Dreamer of Plants

2

Not even coffee can seem to wake me up this morning. I've tried drinking it before I left home, and even getting a cup of the godly drink at a local coffee shop on my way to the shop. None of it, not even a drop, has seemed to wake me up in the slightest, my eyelids are still dropping and it's so bad that not even any of my dreams seem to be able to curl it's way around reality. The dream last night has been playing over and over again in my head, taking my moods on a roller coaster with each and every time it pops into my head. Not even having enough energy to keep thinking about the topic, I reach up and fix the ponytail that's keeping my awful hair out of my boring eyes.

Hours pass and only a few people have managed to come into the shop. One woman came in and asked if I had any animals, like she didn't know that it was a plant shop. Honestly, I get more of those kinds of people than I should and I've considered making a sign to put on the door that clearly says that it's a plant shop. My eyes flit towards the door and see that no one is coming, I walk over to my bag that I had dropped on the chair in the office and take out a sketchbook and a few pencils. The weight in my hand makes me grin a little as I take the materials back into the main room.

I drag over a stool from the corner and put it behind the counter so I can sit on it. The stool creeks under my weight but I ignore it, instead taking the book and flipping to an empty page that is yet to be filled my my drawings of stars and the different universes that sometimes swirl around my feet. My hand instinctively picks up a pencil and starts to sketch lines over the paper, as if it already knew what it was drawing. Every once in awhile a person would walk in and I would have to put the pencil down and stretch out my head before helping the person find a succulent or some marigolds.

As the day goes on, the dreams start to take hold again but not at a large scale. Sometimes it would be a comet shooting in between the racks of ivy's or a miniature black hole sucking up some pollen off of a tulip that I kept by the window. None of them bothered to drag me into their little world so I used them as muses to draw since I had long ago given up trying to draw something that wasn't space related. Every time I tried to draw a tree or an eye of some sorts, all of the leaves would turn into green planets and the purple for the eye would turn into a giant model of Saturn.

Finishing up the tiny features of the supernova that was exploding silently by the plant pots and wiping off the eraser bits that had accumulated on different unused parts of the paper, I carefully tear it out and grab a tack from the cup next to the register. Turning around and facing the wall behind me, I see all of the different pictures that I've drawn in the time that I've owned this place, fascinated by how each and every one of them signifies a different dream that I see inside my head or stars that I've seen in the sky. The wall is so crowded that all of them reach up to the ceiling and some overlap each other, every one of them competing to be seen by the people who navigate the store every day.

Laughing at my thinking, I turn around to greet a group of people who have just walked in the door, making the ever growing supernova disappear without a trace. My head turns to look at the people who are looking at each other and looking at all of the plants. One of the girls not even paying attention to where she goes crashes into my favorite plant, knocking it to the ground and shattering it everywhere on the floor that I had just swept. The rest of the friends just laugh as a boy shakes his head in disappointment with the girls clumsiness.

The first thing that pops into my head isn't that she just broke my favorite plants, but instead "This is just like my dream" My eyes widen as I realize that everything is just like what had happened in my seemingly normal dream that had happened last night. I jump over the counter and towards the girl, her head swivels around to see me and she starts to panic. "I'm so sorry! I didn't see it!" The girl drops back down to the floor and starts to pick up the pieces of the pot frantically. I shake my head, "No, it's okay don't worry about it." Going over to other side I grab a broom and dustpan and then walk over to start sweeping it up. The other four friends have walked over to the other side of the room and are looking at some seeds that I keep on a shelf.

What good friends they are, leaving a friend to do something on their own. Looking back at the girl I notice that she's not panicking any and is starting to swipe the different little parts of both the pot and the plant into a little pile. " I'm really sorry." She says scratching her head. I just shake my head, " I told you, it's fine." Both of us smile and get to work on picking everything up. We make conversation and in time the rest of her friends walk over and talk with us.

"I'm telling you, honey bee's are the cutest things on this earth!" One of the boys who I've come to known as Kit. His bouncy bright orange hair giving him a spark in his looks and one on the inside as well. I can't help but laugh as I dump the rest of the shards of plant pot into the garbage can and putting the broom with the dust pan back into it's place. The only other girl in the group that wasn't the one who crashed into my plant shakes her head and put's her hand on his shoulder, "Kit, how is it that something that can both give you an allergic reaction and immense pain be cute? That's just not possible!" Kit just sighs and turns to one of the other boys, Nate I think his name was.

Nate turns to Kit and just glares at him, though it doesn't work and Kit starts to blab on and on to him about bee's. " You gotta trust me, not Faith! She's wrong and you know this right?" I don't think that my brain processes that Kit's actually 24, not 15. Shaking my head I turn to the other guy who's talking to the girl. He see's me looking at him and walks over to me with his hand out. I do the same and shake his hand, "I'm Andromeda, what about you." He smiles at me, " The names Colt, and no it's not cult." He drops the smile and walks over to Kit who's getting more and more mad at Faith about the Bee thing.

I turn away from them stifling a laugh at just how interesting they are. The girl who I still don't know the name of starts to just laugh as she shakes her head, "Sorry for them, this is typical for them. It's not often we all get to see each other due to our work and other obligations." I smile, "Yeah, work can get you pretty caught up from doing a lot of things doesn't it?" She nods and turns to properly look at me.

" I'm Libra but I'm actually a Scorpio so I have no idea why that's my name" Libra as I now knows her smiles at me with a smile that's practically made of all the stars in the sky. My mouth lifts up into a grin and different planets start to pop out of the different plants and shelves around me and start to zoom around the room with a vigor I've never seen in them have before. I ignore them and look at Libra with an interest and hope that I don't think I've ever had before. "Nice to meet you Libra, I'm Andromeda. It's nice to meet another person whose parents named them after something in space." The smile grows on my face as she laughs. "Yeah, They were obsessed. I'm not so much but I do think it's a really cool topic and I suggest it to my patients when they come in to see me." Patients? The planets stop in their place as I try to think about what kind of doctor she could be.

"um, what kind of doctor are you? I never pegged you to do something like that." Once again she just laughs and put's a hand on my shoulder, " I'm a therapist, I know I'm a little young but I don't think 27 is that young" My eyebrows raise at her sentence, "That's a cool job. I just own a plant shop" I say with a chuckle. We both laugh as the conversation keeps going as we keep an eye on the bee conversation that Kit seems to be winning. At some point the group all converges back together and says bye to me, Libra apologizes for knocking over and effectively killing my favorite plant for the fifth time and they all head out the door, disappearing around the corner.

The smile on my face wears off as I realize that they are gone and black holes starts to swirl around the room, sucking out all of the planets in the leaves, and the stars in the flowers. Even a nebular that's been developing in the corner for a few weeks gets sucked into one. I look down at the counter and see that my sketch book is still open to a new blank page and grab the pencil that is still put down messily next to me. Thoughts rush through my head about the group of friends and how much I already miss them, by the time I come out of the entanglement of all the negative thoughts, I see that some how unconsciously, I drew the group of people who have been the closest people I've had to friends in a while.

Tears build up and roll down my face, and all I can do is shove the sketchbook away and cry into my arms with the hope that no one walks in to see me in such a horrible shape.

A/N enjoy this second chapter. I might have the next one up in less than a week.