Rosemary. Still alive, woody stems reaching up through the tangle.
Thyme clinging to the edges where the stones used to mark a border.
Something that might be lavender if I can uncover it and give it room to breathe.
This garden wants attention, not precision. It doesn't need someone to impose order on it, just someone to help it remember what it was trying to be. Nothing like Ragon's yard where every trimmed hedge was a small act of control, every flower bed a statement, every blade of grass measured and regulated to within an inch of its life.
This garden doesn't care if I'm perfect.
It just wants someone to notice it's still fighting.
I can work with that.
I'm elbow-deep in dirt when a memory surfaces.
The lake. Around my second year with Ragon's pack.
It was one of those perfect summer days where the heat sits heavy on your shoulders and the air feels thick enough to swim through. Drake wanted everyone in the water. He kept trying to cajole us off our towels and into the lake like an overgrown puppy.
I didn't want to go in.
My hair was down, wavy and loose, and if I got in the lake it would turn into an absolute mess. Frizz and tangles and hours of combing it out later while Drake apologized and Eli pretended he couldn't hear me cursing.
"I'm good here," I told Drake from my towel on the shore.
Eli appeared a few minutes later with a book he'd grabbed from the car and a sweating glass of iced tea.
"Thought you might want these," he said, setting them down next to me with that careful gentleness he always had. The tea was sweet and cold and perfect.
"You're a saint," I said.
"I try." He sat next to me on the sand, close enough that our shoulders touched, and pulled out his own book.
We sat like that for a while, comfortable in the quiet, before I asked about his shift the day before. His face lit up like it always did when he had a good story.
"Oh man, you're going to love this," he said, leaning in conspiratorially. "This woman, must've been eighty, walks in yesterday and immediately looks me up and down. 'Are you the doctor?' she demands. I say yes, and she goes, 'You look twelve. Does your mother know you're playing doctor?' Then she points at my stethoscope and says, 'That better not touch me until you wash your hands twice. Once for whatever you touched last and once for whatever you're planning to touch next.' When I tried to take her blood pressure, she slapped my hand away and said, 'The cuff is too cold, the room is too warm, and those walls are an abomination. Who chose that color? Fire them immediately.'
I laughed so hard I almost spilled my tea. "What did you say?"
"I told her my mother was very proud and that I had a medical degree to prove I wasn't playing." He was grinning, eyes bright behind his glasses. "She said the degree was probably fake and demanded to see my supervisor. I told her he fired me that morning for choosing the wallpaper."
"No."
"Yes. So I got another doctor, and she took one look at him and said 'this one's worse, he looks ten.'"
I was crying laughing by that point, and Eli nudged my shoulder with his. "That could be you one day. Terrorizing young medical professionals."
"I would never."
"You absolutely would. You'd be the worst patient. You'd ask if they washed their hands twice and demand to see their credentials."
"That's just good hygiene and due diligence—"
I didn't get to finish because Drake appeared out of nowhere, scooped me off the ground before I could react, and ran toward the water while I screamed.
"Drake! No! My hair!"
"Your hair will be fine!"
