The Glowing Succulent
"Okay, open your eyes," James told her after he unboxed the gift and placed it on the table.
The air in Vanessa's Astoria apartment was very humid due to the large collection of plants. It was basically stepping through a jungle. Large green leaves filtered the light through the window, requiring overhead lights to be on even during the day just to see. Terracotta pots crowded the windowsill and most corners. Although James was a bit spooked the first time he came over, it was clear how happy it made Vanessa.
Vanessa had no idea what he had gotten her as a birthday gift, but she had her suspicions. He had the excitement in his voice that he'd usually used for a new phone or gadget being released. She heard something ceramic clinking on her coffee table and she couldn't guess what that meant.
She lowered her hands and looked down, where she saw a small, pale green succulent. Its leaves were arranged in a tight circle that looked eerily symmetrical. It was pretty, but had a certain uncanniness she didn't feel with most plants.
"It's a very nice plant," she said flatly, trying to sound polite.
"It's better than the other plants. It's a Luminflora, one of the first consumer-grade plants that can actually glow in the dark," James clarified, practically vibrating in his seat. "They infuse photosensitive carbon nanoparticles during the germination phase. So during the day it absorbs photons from ambient light, as it does now. Then, at night, a biochemical trigger releases the particles to release the energy as a soft phosphorescence."
James leapt out of his seat and raced to the light switch to flip it off. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a faint rose glow started emanating from the edges of the leaves. It wasn't a harsh glare of an LED like the overhead lights. It looked more like a soft starlight.
"It's a living nightlight!" James grinned. "No waste. And no CO2. It's the future of light, both beautiful and functional."
Vanessa had to agree there was a certain beauty to it, in a technological way. Yet it didn't feel like a plant. Instead, it felt like one of James's gadgets. It was a solution to a problem she didn't have.
"Is it sterile?" she asked.
"Absolutely," he continued to smile, viewing it as a technical question she was curious about. "It's a key safety feature for all bioforms sold by the Marble Biolabs. And the state has mandated it since '29. It's perfectly contained. It won't spread or compete with the local environment."
Contained. Her plants grew and changed. They were unpredictable because they were living things. Yet this succulent was designed to be a perfect, sterile object. It just happened to photosynthesize.
"Wow, James, it's really clever," she forced the words out.
"So you like it?" he looked at her face for a sign.
"I do," she lied, leaning in to kiss him and hide her face.
She picked up the pot. It felt cold in her hands. She looked around at her chaotic apartment greenery to find the best spot for it. Thinking for a moment, she walked over to her bookshelf. It was already overcrowded. She nudged aside the pot of fern and placed it next to it. The succulent's glow instantly looked out of place next to the fern's delicate fronds.
James meanwhile had pulled up the plant's care manual on his watch, explaining each step with specific measurements of water and sunlight. She kept her back turned so he couldn't see her roll her eyes.
The high-speed train whispered them from Queens to DC in under two hours, gliding across several states in the blink of an eye. The cherry blossoms were a spectacular sight: an explosion of pink color that accented the usual marble white monuments.
James excitedly brought up historical facts on his watch as they walked through the city streets to the Jefferson Memorial. Vanessa simply tried to enjoy the sweet scent of the flowers.
Once they returned to their hotel room on the top floor, the organic world felt far away. The floors was made of polished tiles. The walls were a pale white with only a small abstract painting hanging over the bedframe. The window was a singular pane of smart glass which transitioned to an opaque black at the touch of a button, sealing them away from the world. James quickly fell asleep, exhausted from a long day of enthusiastic sightseeing.
She lay next to him but couldn't get to sleep. The room was dark, but not the gentle, layered dark of her bedroom. This was a manufactured blackness, completely isolating her from light. The place felt claustrophobic. The only thing piercing the thick silence was the quiet whoosh of the climate system pumping air through the space. The air tasted sterile.
