Sometimes when Benji was alone with Rick, he strongly disagreed with Nella’s decision not to incinerate the plant when the Living Plant Collection had asked her to. The first few times he’d gone alone to use the plantworking, the plant had been reticent, and his vines and leaves had bristled just as they had before they wrapped him in their almost fatal embrace. It didn’t inspire confidence, especially without Nella there to save him. Fortunately, the actual plantworking was easy enough, a more involved application of a growth dampening working they’d learned in their third week. The plantworking did little more than ask the plant to feel content with its current shape. It was easy to tell if it was working, as the resulting contentment caused Rick to visibly relax, his botanical hackles no longer raised. The less nice part was that Rick always seemed to forget that he enjoyed its effects until Benji actually started, and would begin each session with complaints about his abilities, technique, and overall value as a human being.

  “You’re no Nella, that’s for sure,” Rick said on this particular afternoon when the sun was high and Benji wished to be anywhere except underground.

  “Few can be,” Benji replied. “I’m doing my best.”

  One of the orchid-like flowers bobbed beside him. “It’s like you’re intentionally trying to pinch me. Why can’t you diffuse the working the way Nella does rather than hammering it into my stem like you’re trying to saw it off?”

  “Maybe I’m trying to saw it off.”

  “Ha ha.” Rick did not possess the ability to laugh, although he didn’t let that stop him from producing sarcastic approximations of humor. More often than not, he accompanied it with flares of vines that came menacingly close to Benji’s still tender shins.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask—and I promise this isn’t related to whether or not we should saw them off—are your flowers like . . . your head? Like, is that where your brain is?”

  There was a long silence. The flower pinched together, giving the impression of narrowed eyes. “I am a destroyer of worlds. I do not need something as primitive as a brain.”

  “I just don’t know where your consciousness lives, that’s all.”

  “Plant consciousness is a thing of flow and exchange. It does not live in a meat puddle the way it does with humans.”

  Benji tried not to flinch at the expression “meat puddle.”

  “Here’s maybe a more relevant question. At least when it comes to the continued existence of my meat puddle.”

  “Continue,” Rick said, obviously pleased.

  “I know you’re a Worldeater, and that’s cool. I get it. But when it comes to destroying entire cities—”

  “Or continents.”

  “Of course. Well, I guess I’m wondering whether you would rather we didn’t do all these plantworkings to stop you from growing. Are we keeping you from fulfilling your purpose by not letting you kill us all?”

  Benji had found, when speaking with beings of a herbaceous persuasion, that it was best to be direct and honest.

  Rick considered this question for an uncomfortably lengthy stretch of time. It was long enough for Benji to finish the plantworking and take a steadying breath. It wasn’t the most complicated working, but it still tired him.

  “I wish to draw a distinction between my ultimate form, and my purpose,” Rick said. “When one of my kind reaches its full size, it dies thereafter. I do not wish for my own death”

  “But isn’t there some biological imperative that pushes you toward that result?”

  A second flower emerged from the wall. Both flowers shrugged. “I don’t know about all that. I just know that eating cities brings trouble, and I don’t wish to start that kind of trouble until I’m good and ready.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Benji noted, with a deep sliver of apprehension, that Rick’s response hadn’t once questioned the ethics of consuming human civilizations. Plant ethics probably worked slightly differently. Nella would know, although Benji thought she might also be more likely to agree with the plants than with the humans.

  ***

  That evening, there was a knock on Benji’s door and he was surprised to find Nella standing on the other side of it. Even in the moments when he allowed himself a flight of fantasy, it didn’t seem possible that Nella would actually visit him here. She lived in off-campus housing paid for by her plantworking fellowship, so she rarely visited the dorms on the north side of campus.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to drop in like this,” Nella said.

  “No, please. Come in.”

  Benji looked around regretfully at his unadorned room. A lifetime of sharing too small a space with his parents had forced him into a habit of tidiness, but where most other students hung artwork or tapestries, Benji’s room felt drab and standard issue. The fire he’d made earlier in the evening had long since died down, leaving behind only the room’s warmth. Despite Benji’s offer of a place to sit—the chair by the desk being the obvious candidate—Nella paced the room. She seemed distracted enough not to notice the bare walls.

  “Rick is growing,” she said after her third pass over the same section of carpet.

  Benji gulped.

  “We’re not doing enough. Over the past few days I haven’t been able to get away often enough to use the working on him, not with Matilde watching me.”

  “Probably a bad time to mention this.” Benji was leaning against the bedpost awkwardly. “Matilde confronted me yesterday. She thinks I’m wrapped up in whatever it is you’re doing. I don’t think she knows what ‘it’ is, but she seems to think it’s something subterranean.”

  Nella slapped her own forehead so hard that Benji winced, worried she’d given herself a concussion. “Nooooooo.” Her expression was serious, and a little bashful. “I’m sorry for bringing you into this. I never wanted to get you in trouble.”

  “I did find the trouble myself. You did nothing wrong.”

  “You could still walk away.”

  That fact hung in the warm air between them. Benji wouldn’t even need to rat her out in order to save himself. He could simply stop showing up, leaving Nella and Rick to their fate. He was reminded of how little he really knew this woman, especially by how clearly her expression betrayed that she thought he might do it.

  Deciding that somebody had to sit in the chair, Benji crossed the room and set himself down in it with a heavy sigh.

  “We need more people we can trust,” Benji said. “If I can only use the teashop entrance, and you’re being watched, then we need at least two more people who can run the plantworking. No offense to my plantworking abilities, but how important is it that they be a good plantworker? Could just about anyone with basic training do it?”

  Nella nodded, obviously grateful that Benji had skipped over any consideration of leaving her on her own.

  “I have someone in mind, although she’s not the best plantworker,” Benji said. “I think she would help, although it might require something from you.”

  “I’ll do whatever.”

  “Even join a somewhat silly group of magical elitists?”

  Nella groaned so loudly Benji feared she might whack her forehead again. “How did I know this was going to be a mistake?”

  “Jurni’s the one person here I know I can trust. And aside from that, she’s a bioworker, and cares about other sentient creatures just as much as humans. She’d want to help.”

  “For a price, of course.”

  “Well, think about it. It might actually be decent cover if you can explain your absences as an initiation into the Completists. Some sort of hazing ritual?”

  “I want to help Rick, but I also don’t want to be hazed!”

  Benji put up placating hands. He didn’t know if he could handle a full-on breakdown from his classroom assistant in his bedroom.

  “I’m sure we can get them to forego the actual hazing. It seems silly for a tenth-year, anyway.”

  “Silly for all years,” Nella grumbled.

  “No argument there,” Benji said, laughing even though the tension hadn’t really eased. He reached out a hand to Nella, who stared at it as if he was offering her a raw eel. Then, seeming to settle, she took it. “We’re in this together, alright? I’ll talk to Jurni. You think about whether there’s anyone else you can trust. Even better if they’re not a student.”

  Nella nodded. “Thank you, Benji. I really thought I was going to leave here fully on my own.”

  Later there would be time to consider what had happened in Nella’s life that caused her to expect people not to stay by her side in her most difficult moments. For now, Benji let go of her hand and aimed his most genuine smile at her. “Come on, I didn’t come to the university not to get embroiled in magical plots and schemes.”

  “I wish there was a scheme. I’m just running around at random trying not to make things worse.”

  “Then I’ll be right there, running around just as randomly.”

  When Nella’s hand went to her head this time, it was gentle, to smooth back hair that had been flaring wildly. “It’s comforting to know that other people have just as little idea what they’re doing.”