Young Master's Chapter 117: The Greenhouse

Chapter 117: The Greenhouse

Elara didn’t send a note. Elara didn’t need to.

I was halfway through morning ditation in Room Seven when Kira’s signature flared in my mind — small, warm, a four-pound spirit beast registering excitent on a frequency that ca directly through the bond Elara had woven between us months ago. The fox had a vocabulary of about twelve discrete emotional states, and I’d learned most of them. This one was *co*.

Not urgent. Just *co*. The fox version of an outstretched hand.

I opened my eyes. Ren was at his desk, pen moving. He looked up.

"Kira?"

"Yes."

"Greenhouse?"

"Probably."

"You should bring her flowers."

"I should — what?"

"Elara. Flowers. Standard greeting in the Wildgrove. You hand soone a flower when you arrive at their door, they hand you one back when you leave. It’s the regional equivalent of bowing." He didn’t look up from his page. "I assud you knew."

"How would I have known?"

"Because I’ve been docunting her cultural background for six weeks and the file is in the third notebook. You’ve had access to it the whole ti."

"You could have just told ."

"I am telling you. Right now."

I almost laughed. Ren’s particular thod of being helpful involved making

feel slightly behind on information he’d had organized for weeks, and then offering the information at the exact mont I needed it. I’d stopped being annoyed by this. Mostly.

"What flower?"

"Anything alive. The point is the gesture, not the variety. There’s a planter in the corridor outside Cloud Terrace Four. The white blooms there are what most students use."

I nodded. Picked up Nihil — Kira’s signature hadn’t asked

to leave him behind, and I trusted Elara more than I trusted myself in most things — and went to the corridor.

The planter was where Ren had said it would be. White six-petal flowers I didn’t know the na of, growing in soil that had been blessed by Elara’s nature-affinity at so point because the blooms were larger and more vivid than the ones in unblessed planters elsewhere on the campus. I took one. The stem ca away cleanly, as if the plant had been expecting .

The greenhouse was on the academy’s western edge. Built into the side of a floating island, with one wall made entirely of leyline-reinforced glass that looked out over the cloud sea. Elara had been given access to it during her first week because the academy’s botany faculty had recognized within ten minutes that her nature affinity was strong enough to revive plants the institution had given up on. She’d been working there ever since. Most of the academy’s dicinal herb supply ca from her hands now.

I’d never been inside.

I knocked once on the door — the formal Wildgrove knock, three soft taps, which I knew only because Ren had probably docunted that too — and pushed it open.

Warm air t . Not heated air. Living air. The kind of air that filled a space full of breathing things. The sll hit

next — green, sweet, complicated, layers of plant chemistry I couldn’t na. A faint undertone of damp soil. The specific sll of a place where things were actively growing.

The greenhouse was larger than I’d expected. Long rows of plant beds stretched the length of the room, each one holding different species at different stages of cultivation. Vines climbed support trellises that had been shaped to specific patterns. Hanging baskets dripped with flowering creepers. Near the leyline-glass wall, a small pool held water plants whose leaves I’d only seen in lecture diagrams.

Elara was at the far end. Kneeling beside a plant bed. Her braid was over her shoulder, hands moving through soil with the quiet attention of soone who’d been doing exactly this every day of her childhood. Kira was on her shoulder, tail curled, watching

approach.

"You brought a flower," Elara said, without turning.

"I’m told that’s the proper greeting."

"It is. Though most students at the academy don’t know that. Did Ren tell you?"

"Yes."

"Of course he did." She stood. Brushed her hands. Turned to face . "He’s been docunting my customs since week three. I caught him observing my morning routine once. He apologized for an entire afternoon. Then he kept observing."

"That’s Ren."

"It’s also kind of him. Most people don’t bother to learn customs. They expect you to assimilate. Ren prefers to learn."

She crossed the floor to . The fox shifted on her shoulder, considering whether to leap to mine. Decided against it. Curled tighter on Elara’s instead, the way Kira did when she was emotionally satisfied with the configuration of the room.

