bloom he had chased his whole long life. He wanted, more than anything, to see one open fully under his own care. He pressed a tentacle into the soil beside the pond and frowned. The grains were warm. They were dry. Nothing here remembered the cold weight of the trench. A seedling set in this bed would shrivel in days, and he knew it the way he knew the ache of last season's half-open bloom. Octavius gathered the loose soil into his arms and carried it away. He would not plant the seedling here. Tomorrow he would begin digging a deeper bed, one shaded and chilled by pond water, even if it meant tearing his garden apart to do it.