It started out as a burning chunk exploded from a dying world. Not that it was the burning chunk exactly, it was inside the burning chunk, hiding, tucked in and sleeping. When the fire was quenched by the lack of oxygen in space, it evolved into a comet, it’s tail all full of dead dreams. Space was icy and inky and indifferent to it, buffeting it with other chunks of dead worlds and tossing it into gaseous belts before expelling it again. It was also indifferent to space, asleep and dreaming its way across the universe. Hundreds of years gone traveling.
Scientists took note of it in the night sky. They talked to one another about its approach. They calculated it’s impact and quickly became bored, labeling it NOT A THREAT in green. It would burn up in the atmosphere and meet its death as a harmless shooting star. The Astronomer named it Lucky Strike in a fit of humor and put a sticky note up to show where it would cross the night sky just in case anyone wanted to make a wish.
Penny, dressed in leggings and NASA tee, saw it. She was outside staring up, trying to remember a few more constellations. It was her first day in her VERY FIRST apartment and she could see the stars above the nearby woods twinkling. It was an improvement over her old view of skyscrapers and electrical lines. She was a bit lonely having never lived alone before and she wished on the bright shiny streak.
The atmosphere ate the dead planet, burned it screaming away into gasses, leaving the seed. Naked and light, it didn’t have the velocity to fall properly. Caught on the night breeze, the seed was buffeted around for hours before “crashing” into Penny’s flower pot.
Not being a gardener, Penny paid no attention to the outside. She spent her time at work and inside her home unpacking boxes of books and pillows and things she should have thrown out ages ago but didn’t feel like going through just yet. She hung pictures. She cooked dinners. She ordered pizza so friends would paint her bedroom a lovely apple green. She would go to her job without sparing a look for the pot and the strange green shoot pressing it’s way up between the clover and dead zinnias. She would come home from work carrying a bag of groceries and completely miss how the shoot was now a foot high and sporting some impressive blue leaves.
Time passed. The weather grew cold. The impressive blue leaves turned black and that would have been that if the pot hadn’t been so toasty and warm up against the brick house. It went to work growing under the surface. Roots, tendrils, tubers, lines of communication, lines for food and nutrients, water traps, all snaking around inside the pot. Months of darkness spent growing stronger. It lived on rainwater than snowmelt, then rainwater again as the sun warmed the earth. It sent up branches and unfurled them into leaves.
Penny had stopped for a pizza. She juggled it and a bag of french fries. She needed the keys and they were in her pocket. The pizza tilted dangerously. Sighing, she placed it on the ground and with a harsh word for any ants that were hanging around, she dug into her coat for the keys. They came loose and dropped right in front of her pot.
“Whoa,” Penny exclaimed.
She was eye level with greenhouse size cobalt blue leaves with lovely lilac veins. The alien plant rustled its leaves in greeting. Penny took a picture of her social media. Smiling she patted the leaves gently, telling the plant, “You are beautiful.”
No one could identify the plant. Penny’s friend Sam was a gardener. She had never seen anything so blue! The internet accused her of putting blue dye in the soil. Her mother said it was probably global warming. Penny got it a bigger pot. She fed it carefully with plant food. She watered it for good measure when it was dry. And after Sam noticed the plant looked a bit sad, Penny started talking to it.
Penny liked to think she and her plant which she named Blue, she didn’t have the best imagination, were friends and her wish had come true.
Karen Kalbacher 