If you are lonely, the witch had said, plant this.

Will it grow a magical plant? Cecilia had asked.

No. It will grow a flower, just a flower. In order to starve your loneliness, talk to it. Remember that it is a living thing. Take care of it, keep it well and warm. Let it be an open ear. Encourage it to grow. All growth is magical.

Oh, Cecelia had said. The witch had smiled faintly, patted her shoulder, and showed her the door.

🜨

Cecelia stood at the edge of her property, not-so-magical seed in her hand. She carefully knelt in the spongy moss and began to dig. The soil yielded readily under her fingers, and the task was swiftly finished.

“I wonder if you can hear me while you’re in the ground,” Cecelia said softly. She felt a bit silly, talking to a seed. “This feels a bit silly,” she admitted, “but for now, what have I got to lose.”

If she had been expecting a sense of approval to wash over her, she was disappointed. The seed remained inert, and Cecelia sighed. It was a fair walk back to her house. She hoped she would remember to come out here every day.

Under the ground, the seed settled comfortably into the soil.

🜨

After a few awkward days, the words started to flow more easily. Cecelia found herself lying on the ground in front of the spot where the seed was planted, talking for hours.

“My mother was a lovely woman—is a lovely woman, I mean, wow. Slip of the tongue, knock on wood or whatever.” She rapped her knuckles on the side of her head. “My home life was fine. Everything about my life has been fine, really. But just fine, not… excellent. Life is supposed to be better than just fine.”

“My high school friends told me all I had to do was wait. My college friends said to work hard, to take my life by the throat and demand exuberance, demand overwhelming joy. I tried to do both of those things, at different points. After I got my PhD in planar physics I kinda expected something important to happen. A big life shift maybe.”

“Nothing really panned out. The only companies hiring planar researchers rejected my applications. Thank goodness Aunt Halley left me this place. I think she wished that we were closer. I wish that too, now. Been thinking about going to a medium. There’s one that advertises in the almanack, and I think I can trust a person who cares enough to do that.”

“I think I study other planes because I can’t find anyone who’ll stay on this one,” Cecelia confessed. She had been sprawled out for hours in front of the seed, eyes closed so she wouldn’t stare right into the sun. She opened her eyes and rolled them upward to look at her plant. A verdant shoot was pressing its way out of the soil. Cecelia leaped to her feet in excitement.

“Oh, look at you. I was starting to get worried.” The plant didn’t move. Cecelia smiled. She glanced at her watch, and up at the sun. “I’ve got to be going for today. Tomorrow, though, I’ll bring some lunch out with me. So I can stay a bit longer.”

🜨

When the shoot was as tall as Cecelia’s palm, she brought up the possibility of moving the plant. “You’re far off, over here. It’s a good half hour walk back to the house. What if there’s a rainy day and I can’t make my way out here? Would you mind the move?”

The plant didn’t respond. A breeze ruffled Cecelia’s hair, and made singular small leaf the sprout had produced nod. “That’s settled, then. Tomorrow I’ll bring a shovel and a pot. Just for a little bit, I promise, then you’ll be back in the ground as you should be.”

It was raining when Cecelia arrived at the sprout, and her wagon was already a quarter of the way filled with water. “Lovely weather we’re having, eh?” She turned over the wagon, emptying the rainwater. She tugged on her clawed garden gloves—the shovel had proved too hard to locate—and scratched away at the sopping soil, careful as she could be of the delicate roots.

The plant seemed to cower in the downpour. “I’ll keep you inside for the day, I think. Unless you mind terribly,” she added. The plant offered no comment. All the while murmuring encouragingly, Cecelia transferred the plant into the small pot she had brought from the house. She dumped out the wagon once more before beginning the trek back.

🜨

“I think I’d better move you again,” Cecelia told the plant. Somewhere amid the days following the rainstorm, she had forgotten all about planting it in the garden space right near her porch. The plant stayed on the windowsill in Cecelia’s bedroom for months, until the crown of the stalk brushed the top of the window, and the roots threatened to shatter the pot.

