This Beautiful Earth

Clare’s eyes swung back and forth across the plot of mulch which held her precious plants so tightly. She admired the beautiful things that they were, the gorgeous life-givers her mother had taught her to behold. Clare patted the soil absentmindedly, swirling it in abstract patterns under her palm and letting its soft homely feel seep through her fingers. She thought back to years prior, a simpler time, when she and her mother would garden from light until dark, getting their knees as dirty as the dim night sky, stars restricted from view through a thick layer of pollution. The Human’s Haze, her mother always used to call it. Clare’s mother was the kindest and sweetest woman one could ask to meet, but nothing got her more bitter and worked up than the mistreatment of the Earth that she held so dearly.

“We must continue to plant, Clare,” she would tell her sagely. “Plants are the life-givers, and we must cherish them and help them grow. They need water, like you and I. They need love, sunlight, food, and just a little helping of magic.”

“Why do they need our help, Mommy?” Clare had asked naively one afternoon.

“Because, sweetie, humans ruined their chance of surviving on their own. They filled the sky with their Human Haze, blocked out the brilliance of the sun, and didn't even think twice about it. And now we need to be here for the life-givers.”

“I’ll never quit helping the plants, Mommy,” Clare reassured her mother. She smiled down at her innocent daughter.

Clare came back to the present and shook her head clear. She had work to do. Starting from the left, and slowly making her way to the right, Clare jumped from soil plot to soil plot, checking each fruit-bearing plant for any ripe and perfectly pluckable treats. The grapevine bore no sweet green delicacies, her carrots were not ready for collection. She investigated her tomato plant, which sat directly in the middle of the plot much like it had done in her mother’s garden. Clare found no ripe tomatoes, but she did find herself slipping back into memories of her past. 

She thought of the blurry sun, barely perceptible through the ever present Human’s Haze. When told that the temperature hadn't been so low before the Human’s Haze, Clare had asked why. Her mother told her that the sun provided heat. She wondered how beautiful it could have been to lounge around, soaking in warmth from the sun and feeling like a plant. Stuck to the ground, nothing to do, eating up the sunlight and helpings of magic the world had to offer. She fathomed that if she were to be a plant, she’d have to be a beanstalk. Her mother told her on many occasions that she was growing faster than a beanstalk. Thankfully, she and her mother had a beanstalk in the garden. Every day, just as it was getting too dark to see, Clare would run to the beanstalk and measure where it reached on her arm. After a number of months, she found that her mother had in fact been wrong, and that the beanstalk was the one growing at a faster rate! She rushed to tell her mother of this exciting discovery, only to have her laugh sweetly, pick her daughter up, and tell her that she was the 'only helping of magic this world needs’. 

Clare blinked, her mind returning to her body as she realized she hadn't been focusing on her check-ups of her life-givers. She sighed and restarted. Despite how dull and gray the sun had looked through the haze, Clare now understood how much she had taken it for granted now that she lacked it. She glanced up to look out of the window, seeing nothing but endless black, with no sun in sight. Clare proceeded to check all of the UV Light emitters, which gave life and light to her plants, and which gave Clare a heavy sadness in her heart. Besides her mother, the sun was likely the thing that she missed most about gardening. 

Clare found that one of the light tubes in her overhead UV Light emitters must have gone out, and she could already see the agony of the plants below, starved of their sunlight, and therefore, their food. Inherently, each plant in her room was deprived of a helping of magic. Clare had felt that leave the moment her mother had died. 

Clare got up, determined to care for the life-givers and not disappoint her mother, knowing that somehow, some way, she was watching. She tapped one of the lights over her plants, noticing a bulb was dead. She spun on her heel and marched off purposefully, determined to save these plants from being deprived of their light. ‘Never forget the beauty that this world holds,’ her mother would tell her. 

As Clare approached the metal door to her room, it hissed and slid open automatically. She left the door behind as she wandered into the hallway, looking for the storage closet. She felt herself pause, and she looked up to see the large painting of Earth that was hanging on the wall. That gorgeous planet, long since abandoned, and long since forgotten. She found herself unable to picture the lush landscapes or vibrant colors of the trees when the seasons changed, except by the pictures in the textbooks she read. ‘Never forget the beauty’, her mother had told her. And what had she done? Exactly that.

Clare stepped closer to the picture frame, feeling tears pushing up against the back of her eyes, fighting to escape. She stared through glimmering tears at the planet she, along with whoever else the government had deemed worthy, had left so long ago. She pressed her fingers to her lips, then lay the kiss gently upon the shining glass, leaving a smudge against the perfect glossy surface. The planet they’d cherished together was behind them. The beauty she had been told to remember was bordering on being lost for eternity.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” but her whisper could not travel the lightyears of distance and the empty soundless vacuum of space separating her ship from that old planet.