Page 94 of As You Wake, Break the Shell
plant. It doesn’t know what to
do with water too freely given,
so I deny it nourishment to
help it thrive. This one, here—it
expects to grow on the side of
a tree it has never seen, so I tie
it to a stake instead. These ones
exhaust themselves if they don’t
sleep through winter, so I put
them in the fridge for the same
three months every year. Years.
Months. We keep the same time
as Earth, even though the lengths
of Fortune’s days don’t quite
match up. They say it doesn’t
matter, on a world without
seasons, to correctly mark where
you are in orbit around the sun.
They say it matters more to
follow the rhythms of the world
we should aspire to become—
months, minutes, money. But
my plants tell a different story.
Their internal clocks are infinitely
more varied than a quarterly
calendar can express. Perhaps
that is why seeds are so tightly
controlled.
Lawmakers say they’re being
prudent, they say, what if a rogue
