CHAPTER THREE: DISCOVERY
PART TWO…Loneliness' Cure…
The toma-drawn cart arrived at the remote home site a few hours before sunrise, fully laden with barrels of plant-produced water. Knives immediately went to work filling the irrigation tanks. Once the barrels were emptied, he led the tomas to their covered stable. The remaining morning hours were spent building onto the greenhouse, creating an expanded wing for the ever-growing greenery.
Just before first noon, Knives gathered a meal. He filled a bowl with several handfuls of peapods, a young squash, and a sunflower bloom. Once inside his shelter, he poured a glass of lukewarm water and dove into his meal, ignoring the little grains of dirt and sand attached to the foods. He didn't even bother to shuck the sunflower seeds or peas; he simply hastened to feed his hunger and assumed that all parts of the plants offered nourishment.
Eyes heavy with exhaustion, Knives let himself relax, toweling the sweat from his shoulders and chest before laying down for his afternoon nap. Every day was a physical and emotional struggle for him, every moment taken by chores, traveling, and anticipation. Daily water trips were required every morning, and once he woke from this brief nap, he would head out to tend to twenty plants, as scheduled. At first, the procedures had been too much for Knives, and he'd grown ill, passing out occasionally from the strain. Now, however, his body and mind had hardened from the efforts.
If he had a mirror, he would've stared in somber awe at the reflection. He had been muscular before, but now he was nearly without body fat, every muscle defined. His skin was deeply tanned, and his face was as fixedly serious as ever.
OOO
For all these months he had gone without seeing a face beside his own. Only when the two plant angels had descended simultaneously at the geoplant trials had he seen faces.
That day, he journeyed to visit the third randomly chosen plant, to see if she would display a reply to his choice. His heart nearly skipped a beat when the two descended. Arad, the chosen plant, pressed her hands against the bulb, showing him her predominantly black hair. Sofiel, across the plant bank, did the same, but her hair was still light. Knives waited, hoping for communication, but there was none because there was no need for any. The reactions were clear – Sofiel wished to assume the geoplant position because Arad was too weak to live through the ordeal. Once the truth flashed in Knives' mind, the plant angels rose and curled themselves back into rest. Knives had sighed, and held back sadness as he realized that the plants weren't going to socialize with him after all.
Plant angels only descended in moments of great urgency, such as overload, physical trauma, or impending death. In the past, Knives had formed an additional hypothesis – that the plant angels would descend in other times if no humans were present. He'd assumed the plant angels to hold the same sort of species secrecy that he felt so strongly.
There were eyewitness reports from humans claiming to have 'met' plant angels, and from them sprouted various plant worshipping cults. Knives considered the worship perfectly natural, considering his race's obvious superiority, and also found that the more devout followers could prove very useful. He had used religion to recruit many reverently fearful disciples, to be sent out in the plot to ruin his brother's peaceful existence.
Nevertheless, how could Knives allow himself to believe the reports, that plant angels would in safe times willingly expose their true form to the humans? Surely these were mistakes and rumors. After all, Knives himself – the beloved son and brother to all self-respecting plant angels – had only seen descended plant angels in trauma. Only when he had found them sick or dying, or had himself affected their levels harshly, did they appear. Never would a plant expose itself in human presence, if they would not do so to their own kind. Or so Knives believed.
They didn't show themselves unnecessarily, but they regularly made their preferences known. Through light and warmth they forced him to read to them, but only from documents or books that invoked strong emotions in himself. The plant angels were strangely completely uninterested in technical or mathematical texts. Knives hated to think of himself as their personal live action soap opera, but it seemed to be the truth. They delighted in his passions and suffering, and he had so much of such things to offer. And though at first they had seemed interested in his writings on plant superiority and the need for human extinction, after time they had reacted against these ideas. When he turned to blind anger and prejudice these days, they slunk away into darkness and chilled the room to a temperature far below the coolest desert nights until he offered a different, more accepted emotion. The recent most popular emotions they liked to observe in him were desire for companionship and jealousy of Vash's chances at fatherhood. It was during these invocations that Knives felt the most warmth and most comforting light radiate from the surrounding plant bulbs.
OOO
Startled suddenly by a soft murmuring outside, Knives rose from his humble cot and burst from the shelter. In the greenhouse, he found that huge vines and tree tendrils had transformed his modest vegetation into a formidable jungle. From this mass of foliage, soft cries came, drawing him deep into the darkness, through this maze of treacherous and foreign plant life.
Finally, he found an open space, where Vanessa stood like a harvest goddess. She smiled happily at Knives, without scars or blindness. "Hello, darling little Knives."
Knives gripped a thick vine to keep himself from collapsing. "How can you be here?" he asked bitterly, wishing he could lose himself in the vision, fighting his own logic.
"Shh, Knives. I've missed you," she cooed, stepping closer to him on those familiar bare feet, moving slowly and quickly all at once until suddenly she was before him, breath hitting his face sweetly as air laden with honey. "I've missed you so much."
Opening his eyes after blinking hard, he still saw her. She was so lovely, so good. He reached out to hold her, and drew her against him until her body tensed with pain.
She drew back, arms going limp as the wounds appeared across her face, neck, back, and hand. Even her old break struck her arm, causing it to fall lifeless at her side. Blood began to pour sickeningly from her eyes and other wounds, though she still smiled from beneath the mask of red. "Knives, have you missed me?"
"How could you, Knives?" a young voice murmured. Stepping from behind Vanessa and gripping her skirt was a small boy, perhaps ten years old, with spiked blonde hair and wide blue eyes. Tears rolled down his pinked cheeks, accenting the twitch in his lower lip. "After all she did for us…"
Knives' legs failed him. He crumpled to the bloodied ground before them, watching the tender blood feed the soil. The soil became rich and black, and thick green stalks struck out, entwining the figures and growing with a maddening speed.
Young Vash reached out with his little fingers and grabbed Knives' hair, wrenching his head to look up again. "Tell me why?" he demanded in his broken voice until sobs thundered his little body.
"Even in my dreams," Knives murmured sadly as the realization hit him. "Why are my dreams so mocking? Why can't I just sleep…"
Then the light changed from a sunny glare to an almost neon blue. Knives felt as though this was no longer a dream of his own mind, but rather that some outside force was controlling the images. He watched as the blood and mutant vines disappeared. Little Vash sidestepped into Vanessa's form.
Vanessa's face was clean, and her pupils disappeared. Her grin faded into a soft smirk. "This is too lonely," she whispered, with an echo as though speaking through water. "Desperation leads to the end of life. No need to die. Live on for now. A solution is offered soon. Do not dream like this, it is ugly."
With that vague speech, she turned and Knives awoke, covered in a cold sweat. It was afternoon and he had plants to adjust.