Stop Squealing While I Smack

Since Habel started garden duty, life’s been a peach. Or more like a water fruit, you can’t get peaches on Otris. Not that it’s easy on Earth, they’re neigh near a pound of flesh, he’s heard (though that record may be dated). Regardless, life’s sure sweet as keeper of inventory: Habel’s solemn duty is to count profit. Stacks and sacs of energy, biomolecules and building equipment, and the occasional slurpy tube. That means early mornings and long days connecting floral partners, running exchange errands, nurturing the thirsty and drying the wet. The gardens are the Mythtuf’s prized creation, source of self-sustenance and accumulation of ecological wisdom. As the last bastion between him and the Quintreiser’s economy, the gardens keep Habel from labor he would rather die than do. He’ll shake hands with the withering bush if it grows its neighbors green.