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CLARA

I used to think soil was just dirt.

A backdrop.

A place where things happened .

But now I know better.

Soil is a story. It's memory. It's where grief breaks down and makes room for green things to bloom.

Which is why I’m standing in front of two dozen students this morning, my voice shaking like a leaf, holding a stick I don’t know how to use as a pointer and pretending not to panic.

Julie gave me the pointer.

Said it’d make me look “professorial.”

Hazel snorted and called it a wizard wand for introverts.

But Thorn?

Thorn just nodded when I told him.

Like he knew I was ready—even when I didn’t.

I tap the tip of the stick against the top of the wooden sign I carved myself:

"Eco-Magical Restoration: Theory and Practice"

“Okay,” I start, voice barely above a whisper. “Um. Welcome to day one of the new curriculum.”

A few students look up from their notebooks.

One’s chewing on a pencil. Another’s halfway asleep.

Typical.

I inhale.

“You’re gonna get dirty,” I say. “And tired. And sometimes frustrated because magic doesn’t always behave the way you expect it to.”

A few heads perk up.

“But,” I continue, gripping the pointer tighter, “if you let it… the Grove will teach you. About plants, yes—but also about memory. And trust. And healing.”

I see it in their faces—how the mood shifts.

Slow.

Real.

Behind me, vines sway gently, reacting to my words like punctuation. The petals near the boundary path flutter as if nodding along.

I smile, just barely.

“Today, we’ll be tracing soil memory signatures and mapping residual enchantment flow through the moss bed. Tomorrow we start hybrid propagation.”

Hazel, sitting crisscrossed on the ground with her toad in her lap, grins wide. “And when do we raise a moss golem?”

I blink. “Hopefully never.”

Some of the kids laugh. A few scribble notes like I just revealed a hidden unit.

After class, Julie stops me by the tool shed.

“You were great.”

I blush, kicking a root with the toe of my boot. “I mumbled half of it.”

“They leaned in,” she says. “That’s what matters.”

I nod, swallowing the knot in my throat.

Later, after dusk, I wander back to the heart of the Grove.

Thorn’s waiting.

He doesn’t say anything.

Just sits beside me as the fireflies flicker and the leaves hum with quiet magic.

“You saw?” I ask, barely audible.

“I saw everything.”

My voice breaks on a laugh. “I didn’t throw up.”

“I’m proud of you,” he says, and my heart does that ridiculous somersault thing it always does when he’s near.

I lean into him, shoulder against bark-skin, pulse steadying.

And for the first time in a long, long while…

I feel like I belong.

Not just to the Grove.

But to myself.

The second week, I ditch the pointer.

By the third, I’m drawing diagrams in the dirt with a stick and letting kids interrupt with questions halfway through my sentences.

Turns out I like it that way.

I stand in front of a cluster of students, hands dusted with ash bark and chalk, sketching the convergence point between human irrigation routes and natural leyline flow.

“Design isn’t about dominance,” I say, voice steady now. “It’s about listening. Observing. Letting the wild parts speak first.”

I gesture toward the root map we’ve etched into the Grove’s edge clearing.

“When we align magical infrastructure with the land’s will ,” I continue, “we don’t just avoid damage—we make something better. ”

A few students nod.

Hazel grumbles, “Bet the city planners won’t care.”

I smile. “Then we show them. Through the work. Through the results. ”

The Grove behind me pulses faintly—encouraging, affirming.

And I realize then, this isn’t just about restoration.

It’s about balance .

About building a future where roots and concrete can share ground.

Where wild and human don’t cancel each other out—but create something new.

I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and turn back to the class.

“Now,” I say, smiling, “who’s ready to get their hands dirty?”

By the end of the month, the campers give me a nickname.

The Plant Whisperer.

At first, I blush so hard I almost bury my face in the compost pile.

But Hazel just pats my shoulder and says, “You earned it. Don’t argue with branding.”

Julie laughs and starts calling it out in front of guest groups—“Ask our Plant Whisperer, she’s got answers!”

Even Callie carves it into the corner of the new community board, surrounded by little doodles of roots and stars.

And somewhere along the way, I stop flinching when I hear it.

Because maybe they’re right.

Maybe I am someone who listens to what’s growing, who speaks gently to wild things, and finds the space where magic and science hold hands.

Maybe the Grove heard me whisper once—and now it’s whispering back .

That night, after the campers drift off and the Grove settles into its hush, I find Thorn at the water pool near the heart tree.

He’s half-sitting on a stone, his form bathed in moonlight. Runes faintly glowing across his shoulder like fireflies caught in still motion.

He doesn’t speak when I approach.

He doesn’t need to.

I sit beside him and let the silence stretch—comfortable, like moss underfoot.

I say, “They started calling me the Plant Whisperer.”

He hums low. “Fitting.”

I glance at him. “You’re not gonna tease me?”

He looks down at me, eyes gleaming. “I don’t tease what’s true.”

My breath catches.

I reach out, fingers brushing the bark-line of his forearm.

“You came back to me,” I whisper.

“I never really left,” he says. “I was just… lost in the roots for a while.”

I lean into him, resting my head against his shoulder. He doesn’t flinch. His hand lifts slowly, then curls around mine.

And for a long, perfect moment, we sit like that.

Wrapped in quiet.

Wrapped in each other .

And I know, without doubt, that the Grove isn’t the only thing that’s come back to life.

So have we.