SHort Story
“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 contribution to a collection of Oraean stories about the 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.
