About a thousand years ago, on a planet not very distant from ours, lived a lone flower farmer in a remote region. She grew exquisite edible flowers. Hers were the most rare and unique in the whole prefecture. At least they used to be when she was a little girl. Pilgrims would travel thousands of miles to visit the farm and buy their flowers.
She had been losing money for years, since another farmer discovered how to clone her flowers. Flower farming was becoming a lost art. And, she was starving. She resorted to eating her own flowers. The combination of not having enough income and slowly eating away her inventory, meant...she was in big trouble.
Coupled with her financial woes, came a season with no rain at all. If she'd had more resources she could have been able to afford irrigation. The black rich soil her flowers depended on was drying out and blowing away. She felt the distress of the plants themselves...
There were a dozen species in her field--separated into patches. Each individual flower was different from all the others in each species but shared similar coloration. Additionally, each species was very different from all the others in form, fragrance and taste.
When she walked outside into the blazing light of the two suns that ruled the sky, she saw that in the middle of each patch of flower species there were still beautiful specimens. But as her eyes panned across the thinning growth toward the edges there was no more color. She bowed her head and wept.
After several months had passed and the flower patches were nearly gone, things had become very serious indeed. She saw her rib cage protruding, even above her breasts. The flesh of her shoulders was beginning to sink in toward the bone. She was ashamed of how she looked.
There were no more happy pilgrims showing up. There hadn't been any for longer than she could remember.
She ate nothing but one flower a day. She gathered dew in the mornings and evenings, from the farm's large vertical catch trays built just for this reason, but it didn't yield much--and ever-less each time. She always kept half for herself and, though she would be very thirsty sometimes during the days, she always reserved the other half for watering the few flowers she had left.
One morning she heard a few taps on the kitchen roof. Then a few more. Then, as if heaven were finally settling to earth, a steady rain poured down. She was so shocked that it took her several moments just to stand up. She burst through the kitchen and down through the outside path to grab the bucket, singing and crying out with joy. Ecstatic shivers ran up her spine as she dunked the bucket into the now full catch tray basins. Turning to the back field and smiling, her tears mixed with the rain and both gushed down her cheeks and neck, thence over her tiny, bony frame. "The flowers!"
Swinging the bucket from side to side, and grasping with both hands in front of her, she reached the watering tank, which had been emptied by the heat and sealed shut by the sun. It needed a large amount of water poured directly on to the seal in order to prime the valve. Once open the valve would allow the rain harvesting surfaces to channel their water into the tank where it could be stored.
She dumped the water directly on to the valve and it peeled open exhausting a hot blast of air. And, the tank began to fill. She was experiencing a joy she hadn't felt since she was a small child.
Once the tank was taken care of, she ran as fast as she could toward the flower field. A few times she slipped in the deepening mud, but stood back up, thrilled to even be able to see mud. The flower patches were coming into view. Or, at least the field was. But where were the flowers? She slowed as she approached the edge of the field. The rain had knocked down nearly all of the flowers. They were too weak to withstand even one rain storm.
She gently stepped into the field and saw the damage. Strangely, at the center of each of her dozen patches stood one last healthy flower--twelve in all. The rain was getting lighter now. She had wished and prayed for rain for so long. And now...this.
She fell to her knees among the dying flowers and sobbed. When she had finally emptied her sorrow on to muddy ground, the violet blue of the sky broke through the clouds. The suns bore down upon the land.
The twelve flowers opened in the growing light. They looked so beautiful. The tragic realization of knowing that these would be the last flowers of their kind, pulled on her beating heart. Each species needed at least one other flower of its own kind in order to produce seeds.
In resigning to her fate, she rose slowly and walked back to the water tank. It was full. She would have plenty of water now, but no flowers to water.
In the evening, as the suns touched the far horizon, she pulled on her jacket and walked back to the field. The twelve flowers swayed lazily in the breeze. And, they seemed to sparkle. At first she thought it was a reflection of the sun on their petals. But, as she stepped up to one of them, she noticed a shimmering dust. Examining it very closely, she concluded that it was the flower's pollen, but it was not yellow as it should be. It was a scintillating platinum white.
She inspected all twelve by using her fingers to open each one and found the same sparkling white pollen. She was mystified.
That night she slept very deeply. When she woke the next morning and walked outside to the field, the twelve flowers were dead. She had assumed this would happen anyway, but was still saddened by how quickly it had come.
Three days and nights passed by. Other crops had sprung up around the property and she was able to eat more regularly, picking the tender shoots. She felt better, physically. But a void existed in her heart. She'd lost the business that her mother had started.
One day, about a week after the rain, she was foraging around the edge of the flower field, when she saw that at the center of each old patch was a dot of green. Curious, she walked in and looked down at the ground. In each patch was a small sprout. The shapes of the tiny leaves made each plant look very different from any other. She had touched each of those original twelve flowers, when she was examining the pollen earlier. Could she have cross pollinated them? That would be impossible... Wouldn't it? What was going on?
