‘Fecund’

She was never much of a communicator, though she could coax anything from the ground. Vegetables, fruits,  even some strange hybrids that she created over the years – the cool dankness of our root cellar was always a season behind what was taking place up top, reflecting what little remained from our lives of just a few months ago. On evening walks, she would scavenge: jades from flowerpots, red-headed mosses from the riverbanks, smelly mushrooms from the swamps, and fruit-tree sapling after sapling from the dump – mango, guava, lemon. "Just lying around," she'd say as though she could hardly believe that this was the world of which she was allowed to be a part. "I'm just picking them up and showing them off so others don't forget!"

Her mother, on the other hand, was a great communicator, coaxing meaning from even the most ancient of texts, relaying large words to small minds in ways that made sense. On her evening walks, people would gather around to hear her poetry, rants and witticisms. But the daughter would always hold back, tongue knotting at the sight of crowds, content to study the folds in the bark of the great banyan under which they would sit. When the mother died she left a great library of works of historic value, which the daughter left to moulder, unread. Eventually on these grew a fine phosphorescent fungus, which the daughter gently cultivated – "Just making sure that no one forgets," she'd say absentmindedly.