Dune stopped by Kama’s table and right on top of the bowl of stones was a jagged purple rock that said Nourish. Dune smiled, feeling like her mother was proud of her. Then she wiped the rock as a test and, once again, the letters came off in a thin green film that stained her thumb. “What the fuck?” She looked around, feeling a little disconcerted, a little dumb, a little played by what appeared to be ancestral jokes.

She carried some of the mystery greens upstairs and showed them to Mama Vivian, who cocked an eyebrow at her and then returned to looking out the window. Dune wondered, not for the first time, if her grandmother was just deeply unimpressed by her. She was the shy daughter and granddaughter of adults who had filled up all available space with words, analysis, cutting each other off to get their points across. It had been easy for Dune to take on a listener shape in her family. But now it was hard not to take the silence personally.

The old woman had given up speaking, she no longer needed a listener. And Dune didn’t know how to fill space. Most of the time it felt like she had too much happening in her head to get it coherent in her mouth.

Carrying the mysterious vegetables back down the stairs, Dune decided to ride around and check out the other community gardens nearby, reconnaissance to clear her head.

The gardens she knew of were at 2nd and Willis, down John R and a big one on Warren, in the southernmost corner of Wayne State. The Wayne State Garden had security and looked as it were being well tended. The other two were ripe with unpicked food.

She was not alone as she entered these, there were others with baskets, plastic bags, cardboard crates. A trio was gathering greens methodically in the corner, their faces covered. They didn’t look up.

Dune started in the other corner where no one was working. She didn’t feel guilty for entering these gardens and no one looked askance at her as she began to part the greens and try to figure out what was in the dirt. The abundance of the gardens amazed Dune and she couldn’t figure out how anyone ever learned to know what they were looking at. She could tell broccoli from eggplant, but just barely.

There were nods, grunts of hello, and she overheard the low murmur of news being exchanged. Everything was done at a distance, each person or group setting their own cone of safety about them, holding it without words.