AN: This one is for MyShame7 who wanted to know what the hedge saw in NCIS Drabbles Ch. 2, and for everyone else who liked the hedge.
My Tibbs has up until now been NCIS-y and funny-ish. This is NOT what I expected to write!
Feedback: Please!
Disclaimer: Barely Recognizable
Spoilers: See Disclaimer
Warnings: It's different! I hope you like it...
What the Hedge Saw
It is a quiet, gentle day. I love where I live today, though I did not choose it. I was put here many long years ago by the one who shares my space. He nurtures me and he doesn't know that I do not truly need his care, not since I took root and my rightful place in the world.
I am a hedge, you see, a plant. I have no brain, but I do have a mind, like all else that lives. I smell and taste because air enters me through my skin, nutrients through my subterranean organs. I feel, because I do not move. I hear, because I am eternally caressed by the wind. And while I have no eyes, I live for light and light lives in me, so yes, I see. I see a lot.
A man lives here. I know what he is because I know what male and female are. I am both. Not all plants are but I and my kind are. My flowers make pollen or ova depending on who is flowering in my vicinity. I'm flexible that way. My cells are more adaptable than the cells of those who move, who do not know as much as I do about what it is like to simply be, who are always on their way to becoming.
If you cut off a branch and plant me upside down, my head will grow roots and my feet will grow leaves. I'd like to see one of them try that. No, I wouldn't. They would die. But that is how I become, though the man cares for me as if he doesn't quite believe in my self-sufficiency. He waters me when the sky is unyielding. He spreads minerals on the soil around me, uncertain of exactly how deep my roots go, just making sure. He prunes me when I become attenuated, so that I may gather myself and grow strong again. I will admit this is a great service.
I know him. My roots live within his area and are entwined with the foundations of his shelter. I taste and smell and see and hear him and much of what he does. If he knows this, it is what he would name subconscious, or whatever he may call what he knows and yet does not. I know, just as I know when light and gases and water come together to form the sugars that course through my vessels and feed me. I feel all of that. His kind try to feel everything with their brains, but I know when he is feeling with his body, with his very breath, as it were.
There have been females here. He reproduced once with one who was part of him and who disappeared. The young disappeared too. I do not meet the young of my flowers, but if I want to I can clone myself from my roots. Pretty neat, huh? He can't do anything like this. I know from living with him that flesh is a risky proposition. He knows it too. I have felt bad for him, many times.
Other females followed, and strangely did nothing for his life force, to which I have become attuned. Initially there would be strength and joining, as if by force of will, but these grafts were rejected. Each time, I felt him go dormant and wither, and it was the nearest thing I know to fear. But he survived. It wasn't good - it was long dry seasons in which rebirth failed. His resilience surprised me, considering. He goes away most days and must be getting sustenance somewhere.
He doesn't suspect I know of emotions - even he could not intuit that little secret - but I do, and I lived it with him. I speak of the other females again. And of him of course. Of need and eventual disappointment, even hate. And sorrow, always.
Things changed a while back when another came, infrequently at first and then more often. A young male bursting with life and light. I felt the man unclench and then unfurl. I felt him relax and grow as I do after a long rain. I felt his uncertainty, felt him plumb the soil of his being and accept this other. I felt him release a burden as I do when the dust from a hot dry spell is washed from my leaves. If he had branches they would have reached for the sky.
The other male is here a lot. They play in my yard! The first female and the young used to do that! I can taste every change, every harmony in their exhalations. Who knew? They spend both days and nights in my company, sometimes busy, often still, sometimes just being, other times becoming. I can taste that too, for renewal and growth are my first language. I'm happy for the man. I didn't know he had it in him.
They join in front of me, almost within the lee of my branches! They take off their outer coverings and touch each other's skins as I do not do with my own kind. I feel them grow thirsty and see them taste one another. The air becomes very full then, like spring, and later, redolent as summer. There is not reproduction, but something else, something just as strong. I know a little about capillary rise, you see, and I when I see their fullnesses I know what they are feeling. I smell their breaths and the wind whispers to me of the emotions in their sounds. They put their roots in each other for the joy of it alone. They laugh, and it is like sunrise. They love each other the way I love the earth, and I hope they never leave.
The End