What Grows Under the Ground

One day, Tilly decides to grow a garden. She wants a beautiful garden, with lots of flowers. She wants to plant them right outside of her bedroom window, so that she can see them whenever she likes. Tilly can almost smell their fragrance and see the riot of colors already. She has time. It’s spring right now, the perfect time to grow a garden.

“Sounds impractical,” her mother says, when Tilly mentions her plans. Her mother is busy with her morning coffee and doesn’t look over at Tilly, so she doesn’t notice her expression turn from excited to withdrawn again. “Gardens are hard work, you know. You should plant something more useful, like some vegetables. Not flowers.”

Tilly walks outside and stares thoughtfully at the spot in their yard where she wants to make her garden. She imagines rows of carrots or lettuce instead of pretty flowers that smell nice. It doesn’t seem half as appealing to her, and so Tilly decides to ignore her mother’s advice.

She walks to the nearby village. This is quite a walk for Tilly, who usually does not venture much outside of her room during the day. At first, she’s pleased. It’s cool out, but the sky is clear and blue, and the fresh air feels good against her skin. Maybe she’ll walk to the village more often.

Except, when Tilly reaches the village, she’s reminded all over again why she rarely goes there. Too many people are around. Everywhere she tries to walk, Tilly almost trips over someone. Why are there so many people here? She can’t imagine living like this every day.

Eventually, after much effort, Tilly manages to free herself from the press of the crowd and arrives at the market. She wanders around for a little while longer, and finds someone who is selling flower seeds. The person selling them is someone Tilly knows. They are friends, she thinks. A girl her age named Missy.

“What are you doing here?” Missy asks in surprise.

Since Tilly has never been here to buy seeds before, she looks over the selection carefully. “I want to plant some flowers,” she says, wondering what ones she should buy. All of the seeds have little signs with their names on them, but no pictures, and Tilly doesn’t know which flowers look like what she’s seen before.

“Flowers take a lot of work to grow,” Missy says. She’s standing behind the display and looks quite bored. “I don’t know if you can do it.”

Tilly doesn’t know, either. She’s never made a garden before. Still, she wants to try.

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Meet Tilly, whose garden never grows. No one has ever taught her how to make a proper garden. She toils and toils every day, but everything that she plants always dies. Instead of helping her or offering some advice, though, everyone around Tilly berates her for failing. Still, Tilly tries, again and again, to create her own garden. Will anything ever grow?

Want to read the rest? You can find the short story here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S7FD8LQ.