She rolled onto her side, away from James, and stared at the crimson time blinking on the bedside clock. She missed the earthy scent of her sleeping plants and being able to see the faint moonlight peeking in against her far wall. Then she thought of her other light.
She had judged her small glowing succulent as a gimmick, but in the past week it had quietly joined her nights. The glow was soft, not like the glaring clock next to her. The glow rose and fell like it was breathing, as a living companion.
She tossed over again. The sheets felt cold against her skin. She missed the tangle of her vines and the fuzzy texture of her ferns.
The ride back on the train was a silent blur to Vanessa. Her sipped her coffee quietly and tried to keep her eyes closed. The eastern seaboard streaking past the window. James was already hard at work planning ideas for their next trip, talking with the AI in his watch to pull up potential destinations and explaining out loud the potential opportunities of each with his usual cheeriness. She just nodded along, happy to go along with wherever he wanted. The lack of sleep had left her feeling frayed. Her head felt dull and heavy. She just wanted to get home and nap.
The biggest relief of the day was when the apartment door clicked shut behind them. She took a big whiff of soil and life and she could feel her body instantly relax.
"Home sweet home," James dropped their bags against the door. "I'm craving some Thai food. You want me to order some for you?"
"Yeah, the usual," she murmured, drifting towards her bedroom.
The afternoon light was soft as it filtered through her curtains and leaves on the windowsill. Then she saw the succulent sitting on the bookshelf, hidden behind the thriving fern. Its elegant leaves had puckered and shriveled. The pale green had dulled to sickly hue. A few had even turned yellowish. The light, or lack thereof, had made her heart clench. The pathetic flicker showed how much pain it was in.
All her skepticism about its unnatural origins faded away. It was a living thing and it was dying because she had abandoned it. She had treated it like another simple gadget and it was suffering because of that.
She picked up the pot with a mothering tenderness. The ceramic was cold and the soil within was bone dry.
"I will heal you," she whispered to it.
For the next hour, she worked with an intense focus. Her Thai food grew cold in the kitchen as she carefully paged through the care manual.
For optimal photon absorption and nocturnal luminescence, Luminflora requires a minimum of six hours of direct, unfiltered sunlight daily. Its vascular system requires more frequent hydration than standard succulents to help nanoparticle flow.
It needed more. More light, more water. Its unique biology had more demands of her attention. She had just stuck it in a shady corner like a fern, failing it on the most basic level.
Carefully, Vanessa drew it out of the pot and felt its fragile roots. They were brittle and dry. She grabbed a new terracotta pot and filled it with a custom soil that she usually reserved for her delicate orchids. She tipped her watering can into the new pot, providing it with a long drink of filtered water.
Then she placed it on her bedside table, right in the spot that caught the bright sun every morning. She moved her dog-eared novel and small ceramic bird to the bookshelf in its place.
"There, now you'll get all the sun you need," she touched one of its frail leaves.
She watched it carefully over the next week. Every morning she rotated the pot to ensure the light struck each side evenly. Every evening she watered it and checked the soil. Miraculously it began to respond. The leaves plumped up, starting at the center. Then the light started to change. Each night it grew brighter and warmer to the welcoming starlight she remembered from the first night.
Her sleep returned, deeper than it had been in years. The light from her succulent was a silent companion providing her with a steady presence.
Saturday morning, James let himself in with his key with a box of donuts in his hands. He found the apartment quiet. He crept towards the bedroom and peeked through a crack in the door.
Vanessa was curled on her side fast asleep. The room was covered in the glow from the succulent, which was now thriving. Her hand rested just beside it, as if she had reached for it in her sleep.
Just as he was about to back away, she turned and opened her eyes.
"Hey," she murmured.
"Hey, back," he whispered. "The succulent looks good."
"It's happy now," she sat up. "It wasn't getting enough light."
She looked at the plant then back to him.
"At first, I thought it was just a gadget. But it's not. It needed me. When I started caring for it properly, I realized it really was my plant. And its light is just its way of thanking me."