“I thought we were going back to the garden, why are we here?”

Gale stood in front of a large barn near the edge of the wheat fields. The garden was just a bit further beyond this point, but his body had pulled him towards the barn when he tried to go past it. He could see lights flickering in the barn and when he slid the door open and entered, he saw the familiar fires and ashen skin of the other slaves. They were all asleep, lying together on the dirt floor or sitting next to each other on the hay bales that lined the wall with their heads resting just out the window, presumably to not set the barn on fire. They weren’t the late teenagers he was with that morning, they looked older, stronger but more scarred as well. Gale opened his mouth to say something, but eyes glazed, and his throat tensed uncontrollably, and he found he couldn’t say anything.
            “I don’t understand. I was allowed to talk to others when I was being trained. When was I ordered not to?” He thought. Gale sighed sadly and found a place near the others to sleep.
            “I’ll try talking to them again in the morning…” he thought as he drifted off.
 

Gale was only able to sleep for a few hours before being awoken. A loud banging noise was coming from outside. He looked around but everyone else was still asleep, they didn’t even look disturbed, were they used to it? He got up and tried to slide the barn door to exit but his body wouldn’t let him. He tried to peak out the window, but his body wouldn’t let him extend his head very far. The best he could do is hold his ear to the door.
            “It sounds like… do they really have someone building this late?” He thought.
The banging kept on but with nothing else to do, he eventually settled back down. Sleep eventually winning over as the loud obnoxious knocking began to feel more like a harmless rhythmic pattern.

Gale woke up slowly to a strange sight. After rubbing his blurry eyes trying to comprehend it, he realised he was standing at the edge of his quadrant, the familiar garden in the distance. Gale squinted in confusion and rubbed his eyes again before it dawned on him.
            “It moved me while I was sleeping!” He said, exasperated.
Grumpily he began his walk, but when he got closer his frustration quickly faded as he noticed someone standing in the garden. She had a wooden cart and was unloading unrooted plants onto the ground.
She had a thinner build and was a bit older than him, but she had the same fire on her head. When Gale got to the garden she looked up and he opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He remembered what he learned last night.
            “At the very least I can wave” He thought, lifting his hand. But he stopped halfway up. “Am I not allowed to communicate at all? I can’t even smile” He thought, trying his hardest to move his mouth.
She simply looked into his eyes, her face was blank, but in her eyes was a look of sad understanding. Gale looked back in the same way, its all he could do. It was only for a minute, and then she took her cart and left.

“Is this really it? Is this how I spend the rest of my life?” He thought, watching her walk away. “The king can control my body with just a word. What could I possibly do?!” He thought anger boiling up him.
As the woman with the cart rounded the corner, another slave appeared, turning the corner at the same time. He looked much like Gale, if only a bit older and he carried the same style of sword at his side that Gale was using the night before.

“Tch, I guess they even have us patrolling in the day…” He thought, irritated.

Gale stared for a second before his expression lightened, an idea had struck him. He looked back over at plants placed on the ground by the women. There was a bounty of small flowers, roots, and all and ready for planting. Most prominent were lavender plants, bright purple flowers in full bloom, he grabbed a few and moved near to the path the slave was walking down. Without the time to grab a trowel, he used his palm instead and plunged it into the ground to create a small hole to place a plant in. When he place the lavender plant in and packed down the soil he did it again with another beside it. He kept doing this until a small line of lavender bordered the path that the slave was walking up. Once the slave was closer, he made no attempt to communicate with Gale, he clearly already knew that he could not. But to Gale’s delight, he looked down at the lavender as he walked past…

            And he smiled.

He wasn’t smiling at Gale; Gale knew he couldn’t. He was smiling at the flowers. Gale stood up as other slave finished walking past and turned back to face the path. Beaming, Gale dusted the dirt from his hand and looked on as he walked away.

“Maybe I can’t communicate with you, but if I cover your patrol route in flowers, then maybe I can make your days here a little bit brighter.” Gale thought.
Gale looked back at the flowers placed on the ground.

“But I’ll need more flowers...” He pondered. When he walked back over to the flowers, he noticed a piece of parchment and a sharp white feather affixed to a plank of wood. At the top of the parchment, a message was written in dark red.
            “Write requests here and a supplier will find and retrieve what you need. If you have excess of anything, place it in the open with this board and in the morning, it will be disposed of or taken to a location where it can be repurposed.”

Gale took the sharp white feather and pricked his arm with it. The vane of the feather began to rhythmically pulse in a motion that could only be described as sucking as the nib began to fill with a crimson red that spread throughout out the rest of the feather. When the bottom half of the feather was filled with a bright crimson, he yanked out the feather with some force. Barbs now visible on the nib began to retract. He observed the feather for a moment, moving it side to side. Without moving it, it looked like a normal feather that was half red and half white but when he tipped it, the red colour in the feather moved around with the fluidity of ink in a jar. He put the nib to the parchment and squeezed it, the feather began pulsing in reverse as a drop of blood started gathering at the point.

Naturally, Gale tried to write “hello”, but when his body wouldn’t move, he sighed and settled for:
            “More lavender.”
Gale picked up some more lavender plants and placed down the board, looking at it with an air of hope.
            “I have to be hopeful. One day, I’ll be able to talk to someone again, I know it.” He thought.

Gale continued his routine each day. Those days would turn into months and then years, yet he still wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone. While he hated the nightly patrols, he revelled in the gardening and as he grew taller, stronger, the garden grew with him. It became dense with colour and lush foliage with lavender being a major highlight after taking a fondness to it. He had also installed bird feeders and an elegant fountain that doubled as a bird bath turning the garden into an oasis of life and sound.
Yet, he had talked to no one.