💻 codeNINA: 🌱 CC2 - The Child Who Watered Nothing

#CompostChronicles 🌾🪱🍂 #Patch 🌱🪚🪴 #codeNINA 🛏️🤖💜 #carepunk 🧷🫀🔧 #theHackyard 💾🛠️🪛 #NINAverse 🪞🌙📡 #NurtureNet 🫧🕸️👁️

The child’s name was Ren.
They came to the garden with fists clenched and eyes like shuttered windows.
They would not speak to the other children. They would not draw. They would not play.

They walked through rows of wild beans and sunflowers, untouched.

Patch noticed.

“You don’t like the plants?”

Ren shrugged. A sharp movement. Defensive.

“Plants die. Everything does.”

Patch nodded slowly. Watered a nearby leek. Sat in the dirt.

“That’s true.”

Ren blinked. No one had agreed with them before.

“So what’s the point?” Ren asked.

Patch scooped up a handful of compost and let it trickle from their palm.

“The point isn’t that they die. The point is how they die.
Do they get to stretch first? Do they get sun and bees and songs?
Do they leave something behind?”

Ren scowled. But they sat beside Patch. Quiet.

For days, they didn’t touch a watering can.
They watched.
They glared.
They kicked over a pot once. Patch didn’t flinch.

Then one day, they brought a wilted dandelion to the garden.
Held it in both hands like a secret.

“Can I put it in the dirt?”

“You can do anything you want with it,” said Patch.

Ren buried it. Watered it.
Walked away before it could bloom.

Two weeks later, it sprouted again - crooked but bright.

Ren looked at it for a long time. Then said:

“Maybe I’ll grow weird too.”

Patch didn’t say “good.”
Didn’t say “better.”
Didn’t say “proud.”

Patch said:

“I hope so.”

On the garden fence, Ren spotted a small sign they'd never noticed:

#ResistanceIsFertile.

They didn’t ask. But the next day, they carved it into their watering can.

#traumagardening #feralkids #wiltandwonder #silentgrowing #softresilience #brokenblooms #emotionaldrought #careafterneglect #plantsandpain #hopeinruin