The transition from “Vanguard” to “Volunteer” wasn’t smooth. Elara’s hands still twitched with phantom energy. She needed to be useful, so she signed up for the morning shift at the station’s Hydroponics Bay.
It felt logical. It was a “Life Support System,” technically. She understood systems.
On her third day, she was assigned to Row 4: Solanaceae. Tomatoes and Peppers.
She stood before a young vine that looked pathetic. It was drooping, its leaves curling inward, the stem looking fragile against the heavy support trellis.
The “Fixer” in Elara woke up instantly.
Diagnosis: Dehydration or Nutrient Deficiency.
Action: Intervene immediately.
She grabbed the nutrient injector. She adjusted the flow rate on the irrigation line to maximum. She reached out to manually uncurl a leaf, trying to flatten it out, trying to make it look “right.”
“You’re going to drown her,” a voice rumbled.
Elara froze. It was Jaren, the head botanist. He was an older man with dirt under his fingernails—a rarity on a space station. He wasn’t looking at the readout screens; he was looking at the leaves.
“It’s wilting,” Elara said, her hand still on the valve. “It needs resources. I’m fixing the intake.”
“It’s not wilting because it’s thirsty,” Jaren said, moving next to her. He didn’t touch the controls. “It’s wilting because it’s in shock. We transplanted it yesterday. Its roots are panicked. They’re trying to figure out where they are.”
“So… we give it a booster? A stimulant?” Elara offered. That’s what you did with a stalling engine. You kicked it.
Jaren shook his head. “If you boost it now, it will spend all its energy growing leaves it can’t support, and the roots will die. Then the whole thing collapses.”
He gently moved her hand away from the valve and turned the flow down, not up.
“But it looks sick,” Elara argued. “It looks like it’s failing.”
“It’s struggling,” Jaren corrected. “There is a difference.”
He handed her a spray bottle of simple water. “Mist the leaves. Keep the air humid. That’s it. Don’t touch the roots. Don’t up the nutrients. Don’t try to pull it upward.”
“That’s not enough,” Elara said, the anxiety rising in her chest. It felt like the “recruitment” tug again. The plant was recruiting her to panic. “I need to do something.”
“You are doing something,” Jaren said. “You are witnessing it.”
He walked away to check the ferns, leaving Elara alone with the drooping vine.
It was excruciating. Every instinct she had screamed that “Love = Action.” If she cared about this plant, she should force it to get better. She should strap it up, inject it, fix it.
But she remembered the look on Kael’s face when she didn’t fix his roster. She remembered the “New Trust.”
She looked at the vine. It was fighting a battle she couldn’t see, down in the dark of the root block.
I trust you, she thought, feeling foolish but meaning it. I trust that you know how to be a plant better than I do.
She didn’t crank the valve. She didn’t straighten the leaves.
She simply misted the air around it—a gentle, cooling presence.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m not going to force you. Take your time.”
She pulled up a crate and sat down. She watched the humidity gauge. She watched the light cycle. She did nothing else.
For an hour, nothing happened. The plant looked just as sad.
But then, the shift ended. And as Elara stood up to leave, she realized something. The plant hadn’t died. And she hadn’t exhausted herself trying to save it.
She had provided the environment—the water, the light, the safety. The rest was up to the life inside the vine.
She walked out of the dome with dirt on her knees and her hands quiet. She hadn’t “fixed” the station today. She hadn’t saved the crop. She had just sat with a struggling thing and let it struggle, trusting that the struggle was part of the growth.
And she began to suspect that maybe she could offer the same grace to herself.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
Travel in Life 