Stories • Quite Short • Love KNows, Love Grows
“Why Are You Kissing My Plant?”
Spoken by Salsi Songa about wandering off the path into a garden, somewhere in the forest Aliat Erren on Oraea, recorded as it was spoken.
This short story was included in the Oraean collection about discoveries of love titled Love Knows, Love Grows,
It was a fair question.
Why was I?
I hadn't quite realised I was. Kissing her plant, that is.
Even it was just a light, albeit apparently lingering, contact, I didn't usually go around kissing plants. Not Nature's, not mine, not anybody's.
Certainly not without permission. I couldn't remember the last plant I had kissed.
I also couldn't remember if I'd ever felt about someone else the way I seemed to feel for her. I don't see how I could forget.
But what way was that, that I felt?
Like I yearned to kiss her plant, I guess.
Like even my unconscious and subconscious needed to make some kind, any kind, of contact with the vibrancy of life she cultivated.
It really was a magnificent plant.
She was magnificent.
Suddenly everything was a little more magnificent. Even me.
I asked a pardon for my presumption, and explained the surprising circumstance I found myself in.
I stepped back, asking if she could tell me how she'd encouraged such magnificence.
I was aware then that all truths were in this garden, this plant, this moment.
I did not know where any of this would go, or how it could grow.
But the more she shared with me, the more I knew.
And the more she found herself sharing with me, the more she knew too.