Cecelia awkwardly lugged the pot through the house and outside. She found a good spot, but as she was setting the pot down, it broke in her hands, and the sharp clay shards sliced her palms and fingers. A vibrant red slipped over the dull pot pieces and onto the roots. Cecelia gasped in pain, reflexively clenching her fists. The blood trickled in rivulets down into the dirt. Wincing, Cecelia tried her best to heap more soil up around the plant, digging gently into the spot below where the pot had landed. Her hands were stinging and streaked with soil when she was finished.

“Sorry about that,” she said, winded. “I know I said I’d put you in the ground months ago. Time just flew right by. Thanks for being understanding.”

🜨

“Oh, goodness. Aren’t you something?” Cecelia whistled. After weeks of anticipation, the giant sunflower head was finally in bloom. It towered over Cecelia, and she craned her neck to face the flower. She reached out to touch a leaf, stretched out her arms, tried, and failed to reach even the sepals of the head.

To her surprise, the head bent down into her hands, and a pair of far-too-large compound eyes stared at her. Whatever was sitting on top of the sunflower looked like a person, for the most part. They had delicate brown skin and golden-yellow hair, those compound eyes; their garments seemed to be made of leaves. They slid from the disk of the flower and settled their feet on the ground; while they had been sitting, they were small enough to fit in the head of the sunflower, but now that they were standing before Cecelia, she found that they looked her right in the eye.

“Goodness,” the sunflower-person said, smiling in a manner that made Cecelia distinctly nervous. “Aren’t you something?”

“I… I’m—”

“I know you, Cecelia Kastrel. Your voice was my companion as I grew and grew and grew.”

“Would you—would you like to come in?”

“No. You are welcome, of course, to continue your monologuing. I had become quite used to it.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be a monologue, not anymore, since…”

“You are unusually tall, from what I know of your species. This is unexpected. A welcome surprise.”

“Kind of you to say so, uh. I’ve been calling you Sunny in my head, but I suppose you’ve got a name you’ll want me to use, now that you can, uh, let me know.”

“Am I your sun, Cecelia Kastrel? Sunny is sufficient. I will call you Cecelia Kastrel.”

“Oh, just Cecelia, or Cece I guess, since I’m calling you Sunny.”

“Cece,” Sunny said, slowly. They cocked their head and smiled again, lips pressed together. Cecelia smiled nervously. I have to go back to the witch, don’t I? she thought.

🜨

There was a “For Sale” sign on the lawn in front of the witch’s house, and the shutters were all closed. Cecelia groaned, but stumbled up the stairs and knocked on the door. She waited for nearly half an hour on the doorstep, knocking intermittently, hoping against hope that the witch was still in. The door didn’t move an inch until Cecelia was already back in her car and pulling out of the driveway. Cecelia couldn’t see, but the witch poked her head out the door and peered around, watched Cecelia drive off.

🜨

“Do you ever think about the first place you lived and get sad that no place is going to be like that place again?”

Sunny was silent for a while. The pair were stretched out in the garden where Sunny’s flower was planted, the crowns of their heads separated by only an inch. “Yes. Before I went into the ground, I lived in a city made of stone that outshone both your sun and your moon. It was beautiful, filled with the despairing shouts of minstrels. It is a pity—lucky for you, but a pity for me—that you are not musically or lyrically inclined.”

“The one time it’s been useful that I can’t carry a tune to save my life,” Cecelia remarked. Sunny laughed, a little cruelly. “I don’t think I’m going to move from here again. I think everything that’s going to happen in my life has happened already. The money from Aunt Halley is going to run out soon. Maybe I’ll get chickens. Or goats.”

“Stagnant thoughts yield stagnancy. Growth is the only thing that matters. Change and movement. Even if it doesn’t look like it from the outside.”

“Pheasants maybe? Chickens might be easier, but we’ve got all this space.”

“Maybe a garden. I’ll help with that,” Sunny offered. “And quails, I think.”

“I’d have to ask around, see where to order the seeds. No clue where I’ll find someone breeding quails, but if you say so. Thanks for the help, Sunny.”

