Planting Dreams

Samantha is taught a lesson about life. Daily Flash Winner!

Samantha sat on the porch, the air warm with the hush of summer, remembering the way her grandmother used to sit in that same rocking chair, telling her about life while shelling peas into a rusted metal bowl.

“Life is a seed,” her grandmother had said once, brushing a curl from Samantha’s young face. “You plant it, and you care for it, but you can’t always see what it will grow into. That’s the dream, Sam. You plant the dream, not just the seed.”

She remembered how her grandmother’s hands smelled of earth, and the scent of lavender lingering in her apron. Samantha had listened with her legs swinging off the porch, while a crow cawed from the fence post, black feathers glinting blue under the sun. Her grandmother Ruby had looked at that crow and laughed, calling it her “old friend, always watching,” as if even the world’s darkest things had a place in her gentle understanding of life.

Now, years later, Samantha cupped a seed in her own hand, feeling its promise against her skin. She thought about how her grandmother never stopped dreaming, even when the doctor’s visits became frequent, when her hair fell out in soft clumps on the pillow. “Keep dreaming, Sam,” she had whispered, “even if the crows come to watch.”

The crow still visited, perched on the fence like a sentry, as she dug her fingers into the earth, planting a seed like her grandmother had before she passed.

Samantha pressed it deep, whispered her dreams into the soil, and smiled softly as the crow cawed again, reminding her that life would grow, despite fear, despite loss, because her grandmother’s dreams still lived in her, waiting to bloom.

Word Count: 285
Prompt: Write a story that includes the words: seed, dream, crow
Written for: "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"