Within the month each of the twelve plants developed a healthy bud. And, on one cool morning, they all opened at once to reveal the most spellbindingly beautiful flowers she had ever seen. The colors were like no other flowers she knew of. It was as if they reflected light from a different kind of spectrum. At night the delicate blooms would close, but glow with a bioluminescent light.
About midway through the following month, the sparkling pollen developed again in each flower. And there was so much of it that it swirled in the air around the field.
Soon afterward, the flowers simultaneously developed seed pods, but the petals never dropped. The flowers didn't die. The pods grew thick until they were so heavy that they fell off the flower and into the soil. She picked them all up, labeled them and brought them into the plant nursery area of the farm.
The next day she checked on them and saw that they had dried properly, because each had split and released hundreds of tiny black seeds. From each of the twelve tiny piles, she split off half. Then she went back to the garden and sprinkled each handful around its respective mother plant.
With plenty of water still in the tank, she generously supplied the field with a daily soaking. As the peak part of growing season arrived a thousand new flowers were growing! Each was wholly unique, but slightly resembled its mother.
They were all drastically different in appearance. She was astounded by seeing each new bloom, after wondering what kind of design nature might have in store. And, she was never disappointed.
At night the flowers would sway in the breeze, and their multi-colored glow would produce brilliant images across the field when viewed from the porch.
When the populations of flowers reached nearly what she had before the drought, she decided to pick and taste a flower. Maybe there was some kind of special energy within these new flowers. They never died and they reproduced so prodigiously.
Before bed one night, she walked down to the garden in her bare feet. There were no more patches of separate species. All of the flowers were one species now apparently, but they looked so different from each other that she had a hard time trying to find common traits among them. She stooped down and plucked a flower from the ground...
She held it in her hand and looked at it for a long time. Evening was falling and the flower began to glow with its bioluminescent loveliness. She coddled in against her chest as she walked back to the house. Once inside, she sat down at the table and picked off a petal.
The taste was bland at first. She wished it was sweet. And, it became sweet! She thought it could use a touch of tartness? The tartness was suddenly there. It tasted like anything she wanted it to taste like.
Realizing that something profound must be happening in her flower field, she fantasized about what might happen once people get a taste of these flowers. A warm feeling came over her, as she pulled off the petals, one by one, and tasted them. They had every flavor her mind could ask for.
She left a few petals attached to the stem to try later. Now she wanted to try some others to see what they would be like. So she grabbed a bag and put on her shoes. It was a gorgeous night and the flowers glowed as she approached them. But she noticed a dark spot over where she had picked the flower. The light of the other flowers diminished in intensity in a circle around the spot.
Drawing closer, she saw that all the flowers across the field were bent in the direction of the missing flower. Their bowing seemed to make the light ripple inwardly, toward the spot. Strange.
It dawned on her that if these flowers do simply grow on indefinitely - eternally - then, perhaps nothing could be worse for all of the flowers than killing one. Crazy thoughts went through her mind. Maybe she could re-root the one she picked? If it wasn't too late...
Rushing back into the kitchen, she went straight to the table. And, there sat the flower; completely black and as dry as the tissue of a wasp's nest.
Picking the flowers now seemed out of the question. She had enough food from other plants she'd been watering, though she had hoped these flowers might jump start her business again. But she had more than enough of some kinds of vegetables. She could sell them instead, until she understood what the flowers were doing.
She picked up the desiccated flower and headed back out the door. When she'd gotten to the field, the flowers were all upright again. The entire garden pulsed with glowing ripples of light. Some of these pulses seemed to aggregate into images of things around the farm. As she stepped to the edge of the field, she laid the little black flower on the soil.
The flowers pulsed their light toward her and the dead flower, and they bowed their stems. She stood in front of them all. And she said...
"We almost died together. When we live, we live together. I'm sorry for what I've done to one of you. But I tell you now that it will not happen again. Let us live through these coming years and grow as one."
The pulsing stopped and flashes of multicolored images swept cross the field of glowing flowers. They could produce any image they wanted to. She stepped back, and then walked over to the porch to view the display from above. A panoramic image faded into this pixelated flower field. It was a projected view of the surrounding hills. Then the picture of a bird appeared. Finally, the colors swirled in spiraling patterns, slowly dissolving into a portrait of the farmer herself. It was spectacular, lifelike and flattering.
She was unable to move; constrained by emotion and fascination. Her flower field had become a screen of moving pictures!
As the years passed and the seasons cycled through, the flowers remained in the farmer's field. The same twelve plants are still there, and hundreds of generations of flower progeny have graced her land. These flowers never died.
When the first pilgrim passed by the farm at harvest time, she treated him to the nightly light show of the flowers, and then she given him a dozen seeds. On the final night, the farmer made the pilgrim swear an oath to never kill whatever might grow out of them.
From her porch she watched him walk away down the valley path toward his homeland and smiled. Behind her the field erupted into rainbow waves of light.
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There is much more to this tale :) Awesome !
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