The seed packet was smaller than Miran's palm.
On the morning of the hundred and forty-third day, Sera watched from a chair on level ground beside the kitchen. A chart needed a table to open on. The beginning of a leaf fitted inside a hand. The cook did not give Miran the whole packet, but showed what remained of the kind already growing in the kitchen containers, then measured today's available share onto a small piece of paper. Nothing had gone into soil yet.
Miran asked her leaving question first. If she moved the container, could the plant live? That would depend on its size then, the weather, and the time of the move, the cook said. No promise covered every destination. Planting a little in a small vessel today might leave choices later about what to take and what to gather. Freedom to leave had acquired conditions instead of a yes or a no.
The leaf the cook showed her was not the Maru crop Miran remembered. It was something tended in this wind, in this kind of container. Miran asked whether the tip would taste bitter, received an answer within the cook's experience, and tried a small leaf. After chewing it she drank water. She had expected the smell of the sea, she said. It smelled of the kitchen.
“Will it smell of my room if I grow it?”
“Keep the soil off your floor first.”
Sera laughed. The plant's introduction had not made it a symbol of home lost or home gained. It was a leaf one could eat, and a little bitter. Miran chose to try a small amount of that very kind. No familiar taste had to be forced back into existence before she could begin.
Nea checked yesterday's low support, the emergency doorway, and the supply passage, then passed the present boundary to the adults moving sailcloth. A little morning shade remained. The cook explained a modest trial that experience allowed under these conditions, without guaranteeing a result. Miran chose to use only part of the container. Empty space inside a vessel did not oblige her to fill it.
The soil arrived after its available quantity and price had been settled. Miran paid for her share. Nobody secretly borrowed from common stores. When the adult transport was finished, she received small tools she could manage herself. To Sera, the little clods looked heavier than colour spread over a sea chart. They carried the weight of clearing away later, as well as putting down now.
Drainage was checked before seed went in. Better not to discover afterwards that water could not leave, the cook said. Sera remembered the stairs' old groove, but did not begin that whole story. Miran was already examining the underside of her own container. She did not need another person's lesson to displace what her own eyes were learning.
Sera could not see the end of the draining water from her chair. Nea looked below and answered. When Sera turned the arrow on her drawing towards that observer, Nea corrected its end: inside the permitted drainage area, not towards the wall. She replaced the line and left a brief reason. Two witnesses did not make a correct drawing appear without work between them.
Halfway through adding soil, Miran paused. Would the seed left unused die in its packet? The cook described the present storage method and its limits. Using only what was needed could keep a choice available. Sera revised her first judgment of the packet's size. It could be small without requiring every beginning it held to happen on the same morning.
After a brief demonstration within the cook's own practice, Miran sowed the seed. Sera did not record her fingers as though writing instructions. With Miran's permission she kept only a date and the container's place. There was no date for a shoot to appear. Miran, who had asked when she could eat the leaves, first wrote down what she had actually done today.
A few seeds remained in a fold of paper. Sera nearly reached to shake them out. Miran was looking at the container; then she opened the paper herself, chose what to keep, and returned it to the small envelope. Not thrown away, not all planted. A gust passed while she sorted the almost invisible quantity. Nea held the light sheet down with one hand.
Before giving the first water, Miran asked again whether the person watching the outlet was ready. The adult answered. The agreed small amount darkened the earth; what came out was received at the drainage side. Watching a plant get water, Sera discovered her own thirst. She drank instead of rising to lend strength that had not been requested. Even a small beginning need not fasten four hands to itself forever.
When it was finished, the container showed only earth. Miran brushed her palms and studied it for a long time. Had anything changed, Sera asked? One thing she knew had changed, Miran said: there were seeds underneath. To someone else it might look like yesterday's empty container made dirtier. Sera thought of the blank spaces on her first chart. Unseen did not mean absent. It did not mean a lane could be drawn there either.
On her way back from washing, Miran smelled her hand. There seemed to be earth left on it. Sera said pencil dust did not wash away all at once either.
“I didn't say I wanted it gone.”
Today, Miran said, something she had done remained before the paper somebody had given her. Sera almost wrote that down, then left the pencil where it was. What Miran wanted to keep was already in her hand.
Bowls sounded inside the kitchen. The cook's interval was over. Miran began to promise leaves if the planting went well, stopped, and thanked the cook for today's help instead. The cook's own first container had held apparently empty soil for a long time too, the cook said, smiling. Gratitude could finish here without becoming a debt payable only by success.
Sera remembered a plant she had killed as a child. She did not tell Miran. The morning did not need a borrowed failure set over it like another sailcloth. What mattered to her was less the answer to How did it turn out than whether Miran would still be able to choose her own time tomorrow.
Nea received today's care interval and where the equipment would be put away. Miran did not promise another watering every evening regardless of need. She could begin with the current condition the cook had explained. The cook could not be summoned outside on every occasion. Miran received a short inquiry time and the point at which to stop and ask when she did not know. Accepting help had not appointed her a permanent beginner.
Sera's own interval ended. The sunshine tempted her to stay; the heaviness in her knee gave a different answer. Folding her paper, Miran said leaving something she was tending felt strange.
“Worse if it followed you.”
“It can wait outside my room tomorrow, then.”
They laughed and went in different directions. Beginning a day together had not joined the remainder of their hours.
At lunch Or heard the seed had gone in. Instead of requesting the first leaves, Or asked whether the container blocked the kitchen way. Miran explained its position. Perhaps Or could see it on tomorrow's ordinary route. Twenty people did not have to become a single gardening party before they could be curious about one another's belongings.
Tio asked Sera whether he could see it that afternoon. It was not hers to permit. He asked Miran, and she offered a brief time within her own. From the window Sera saw only two figures standing at a distance. His finger kept its resting limits. No repair or water carrying was added to the visit; no voyage was made to conquer seasickness.
Varen pronounced the evening bread softer than yesterday's. Sera said it would be useless under the pier again. Was she still carrying that joke?
“One of my lighter possessions.”
They drank in the low room. His right leg and his old responsibilities remained. Beside the window, the blue clay bell remained without a clapper.
Sera closed the bundle of sunlight drawings. Position, drainage, and the real tending contact had been received by Nea. She had not acquired a job measuring shadows every day. At the bottom she wrote that seed had been planted, rather than that a plant had grown. Both stones were clear in Roan's dry chests, unused and undispatched. The twenty residents still waited here; no current answer about Maru's houses or drinking water had arrived. Those inquiries stayed on another sheet.
Before sleep, a last note came under the door. Nea would be changing the outdoor drying positions over the next few days. They might shade the container. Miran had already received the notice. Sera did not take up her drawings and hurry outside. They had found a place to plant. The sky above it still belonged to more than one person's day.