She did not believe this was true, and her words sounded insincere even to herself. Tonya put the takeout sack on the coffee table, the smell of fried pork and rice overtaking the milder smells in the house. “I didn’t know if I was going to come home and find you sentient or if you’d already turned into bark,” she said. Her little voice. The tremor in it. “I kept delaying coming home.” She gestured weakly at the sack. “Can you even eat anymore?”

Lucy shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You didn’t mean for it to happen, did you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I did.” She tried to search for the right words, then, “It feels good to be this. Even as I know it hurts you to see it.”

Tonya sat next to her. Gently, she removed the blanket that covered Lucy’s shoulder. The sapling popped up, its three tiny leaves trembling as they settled. Tonya caressed the length of it with her fingers. Lucy shivered with pleasure.

“You were right,” Tonya said slowly. “I saw it from the first, but I didn’t want to believe it. All day, your videos and posts…my students…”

Lucy grasped Tonya’s hand. It felt hot around her cold, cold fingers.

“What did you call it?” Tonya’s voice warmed her neck. “A plant prophet?”

“So stupid. It’s just…” she shook her head. It’s beautiful, and it’s strange, Tonya. Please don’t ask me to make it stop.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Tonya said. “I don’t know how to stop you from leaving me, but after watching those…” she gestured towards the computer. “I don’t know how to keep you here with me.”

Lucy swallowed and tried to nod. They were like twins, joined at the hip, like the townhouses and their shared rooftops and low walls and gardens. Everything they did, everything they owned, even feelings, belonged to neither and to both. And now Lucy was becoming something different, and Tonya… Tonya was just the same.

“There’s a professor in Vancouver. She studies plants neurobiology. I left a message for her. I sent her some of your videos.”

A surge of affection caused Lucy to lift her fibrous fingers to Tonya’s lips.

“I’m sorry. It’s not going to help. It’s too late, I feel it. And…I don’t think I want to.”

Tonya fastened her fingers tighter around Lucy’s. Lucy adjusted herself as best she could to rest her head on the crook of her lover’s neck. The plants no longer murmured: they hummed, beautiful chants that Lucy felt echoing all around her, vibrations that embraced her, welcomed her, and felt so much like love.

“I wish I could tell you what they sound like.”

“Try,” Tonya said, pulling her closer in her lap. “Tell me what it’s like.”

 

Laura Valeri is the author of three story collections and a book of linked essays. The Dead Still Here, a short story collection, was released by SFASU Press in 2018. Her debut collection, The Kinds of Things Saints Do, won the Iowa John Simmons Award and the Binghamton University John Gardner Award. Safe in Your Head, a story-cycle, was one of five winners of the SFASU Press Literary Prize in Fiction. Her latest book, Dog Island Style, is forthcoming in Italy with Galaad Edizioni in 2019. Laura Valeri’s fiction, nonfiction, and translations have appeared in numerous journals and ezines. She is a Hambidge Residency Fellow and a Walter E. Dakins Fellow from the Sewanee Writer’s conference. Laura teaches at Georgia Southern University and is the founding editor of Wraparound South, a literary journal.