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CHERRY
Warden Tenn’s prediction came true. The body was gone by morning. Silar and I stood hand-in-hand in dawn’s rosy light, staring down at the patch of blood-stained ground with its new, distinct drag-marks leading away towards the trees. We didn’t stay out there long. Silar wanted to get me back inside the fencing. Once there, he pulled out his data tab to make his call, alerting the warden to everything he already knew.
While Silar spoke to the warden, I wandered aimlessly around the back of the house, rubbing my hands up and down my arms in a shivering motion. My brain felt oddly thick and numb, and I decided to try to make myself useful and maybe find a little calm by throwing myself into my newfound love of gardening.
I turned towards the closest patch of soil with sprouts, suddenly starting when I noticed something I had never seen before.
It was a plant, I was fairly sure. A big one, too. It was about a metre tall, with a spindly brown body and branches stretching out from its core. The bottom of it – presumably the roots and some soil – was wrapped up in a plump fabric sack, allowing the thing to balance upright without yet being buried in the ground.
“Is this a tree?” I asked Silar, hearing him step up beside me. He shoved his data tab into the pocket of his trousers.
“Yes,” he answered. “I ordered it recently. The warden was dropping it off. That’s why he was here last night.
“Huh. I didn’t realize you were looking to add to the trees on the property. What kind of tree is it?”
It didn’t appear to match the native ones on this planet. It just seemed… different, somehow.
Silar’s silence stretched for longer than it should have. Feeling uneasy and suddenly filled with the need to protect the little tree, I hoisted it up, holding the bulging sack part against my chest.
Silar’s eyes settled on the tree. On me, holding it. His expression grew softly raw.
“It’s from Terratribe II,” he finally said. “It’s a cherry tree.”
I almost fucking dropped the thing. Gasping, I adjusted my hold, surprise jolting through me.
“A cherry tree?” I stammered, “from Terratribe II?” I wrenched my gaze from my husband and looked at the bare brown body of the tree with new eyes. “It must have cost a fortune!”
Silar gave a casual flick of his tail.
“Surprisingly, it would have cost more to order cherries,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t just spent what I knew had to have been an astronomical amount of money on this thing. “So buying the tree seemed like the better investment. This way you might have cherries every cycle.”
“Oh… Oh my God,” I said, swallowing thickly and hugging the tree hard. “Thank you, Silar.”
“I said you might have cherries.” His mouth twisted. “It might not thrive here or bear fruit.”
“But maybe it will!” I said, about to sob at the fact that Silar had spent so much of his savings on something that he wasn’t even sure would bloom. Because of me. “If we work hard, and take care of it… Maybe it will blossom.”
A soft whiteness bled out from the aqua veins in his eyes.
“Maybe it will,” he agreed softly. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll start saving up again and buy you the cherries instead. Even if it takes another fifteen or twenty cycles, I promise that you’ll get to taste one.”
“This is more than enough,” I whispered, giving my tree another teary hug before setting it gingerly back down. “There are probably a million other things you could be spending your money on instead of saving it up to get expensive fruit shipped in!”
“There are,” he admitted. “But none of those things matter.” He took my hands in his, running his thumbs gently along the backs of my knuckles. “Every credit to my name,” he said gruffly, “every piece of this property, every store of my strength, every beat of my heart… It’s all for you, Cherry. Everything’s for you.”
I nodded wordlessly as Silar tugged me to his chest.
“Where will you put your tree?” he murmured against the top of my head.
“I don’t know,” I said with a tremulous sigh. A moment later, I pulled out of Silar’s hold, considering the question more thoroughly as I gazed at the property. But it felt too overwhelming, trying to figure it out from down here. Without speaking, I turned and headed for the ladder at the side of the house, pulling myself up onto the roof so that I could get a better sense of placement and scale.
Only my view was blocked by Silar’s broad body suddenly hauling itself up behind me. He planted himself firmly between the edge of the roof and me.
“You didn’t have to come all the way up here,” I chided, even though I was glad he’d followed. After everything that had happened, I just wanted him near me.
“You make me nervous when you come up here,” he grunted, looping his tail in a protective sling around my waist. “I told you last night. I cannot live if you are not alright.”
“It’s not like I’m going to fall off!”
