Green Fingers and Gentle Whispers
Posted on Tue May 20th, 2025 @ 7:09am by Tristi Richardson
Mission:
Season 6: Echoes of the Zynari
Location: Botany labs- USS Elysium
Timeline: MD4 16h00
677 words - 1.4 OF Standard Post Measure
Tristi Richardson knelt among the rows of seedlings in the secondary botany lab, hands deep in the loamy soil of a planter bed. A stubborn Terran tomato sprout was refusing to thrive, and for once, she wasn’t letting that go unanswered.
“This one's just being dramatic,” she muttered, tucking her long sleeves back up over her elbows. “Like half the kids in xenobotany class.”
The room was quiet except for the hum of grow-lights and the rhythmic hiss of the climate system maintaining the perfect environment for flora that didn’t even share the same solar system. Tristi liked the quiet here. No judgment. No whispers about where she came from, or sneers at how she spoke sometimes, or the silent stares when she didn’t know an answer fast enough in class.
The plants didn’t care.
Here, she wasn’t the girl from Rigel’s gutters. She was just Tristi. The one who talked to vines like they could talk back.
Today, though… the silence had something else hidden in it.
She felt it before she saw anything. A flutter. Not of leaves. Of… energy?
She looked up quickly. Nothing.
And yet… the lights over the Tellarite ferns flickered—once, twice—before glowing a little greener. Like they were happy. That made no sense, of course, but the sensation stuck in her chest like a tiny laugh.
Then she noticed the vines of the Rigellian Ivy—normally sluggish and stubborn—curling up the inside of the glass terrarium. Forming…
Letters?
Her brow furrowed. “That’s not possible…”
The vines gently arranged themselves into a shape. Slanted. Careful.
“TRISTI”
She blinked, mouth falling slightly open.
“...Who did that?”
A soft titter, like laughter caught in windchimes, echoed faintly near the ceiling. Tristi stood up quickly, her boots scuffing the deck.
More vines began shifting, their motion graceful and rhythmic, as if dancing. A second message formed, woven in a spiral across the edge of the fern bed.
“You are more than their words.”
Her heart clenched.
Another swirl of faint motion tickled the edges of her vision. A shimmer—not entirely visible, but present all the same. Like something had brushed the air, or thought about becoming solid but hadn’t quite decided.
The hydropod light turned soft pink, washing over the sprouts. A tiny bell-shaped bloom popped open on a plant that hadn’t flowered in weeks.
Tristi stepped forward, reaching out slowly. “Are you… a ghost?” she whispered.
There was no reply.
But a floating spark drifted into the planter bed and curled a line of dirt into a gentle spiral. A play gesture. A nudge.
Not a ghost.
Something playful.
Alive.
Watching.
She grinned despite herself, lowering her voice like she was telling a secret. “You're not from Starfleet, are you? You’re one of them… the Zynari.”
A faint shimmer pulsed in the corner, followed by a puff of pollen that smelled like fresh earth and mint.
Tristi laughed quietly—a rare, genuine sound. “You are! You’re messing with the others… but this—” she looked around at the glowing vines, the flowers blooming out of season, the soft colors warming the cold lab “—this isn’t a prank.”
This was a gift.
No one else had said anything kind to her all week. No one had noticed when she stayed after class to catch up on her reading. No one had helped when she'd been tripped during lunch two days ago.
But they had.
She sat down again in the soil, cross-legged, dirt-stained and smiling. “Thanks,” she whispered.
The Zynari, hiding just beyond her eyes, shimmered brighter for a second—then vanished with a ripple of gold and green that ran down the walls like falling leaves.
Tristi reached into her pocket, pulled out a half-broken datapadd, and started writing a message she hadn’t been brave enough to send to her tutor.
“Hi. I was wondering if I could try the extra reading again? I think I’m ready now.”
The lab stayed softly lit long after she left.
