Story: Sylvans

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A new Writing Prompt, “A houseplant is dying. Tell it why it needs to live.”

Sylvans
 

 She hadn’t unfurled a new leaf in eight months. Her branches drooped, and there were bits of bark littering the floor of the greenhouse around her rooting chamber.

 

 I cried silently as I sat sluggishly on my rolling stool and watched the monitors bleep and bloop slowly. Her sap pressure was lower than yesterdays, and that had been the lowest measurement so far this month.

 

 Rubbing at my eyes I took another look at the chart I held limply in my hands. Nothing. Absolutely nothing stood out. There were no obvious causes of her slow demise. We were losing another subject, barely a year old, and we had no clues as to why this kept happening.

 

 Soft tapping brought my head up and around to another rooting chamber in the greenhouse. Subject 734, or Thomas as he had identified himself once he’d begun to speak, was slowly rapping his foremost branch tips against the glass and his golden sap ringed eyes were pleading with me. I rose to go speak with him, brushing the remaining tears from my own boring brown human eyes.