Garden of Ash

Hop awoke in a garden of ash.

Their head felt heavy from what they assumed to be smoke as a result of the burning. Before them sat a crumpled piece of paper, half scorched. Picking it up, Hop found the text illegible, the damage too great. Shaking their head, Hop wondered what on earth had brought them here and how the crew’s garden had managed to burn so badly.

Sitting up, Hop pulled out their phone and checked the crew’s log, but the previous day’s entry had been left completely blank. Gideon hadn’t assigned Hop a mission after the last one, so they supposed that meant the day was free.

Hop had never loved gardening – that was a job for the servants – but these last few years had them doing all sorts of lowborn jobs thanks to the Collapse, so they supposed planting some new roses wasn’t too far beneath them. Wondering where they could find hybrid tea roses for sale, Hop started toward the garden shed, which had miraculously survived the inferno.

Hopefully, Iris had left some spare rose seeds in the shed, given that would make the job a lot easier. If Hop had to go all the way to the store to buy seeds, they’d probably abandon the task altogether. Where did one even go to buy seeds? It was at times like this that Hop really wished their servants were still around. Of course, they could always buy seeds online, but then the job wouldn’t be done today and who knew how long it would be until Hop had another chance?

By Glob, Iris was going to be so disappointed when she found out that the garden had been destroyed. She’d spent so long delicately planting and guiding each of those climbing roses – an impressive feat considering she only had, on average, a chance to look after them once every five days. The least Hop could do was get the roses started on the road to recovery, especially considering what Hop was planning to do next.