Seasonal Quests: A Stranger in Spring

In hindsight, it had been very clear. Prominent, in fact. A blaring red stop sign that lights the way of destiny. For the opposite of green was purple, and guess what? Eighter-eight percent of Hysi is in some shade of purple. So, it seems to be only fate that another forray into gardening ended up in a disaster.

"Bleh!" Hysi spits out a mouthful of hyacinth leaves. Or perhaps, based on the tingly sensation on her tongue, they were mint leaves. Whatever it was, it left a bitter aftertaste of defeat as she stares at yet again, another failed attempt. Sue her- she doesn't wield Nature magik. She's an arcane sorceress, someone who's able to use Raw magik. She's supposed to be the most versatile, and yet...

Broken pots filled with loose, loamy, foamy soil litter the floor. Plants that dried up and withered away were like dead bodies, piling on top of one another. Other plants drowned and suffocated due to great flooding of water that clogged up the soils. And finally, the latest failure- a house plant that was supposed to be the size of an Arcanai that shot up way too quick, and way too fast, growing and growing until it cracked the stone roof above.

Hysi huffs, and begins the cleaning process yet once more.

Some may say that she's stuck in a sunk cost fallacy. Fair enough. If anyone had told her a few days ago that she'd be huffing and puffing over potted plants she'll write them off as a nutcase.

And yet, she was here, mentally preparing herself for yet another round of trial and error. Although she is not naturally adept at the magic of flora, and perhaps even unnaturally defint of the forces of nature, she is determined to push through and try and try until she gets it right.

She's Hysi, a being overflowing with raw magik, who faced and survived so much challenges - there was no way a small plant is beyond the edge of her limits.

Hysi repairs all of the pots, mixes the soils together, and salvages the plants she could. For those that were too broken after her anti-green thumb, she mixes them into the soil, hoping to create some sort of natural fertiliser.

If one couldn't tell that she had no idea what she was doing from the little snippets that they see, that train of thought would be the biggest signifier to say that truly, Hysi was way out of her depth.

"Note: experiment number fourteen failed due to too much magik... readjusting parameters, lowering by 50%." Hysi said out loud, dictating the floating quill yards away on a table, where any mishaps should not ruin the pristine white pages.

She bring together a plat, with all of the mixed soils and a big pot, and sorts them artificially. She breathes in.

'Okay, you can do it Hysi, it's just a dumb plant, it shouldn't be so hard.'

She gathers a handful of Magik imbued with the properties of growth, stabillity, and protection, and breathes it out towards the green plant.

For the first few seconds there seemed to be no reaction. Hysi paused, trying to decide if she should move forwards to inspect what had gone wrong with the previous spell. However, as sounds of cracking became audible, the plany begins to trmble, before rocketing towards the direction that hysi was standing in and-

"Ouch!" Hysi careens backwards, wings not stopping her tumble as she was woefully underprepared of being punched in the eye socket by a wayward, rebellious plant. "Oof!"

She lands on the ground, glass limbs skidding against the stones and creating an awful sound that caused her to cringe.

'At least it wasn't the working eye...' Hysi thought to herself and she gets back up, inspecting the damage. The plant had grown much less than the last one, but almost like it heard her calling it dumb, had shot towards Hysi like a seeking spell, locked on to the target no matter what happened.

Or maybe it's because plants grow towards sunlight, due to nutients and stuff- what would Hysi know?

"Note: Experiment number 15, half as much growth magik as the  experiment number 14. Conclusion? Plants can hear your thoughts." Hysi closes the book, and sighs, sinking down onto the floor. She's so ired, having had fought with the wildness of nature all day. Wearily, she feels her eyelids dropping down, even though she needs to clean up the place again...

Hysi wakes up to the soft fluttering of leaves-

A small fluttering of leaves?

Her eyes snape wide open, and she gasps in awe at the plant that was still just... standing there? with no differences from how it looked last night. It didn't die, it didn't dry up or drown or explode or anything like that- what had happened? What was the variable that changed?

It took too long for her to realise that in her enthusiasm of gardening, she had been giving the plant too much, when all nature needed was just enough.