I held out the flower.

Elara took it. Held it in both hands for a mont, as if examining it. Then she did sothing I hadn’t expected — she reached out and tucked it behind her ear, into her hair, just above her braid.

"That’s not the standard response," I said.

"It is in the Wildgrove if the giver and receiver know each other well enough. The standard response is to give a flower back. Wearing one is — closer. It says I want to keep yours rather than exchange."

"Should I have known that?"

"No. Most outsiders don’t reach this version of the greeting. Ren probably doesn’t have it docunted. I haven’t told him about it."

"Why?"

"Because so customs aren’t for docuntation. They’re for the people who learn them by being given them. He’ll figure it out eventually if he’s patient. Ren is very patient."

She turned and walked back into the greenhouse, gesturing for

to follow. We moved past plant beds I didn’t recognize, past trellises whose patterns held aning I couldn’t read, into a section near the leyline-glass wall where she’d set up two simple stools beside a small wooden table. A teapot sat on the table. Two cups. The tea was already poured.

She’d been expecting .

"How did you know I’d co today?"

"Kira told . She felt you decide last night, when you finished talking to Nyx. The conversations have a pattern. The fifth one was always going to be . So I prepared."

I sat. The stool was small and well-made. Elara sat across from . Kira hopped from her shoulder to the table, between us, and arranged herself in a small loaf shape with her tail across one paw, watching us both with the expression of a being who’d decided this conversation was going to happen with her present and that was simply the way of it.

"Tea?" Elara asked.

"Please."

She slid one of the already-poured cups toward . I took it. The tea was warm — not freshly steeped, but warm enough that it had been poured recently. She’d tid it almost perfectly. Probably with help from Kira’s sense of when I’d arrive.

We drank in silence for a few monts.

Outside the leyline-glass wall, the cloud sea moved. Slow currents of mist drifting between the academy’s floating islands. The light through the glass was diffuse — the kind that was filtered through enough atmosphere to feel old. I noticed I was relaxing without having decided to. The greenhouse had its own pace. The plants were breathing slowly. The water in the pool was barely moving. My body had picked up the rhythm without permission.

"Elara."

"Yes."

"I should tell you sothing."

"You don’t have to. Kira already knows. Which ans I already know. Bond passes information without language. I’ve known since the morning you told Liora."

"You knew that fast?"

"Yes. The bond carries emotional architecture more than facts. I know you carry a different na underneath your na. I know the body you wear isn’t the one you were born in. I know there was a sister sowhere — Kira showed

the shape of her in your grief, though not the na. I don’t know the details. I know the shape of the truth. That has always been enough for ."

I didn’t know what to say.

"I should still tell you," I said.

"You can. If saying it matters more than the listening. The Wildgrove teaches that so truths are for the speaker, not the listener. The act of speaking is its own purpose. So speak if you need to. I’ll listen. Not because I need to know. Because you need to be heard."

I thought about that for a mont. Then I told her. Not at the length I’d told Liora or Seraphina. Not with the precision I’d told Valeria. Just the bones of it. A boy from Chicago. A sister nad Hana. A ga played for too long. A heart that gave out. A new body. A villain’s life. The honesty conversations with the others, sealing the wedges the Script wanted to use.

She listened.

When I finished, she was quiet for a long mont. Kira had closed her eyes during the telling — not asleep, just present without attention, the way the fox listened to things she’d already known.

"Hana," Elara said, eventually.

"Yes."

"That’s a soft na. The shape of it is round. My grandmother had a na like that. *Mira* — sa vowel structure. Round nas belong to people who fit comfortably in the mouths of those who loved them."

"That’s a Wildgrove thing?"

"It’s a thing my grandmother said. She said nas had shapes, and the shapes told you how the person was loved by the people who used the na most. *Hana* is round. She was loved softly."

I had to look out at the cloud sea for a mont. Not because I was about to cry. Because the comnt had landed in a place I hadn’t been expecting it to land.