The oak didn't speak again.
It didn't need to.
I stood there long after the others fell silent, the dandelion's words — "You're the Voice" — looping in my head like a broken record.
Voice of what?
No answer came.
The night deepened. Smoke from the city blurred the stars. A dog howled somewhere, then stopped mid-cry.
I locked the nursery door. Lit a single lantern. Sat on the floor beside the greenhouse bench, back against the wood, knees pulled to my chest.
The basil whispered something in a language I couldn't understand.
The mint sighed.
The dandelion — Thistle, as it had grudgingly introduced itself — went quiet after muttering, "Give her time. She's still got dirt in her ears."
I should've been afraid.
But I wasn't.
I felt…
recognized.
Morning came gray and brittle.
I watered the plants. Checked the tomatoes. Repotted a fern with yellowing leaves. Routine. Grounding.
As if yesterday hadn't split the world open.
As if I hadn't heard a tree speak.
By noon, the silence broke.
Three men came down the road.
No uniforms. No insignia. Just boots, rifles, and the kind of eyes that had already killed once and wouldn't mind doing it again.
They kicked open the gate.
One spat on the soil.
"Place is dead," he said. "No food. No value."
The second nudged a clay pot with his boot. "Only weeds."
The third — taller, scarred lip — crouched and plucked a rose from the bush.
He inhaled it. Smiled.
Then crushed it in his fist.
I watched from the window, heart low in my chest.
Don't react. Don't move. Just let them leave.
But the garden reacted for me.
The moment the rose fell, the air changed.
Not a sound. Not a flash.
Just a shift — like breath held too long.
The vines along the wall twitched.
Not in the wind.
On purpose.
One coiled slowly around a rusted trellis. Another slithered across the ground like a snake made of ivy.
The men didn't notice.
They kicked over a shelf of seedlings. Laughed when the pots shattered.
Then the cactus — old, spiny, silent for years — leaned.
And lashed out.
A spine, sharp as a needle, shot through the air and buried itself in the scarred man's hand.
He screamed.
They all froze.
The cactus didn't move again. Just sat there, smug, like it had been waiting a decade for that shot.
"What the hell—?"
The second man raised his rifle.
I stepped outside.
"Leave," I said.
They turned. Saw me. Smirked.
"Or what, girl? You gonna throw a petunia at us?"
I didn't answer.
Because behind them, the garden was alive.
Vines rising like serpents.
Roots cracking stone.
Leaves turning toward them like faces.
And the oak —
its shadow stretched across the yard, not with the sun,
but against it.
The scarred man yanked the spine out, blood dripping.
Then he saw the dandelion.
Still glowing. Still watching.
"Cursed ground," he muttered.
They backed away.
One tripped — a vine had wrapped his ankle, thin as thread, but unbreakable.
They ran.
And when the gate slammed behind them, the garden exhaled.
The vines retreated.
The cactus settled.
Even the rose bush seemed to straighten.
I knelt beside Thistle.
"You didn't tell me they could do that."
"They didn't either," it said.
"Until you came back."
I looked at my hands.
Dirt under the nails.
A scratch from pruning.
Nothing special.
But the soil beneath me —
it pulsed.
Not with my heartbeat.
With something deeper.
Older.
And for the first time, I wondered:
Maybe the skill wasn't weak.
Maybe the world just forgot how to listen.