There was something to be said for the fun of it all, the quiet challenge inherent to the game he made for himself. Playing by a set of rules only he needed to know or abide by.
And sometimes? Prowling the aisles of a garden center after the holidays, stocking up on vermiculite, mulch, wood chips, and iron nails (the cacti loved them).
Well…..
It felt a bit like playing Dr. Frankenstein, in some rights, going through the motions of picking through the half dead and dying. Plucking up the mangled morgue painted corpses; waterlogged, rotted beyond recognition, and lifting them free from their prettily potted coffin piles. For the sake of adding them to his own: slicing, splicing, transplanting succulent limbs and branches that looked dead but weren’t, not yet!! Waiting for lighting to strike, to see what lived, died, or bore fruit from his labors!
He suddenly missed Ochre something fierce—- wanted to be back in the grove as badly as he wanted to be back in his garden, breeding new life into all the blight had ruined. The work it was taking now— even with the ichor long removed and gone — it was so much even for his lone greenhouse to bear. It was a migraine inducing flit of a thought, distracting him from the task at hand, brought on by the passing visage of one fiery ginger mane.
Though, when he blinked he found it replaced with another. Similar shades in the most distant way — if there’d been sun in his eyes and he’d been squinting he would’ve called them cousins — Or maybe asked himself more seriously if he needed glasses for more than reading these days. It was a hell of a possibility. Proof that time had passed and he was almost thirty now— racing towards it even as he made commentary on plants he himself was reaching for in the discounted discard bin, full of broken hearts and bruised leaves.
“You know, I’ll never quite understand why—“ his own way of saying excuse me as he reached for what appeared to be some sort of firestorm succulent that had a very bright, very prominent fake flower hot-glued into the dead center of it. “—any of this. Really? Why paint the skin of a cactus — an air fern — you know? Honestly, if you’re looking for something that’ll live. I wouldn’t waste your money on any of these…” idle chatter, useless small talk, all the things he’d been taught to make long ago when lingering near people places, staring at things they were next to covetously; like a vulture waiting for the lions to leave so he could descend upon the much tastier bones of a beast. And he imagined that the red-head thought something in the mix was pretty? Needed a project to pass the time with? He looked like the type of person who had an herb garden on his window sill, dried his own basil and mint for cooking. That type. Well meaning. Well dressed. A nice guy.
