The Gardener and the Ghost Flower - Act 1 of 3

The gardener knelt over the tired soil, his hands trembling from the weight of unseen seasons. Morning mist curled at his boots, and the sky wept soft, invisible tears that left no stain upon the cracked earth. He dug anyway, stubborn in a quiet way.

Nobody watched him. Nobody cared.

The village beyond the hills had forgotten him. Progress, they said, did not need gardens anymore. Progress had polished glass towers and bright lights that erased the stars. Progress had come and gone. All that remained was abandoned factories, collapsed data centers, poisoned water, and thirsty, barren soil.

Villagers fought over cans of food and drops of gray, murky water.

When progress came, and progress went, the villagers forgot what was required to make progress in the first place. They forgot that living on the land meant one need live off of it, and thus one must tend to the land for the land to bear fruit.

The fruits of man’s labor and the corruption of man’s self-obsessed, narcissistic, soulless capitalists had made beautiful towers, intelligent machines, but it eroded the earth, and the hearts and minds of the people along with it.

All that remained were the victorious self-absorbed, angry, hungry, and overworked slaves of a bygone era who knew everything, except how to be human.

Still, the gardener dug. Still, he whispered to the earth, remembering that food was once grown.

The farmer held a chipped seed in his hand. “I know you're tired," he said, his voice low, cradling the seed as if it might shatter. "But if you're willing to grow… so am I,” the farmer whispered.

He buried the lone chipped seed — a seed no thicker than a fingernail, no brighter than a breath. He could not recall where he had found it. Or perhaps it had found him.

Days passed. Seasons flickered past like pages of a discarded book. Still, he knelt. Still, he watered the barren place where nothing grew.

Laughter floated from the village, carried by the winds like careless dust.

"What does he think will happen?"
"Wasting time."
"He's planting ghosts."
“What a waste of water.”
“It won’t grow food.”
“Food comes from tubes and cans.”
“What a fool.”
“I wish we had internet.”

The gardener smiled, though the corners of his mouth cracked. He stared at the soil where he planted the flower. “The plot thickens. The seed may yet grow. Burgeon, little one. Burgeon with all your mettle.”

One evening, when even the earth seemed to sigh, a pale sprout pushed through the dirt — shy, like a child peeking into a world it wanted to understand.

It was not a flower. It was something else: translucent, breathing, sorrowful: A ghost flower.