The first leaf to go was on the fern by the door. She found it on a Tuesday, small and yellowed at its tip, curling slightly inward the way leaves curled when they had decided they were done. She removed it immediately, clean at the stem, the way you removed things before they could spread. She checked the soil. Adequate moisture. She checked the light. Sufficient. She checked the roots through the drainage hole at the bottom of the pot, pressed her fingers to the earth, let her power move through it the way it always did, quiet and habitual and certain. Nothing obviously wrong. She watered it anyway. A little more than usual. Just in case.
By the end of the week there were three more.
A yellowed tip on the climbing thing she had draped over the bookshelf. Two leaves on the small succulent she kept on the mantle, which made no sense because succulents did not yellow, they were not supposed to yellow, they were specifically the kind of plant that did not require much of anything and rewarded neglect with survival. She stood in front of it for a long time trying to understand what she had done wrong.
She watered everything more carefully. She repositioned the ones nearest the window to catch better light. She checked drainage, checked soil composition, checked for pests with the methodical attention of someone who had done this a thousand times and trusted the process. The yellowing continued. She began keeping a record.
A small notebook, nothing formal, just observations - which plant, which leaf, what she had tried, what had helped or not helped. She filled pages quickly. The record did not reveal a pattern she could use. It revealed instead that the problem was not isolated, was not one plant or one corner of the cottage or one variable she could identify and correct. It was everywhere, slow and indiscriminate, touching things seemingly at random, the way a cold moved through a household.
She added more light. She bought new soil and repotted the worst affected ones, carefully, giving each root system her full attention, pressing her hands into the fresh earth and willing her power into it the way she had always done, the way that had always worked. It helped, a little, briefly. Then it stopped helping.
LSA: I don't understand.
She said it to the notebook. To the cottage. To the crowded green-smelling air that was, she was beginning to notice, smelling slightly less green than it had.
LSA: I'm doing everything right.
She was. She knew she was. She had been tending plants since before she could articulate what tending meant, had grown up with soil under her fingernails and the specific knowledge of living things in her hands, had never lost a plant to neglect in her life because neglect was not something she was capable of, not with things she loved. She was doing everything right and it was not working and she did not know why.
The veronica worried her most.
It had not progressed the way it should have. Three weeks inside and it was still the same size, still pale, its stems thinner than they ought to be, the vivid blue it was supposed to become still entirely theoretical. It was alive, she checked every morning with both hands pressed to the soil and her power moving through it like a question, and every morning the answer came back the same - alive, yes, but barely forward, barely more than it had been the day before.
She moved it twice to find better light. She changed its soil. She spoke to it the way she spoke to all of them, quietly and without self-consciousness, because plants responded to sound and she had always believed this even when people found it strange.
LSA: Come on.
She pressed her fingers to the earth around its base. Her power moved through her hands and into the soil and she felt the roots, thin and careful, reaching the way roots reached, slowly and without any concept of urgency.
LSA: I planted you for her. You're supposed to-
She stopped. She sat back on her heels and looked at the veronica in its spot by the window, the best spot, the one that caught the light from two directions, and she looked at it for a long time without touching it. It looked back at her the way plants looked back at people, which was without expression, without judgment, with the simple and complete patience of something that did not experience time the way she did.
She watered it. Carefully. The right amount.
Then she stood and went to check on the others, notebook in hand, moving through the crowded cottage with the focused attention of someone who was certain the answer was here somewhere and was simply a matter of looking hard enough, of caring enough, of doing enough. She was certain of this. She had to be.