Small Things

[Luxury 1082]

 

-

 

Ivy shuffled out into the garden one morning, eager to reap the first spring harvest. Turnips, mostly, and a row of Kale that had survived the frost. In her work, a blur of motion caught the corner of her eye. Her gaze panned the garden slowly, arriving just after the moment, never quite able to catch up until one fleeting instance.

 

There it was, a hummingbird in the herb garden, hovering amidst the rosemary. Then the lavender. Then the chamomile, spurred on by wings that blurred with their speed, the tiny iridescent body suspended at the center of all that motion. She took to calling it Pip, thinking the short sounding name captured it's nature. Some special days she handfed it, her arthritic hand held flat and very still, and felt something she did not yet have a word for. A warmth, or a presence; the sense of something occupying space beyond its physical size. Like how a candle fills a room with more than just light. She thought, distantly, that this was probably what the tome meant.

 

-

 

The following cycle of Winter came and went, and as the first thaw shed its icy sprawl from the crags of Solgaard, Ivy set back into the garden. As the days carried over, she thought she saw Pip from time to time, caught that almost-sound of fast hummingbird wings at the edge of her hearing. But never quite did they meet again.

 

She found it eventually, though this time beneath the rosemary. Feet curled upward the way small things curl when they are finished. There rested her little hummingbird, taken by the frost too soon. She knelt, joints creaking as she did, and touched it once with one crooked finger. Gently, the way she tended wounds at the Healing House.

 

Nothing. Pip's candle was out, she confirmed with a deep sigh.

 

She brought it inside and set it beside the tome, and thumbed to a particular passage. As she read it over, her finger pressed on the word life for a long time. She was not certain what she would do, or if she could do anything at all. Only that Pip's time had not yet come. . .
 

[Turnipian 203]

9 hours ago, Luxury said:

 

Ivy shuffled out into the garden one morning, eager to reap the first spring harvest. Turnips, mostly, a

 

Spoiler

Can you not harvest me, thank you. 20/10 post though if you weren't trying to kill me.