figmentedink:

growing environments by figmentedink

The first that went was Nu’nak.

I feel it, friends, it said to them the night before. It is coming. Tomorrow, it will be here. I can feel it. Oh, if only you knew how glorious it is, all warm and tingly inside me. My leaves are so empty, I need to stretch them, and tomorrow I will.

are you sure, little Qukul wanted to know. It was the only one that was not perfectly round, because it was still so young and a soft grey instead of black, and the other two felt very responsible for it.

If Nu’nak feels the call, Rona decided calmly, then it is the call. After a bit of hesitation, it added: But I will miss you still, friend, even if your Dark Air has finally found its way here. 

what’s it like? Qukul interrupted. tell me. tell me. i wanna know. does it really burn? does it hurt? i don’t wanna hurt.

You have time. Nu’nak was not listening. It tugged at its leaves, expanding until it filled the glass, blinking into the quiet night of the flower shop around them. You will not go soon, your plant is small.

Qukul shrunk until it only filled a corner of the glass. good, it said. the dark air sounds mean and dangerous. it will open our jars and let things in.

One day, you will understand, Rona said. It was watching Nu’nak. Gentle shivers ran through both of their bodies. Yours will come, too.

The next day, the old witch picked up Nu’nak’s glass and gave it to a young man with copper hair and sadness in his sunken eyes. He only returned once, after a month, to hug the old witch and cry tears and whisper thank you.

A month later, Rona went.

There was no warning. The call came in the morning, jolting both of them awake, Qukul by Rona’s sleep and Rona with a delighted little melody thrumming in the glass of its jar. 

don’t leave me, Qukul cried. It pressed against the glass until the jars touched, and the leaves of its plant quivered so hard that dew began to fall all over the floor. rona, please. i’m so scared. don’t leave me alone.

The Dark Air, Rona said before a hand reached out and the old witch lifted its glass. Qukul had never seen Rona’s black body glow with a shimmer like this. Its plant was a magnificent violet, more beautiful than any other flower in the shop.

Then, Rona was gone.

A week later, Qukul heard it.

Its call felt different from what Nu’nak and Rona had whispered about. It was a tiny tickle running through its body, soft and at times uneven like the breeze that used to brush into the shop and rattle the glasses during summer nights. Qukul had never felt anything like it. And when the call rose, its volume filling Qukul with yearning for something it had never known, the shop’s door opened.

Qukul had seen the other’s Dark Air, but its own was so much more wonderful, it thought to itself.

The human girl was tiny. Her hands barely fit around the thick golden door knob, and Qukul didn’t know how she’d pushed it open. Her dress was pink and faded from sunlight, her braids were blacker than Rona’s body had been, and her shoes were green like Nu’nak’s round leaves.

She was beautiful. Qukul pressed its face to the glass. It would be hers.

The old witch looked at his jar, blinking twice. Then, she just smiled (never had she spoken a word to them since their birth half a year ago), took it off its shelf and gently put its jar into the girl’s hand.

“Here, take this. It will help.”

The girl’s eyes were huge and filled with tears. Qukul already loved her so much that it hurt. “What?” she sniffed. “I – no, I just need f-flowers. For a grave.”

“Pick them up tomorrow,” said the old witch, already turning away. “I’ll have them ready then.”

“But… I don’t understand. What is this?” The little girl lifted the glass. Qukul could look into her face now. It was dark too (gorgeous, she was so perfect) and her breath made a fog against the jar’s wall that had Qukul’s body growl in hunger. She couldn’t see Qukul, never would, but it would still love her until it died. It would help. It would be hers.

It would devour everything that hurt her, and grow it inside its body.

“It’s a Purifier,” said the old witch, halfway up the stairs to her attic. She opened the door and turned over her shoulder to wink at the girl. “I think this one’s called Qukul. It’ll drink your sadness and eat the mourning out of your breath. Take the lid off and let it grow. When you’re not sad anymore, it’ll die off and turn into a seed. Bring it back when you’re done.”

The girl looked like she wanted to say something else, or even a lot else, but then the witch was gone and so was the door to the attic. 

Qukul kept its eyes firmly closed until something touched the lid of its jar. There had been a lot of being thrown around and thundering footsteps and almost falling to the ground, but the girl was still there and Qukul had been put onto a flat surface. It dared to blink when the glass parted over its head.

The air that came rushing in filled the jar.

A mighty shiver, bigger than any sorrow over Rona, spread through Qukul’s little soul. Air, it thought. My air. My little human is feeding me. She loves me, too. She’ll let me be hers.

The girl put the lid aside. “What a strange lady,” she said. The plant inside the little jar she’d been given was very small, and it looked like nothing special. But she put the glass onto her nightstand, gave it a bit of water, and breathed a kiss onto one leaf.

She still cried that night, and she still went to buy the flower for dad’s grave the next day. But every day, after mama had said good night to her and tucked her in, she reached for the glass and breathed a kiss into it.

And somehow, that helped. Slowly, and only bit by bit. Slowly, and bit by bit, Qukul grew. Its little leaves became fans of emerald, its stem a strong tower that soon needed a bigger glass, and its shadow reached through half the girl’s room and watched as she slept.

And the day after the girl’s mother laughed once again, months later, and the girl smiled at her best friend, two years after she’d bought funeral flowers, Qukul closed its eyes for a last time.

Maybe it had not helped a lot, it thought.

But something had grown out of it.