Compiled and commented by Albert Weaver
"Green is the magic of patience. Of watching things grow instead of building them."
- From The Rootwork Letters, handbound copy, found in a burned-out village garden, Wild Years
When people think of Plant magic, they picture jungle vines smashing through walls, or someone summoning a tree out of their chest like some wild myth. But most of it's quieter. Simpler. Slower.
In the early Breeze Years, I met a caster named Halim who worked out of a two-hectare rice paddy near Luang Prabang. No robe, no ceremony - just bare feet and hands full of wet earth. He whispered to the stalks as he passed. Didn't cast, not exactly. Just nudged. By week's end, his field had grown twice the yield of the neighboring ones, and needed half the water.
"Magic?" he laughed. "Nah. Just listening right."
***
[Excerpt – Rural Agricultural Co-op Minutes, Pará District – Breeze Years]
"Field 3 (experimental): Sprouting initiated 7 days early with consistent spell application. Yield increase: 28%. Pests are absent. Flavor reports: positive."
Note: caster experienced fatigue. Claims it's 'the plant saying slow down.'
***
And yet, not all growth is humble. Some Green Casters push further - into wild territory. They splice mana into the seed itself. New plants. Superfoods. Crops that grow on saltwater, that self-regulate their nutrients, that don't rot.
[Audio Log – Botanical Defense Symposium, Gdansk – "The Vitaspike Trials"]
SPEAKER: "We didn't just breed a new plant. We bred a survivor. The Vitaspike grows in sand, bears fruit in 17 days, and its roots fix nitrogen as well as any legume. A meal from it can keep a soldier standing for 30 hours. No side effects - yet."
AUDIENCE MEMBER: "But should we?"
SPEAKER: (long pause) "It's already out there. Now it's a question of stewardship."
***
Not every caster agrees with the aggressive stuff. Some say you don't make plants faster - you make time for them. That real Green magic is about rhythm, not dominance. But progress doesn't wait for consensus. Especially when famine is knocking.
Albert once visited a refugee garden near Thessaloniki. Rows of glowing tubers curled in geometric spirals, humming low like sleep machines.
The woman tending them said:
"They're tuned for comfort. Grown in grief. We lost too many to feed people only calories."
***
Some say Plantcraft will save us. Others say we're breeding crops too fast for ecosystems to catch up. But Albert just wrote:
"You can't outrun hunger. But you can teach the earth to meet it halfway."
And that, he thought, might be enough.