#6 - Afternoon Gardening

"It does, doesn't it?"

Thorne stared at the plant in awe. It had such an interesting blue bauble at the top, and so many intricately interwoven vines. He tugged on his gloves and set aside the school sheers to peer at it for a moment more. There weren't berries or flowers, just the blue puff, so after his inspection he reached to try and nip off that top-

And the plant moved, lashing out at him like a serpent.

Or, no, that wasn't accurate. It was more like a squid or an octopus, wrapping around his forearm and giving it a sharp twist before it coiled tight to his skin. He let out a yelp and grabbed for it, trying to tug it off of him. The more he pulled, the tighter it wrapped, until he could feel his fingers start to tingle.

A wave of crossness swelled up in him, uncharacteristically strong. He'd been looking forward to harvesting this plant. Why did it have to be so rude?

After a titanic struggle of several minutes, he reclaimed his now smarting hand and retreated beyond the plant's apparent reach. So. Grabbing it was out of the question. He rummaged through his things and found his net. It was a nice, sturdy thing and he hadn't actually used it for anything yet. He thought for a moment, then took up the sheers again-

And then set them down again, making his way to the tools at the front of the greenhouse to fetch several more pairs.

Hopefully, his plan would work, the plant would admit defeat and not, in fact, realize that he had armed it.

The plant coiled threateningly when he stretched out his first pair of sheers, lashing out - and he let it, watching the tendrils wrap around the sheers' handle like spaghetti around a fork. Instead of fighting it, he let it wrap, until the sheers were down by the base of the plant, all tangled up in vines that now couldn't move because of the sheers caught within.

"Ha!" It had worked!!

He tried again, and the plant repeated its defensive coiling, wrapping so tight around the next pair of sheers that he could have sworn he heard the wooden handle creak. He winced at that, but nothing snapped. He'd just have to check that pair when he'd overcome his planty enemy.

It took him twenty minutes to get the rest of the vines wrapped out of the way, including one incredibly stressful misstep where a thin tendril he'd overlooked managed to get a deathgrip on his thumb- but in the end he stared down at a plant that looked like a weird, poorly executed topiary bush.

The puffball seemed to stare at him malevolently. He took his net in sweaty, sore, slightly scratched fingers and used it like a wilderness guide pinning down a snake - the net securely over the puffball to pin the stem down to the workbench. The plant continued to flail and he hurriedly used his last pair of sheers to clip it completely off.

The result was almost immediate. The once intimidating coils and vines withered and browned, loosening their grip on the various tools he'd borrowed to harvest the pollen. He lifted the net, using it to poke one of the tendrils cautiously...it simply fell away.

He breathed a sigh of relief, jumping when something rustled--

But it was simply a stem falling over. The plant was well and truly dead, except for that vibrant little ball of pollen. He ever so carefully scooped it into a jar, and started to clean up his disaster of a workbench. He had never expected harvesting a simple plant to be this difficult!

He washed all the sheers he'd borrowed, carefully placing them back where they belonged before he cleaned up the rest of the mess, sweeping up dead plant and scattered dirt alike.