“Of course, Cece.” The nickname, Cecelia could tell, fit awkwardly in Sunny’s mouth.

“You can just call me Cecelia, Sunny.”

“Cece is… nice. I would like to use it, clumsy as I seem.”

“Suit yourself. Coming in for tea?” Cecelia asked hopefully, standing up and leaning over Sunny, who was still sprawled out.

“No, I’m enjoying the sunshine. I’ll speak with you tomorrow, Cece. Go have your tea.”

🜨

“When I was younger, I’d sometimes wish I were shorter, like the other girls.” Cecelia and Sunny were slumped against opposite walls of the garden shed, taking refuge from the sudden downpour.

“I think you are lying, Cece. I think you have always wished to touch the sun. You wished they weren’t jealous, perhaps.” Sunny’s voice slipped in between the raindrops gracefully. Cecelia threw her head back and laughed.

“Don’t you like the rain?” she asked Sunny.

“I love the rain as much as one heartless thing can love another.”

“You’ve got more heart than you give yourself credit for, I think.” Cecelia looked out into the storm, and noticed a slinking shape approaching the quail house. Cecelia swore and jumped to her feet. “That damned fox is trying to get at the quails again.”

“It’s not the same one. The one I dealt with isn’t going to come back here again.”

Cecelia pulled her windbreaker tight about her and prepared to set out for the quail house. Sunny slipped past her, shrinking and shifting into a form that matched the slinking, would-be egg-thief. Cecelia watched from the doorway as the faintly yellow shape menaced the more orange one. The fox let out a horrible scream, and Cecelia turned her head away.

When Sunny slunk back to the garden shed, they curled up against Cecelia’s side, rather uncharacteristically. Cecelia didn’t say a word, afraid to break the moment, but reached up with a handkerchief to wipe the dripping blood from Sunny’s mouth.

🜨

“When I was little—when I was smaller than I am, I would wonder what it was like here,” Sunny confessed.

Cecelia’s hands stilled in Sunny’s hair, coming to rest on their shoulders. After a moment Sunny’s head bumped awkwardly against Cecelia’s chin, a wordless gesture for her to continue braiding. She and Sunny were in the garden again, braiding each other’s hair. The braid Sunny had fashioned for Cecelia was studded with wildflowers and wonderfully intricate.

“I uh, only know how to do a basic braid, I’m sorry Sunny,” Cecelia had said when her turn was up.

“I think a basic braid will settle your debt for today, Cece,” Sunny had replied, with a gentle brush of their hand across Cecelia’s collarbone to show that they were joking.

“Pardon my ignorance, Sunny, but isn’t it perfect, over there, where you’re from? All glittering and glowing.” Sunny almost shook their head but remembered themself in time and held still.

“There is no sunshine there, Cece. Just the empty glow of rock and growth, of bounty without source, without substance. It is a hungry land, Cecelia Kastrel. It needs to eat. It is much different here, and I knew that, even when I was smaller.

“This is a land that feeds.”

“Are you hungry, Sunny?” Cecelia’s hands rested at the middle of Sunny’s back, braid completed. Sunny leaned their head back, looking up into Cecelia’s eyes as she looked down. Those compound eyes regarded her in silence for a moment. Sunny took Cecelia’s hands in their own and traced gently over her palms.

“No, Cece.” They pressed a digit into her left palm and the faint scarring from the shattered pot showed up in sharp relief. “When I was smaller, still tucked inside the flower where you found me, I tasted your blood.”

“Oh,” Cecelia began, breathless. When she tried to withdraw her hand Sunny took her wrist gently, then wriggled from her lap to face her properly.

“Cece, my roots ate you up, every drop. I know you, Cece, more because of this than any monologue you murmured. I have eaten of your body, Cece. You have fed me well. Tell me, Cece, are you hungry?”

Cecelia surged forward to kiss them, but Sunny held her back by the shoulder, curling a hand then around her neck, tangling in her hair, drawing her nearer slowly.

“I need an answer, sweet-blood Cece,” Sunny murmured, too-sharp teeth so close. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”