By the third, they were launching seeds into space, growing their ships outside the atmosphere via the cunning systems they had built into the first two, which nurtured and cultivated the growth of the supporting beams, the turn of the guiding limbs. Their technology was entirely biological, but they had learned from species that worked in metal, in crystal, in everything under a hundred suns.

The first two ships remained in orbit around the homeworld, while the others, still growing, set out to see a universe, understand it, and consume it.

“Without them, there would be no us,” said First. “We are the sum of a million gardens, a million different worlds. We contain and preserve everything they were.”

“Why does it have to be ‘were’? Why can’t it be ‘are’?”

“Because they do not understand.” One of the ships reached the world that had birthed a known host species. Those templated upon that species made first contact, boarding the scout ships and descending through the clouds on a mission of peace and understanding. They chattered rapidly as they fell, leaving the shared speech of the pollen in favor of the language they had learned from their unwilling templates. How excited they looked, these shining green balls of fluff and feather, going to meet their other parents for the first time! The forest was their mother, and this new world, this gleaming sphere of possibilities, was their father: they were, in a very real way, going home.

But when the ships landed and the emissaries emerged, they were met with fury and fierce attacks as their very existence was seen as mockery and cruel reminder that sometimes explorers went out and did not come back. They fled for the scout ships, terrified and unprepared. Only two made it to the safety of the great seed ship waiting above the planet’s sky. They stumbled into the fields of flowers shaking, crawling into the green and curling beneath the roots.

“We are conquerors now, and we are not ashamed of it, but there was a time when we knew nothing but the desire to make friends, to make peace,” said First. “We thought, as you do, that we could approach our host species and tell them we were sorry, we had slain their children when we were mindless and innocent and knew no better. Some even thought that we might convince them to give up the excess among their population, that we might increase our knowledge without doing them further damage. We had wonders to share. We had good things to offer in trade. We wanted to be a part of a community, as we were on our homeworld, in our first garden. Many roots make good soil.”