Author's Note
Any grammar or spelling mistakes in Lily's essay are hers, not the author's.
Why I Tend My Garden
Lily stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of her. Neither she nor it had moved in the past twenty minutes, and it was beginning to look like this paralysis would continue for the foreseeable future. Her eyes flickered over to the pot of petunias sitting placidly on her desk, then to the ever waning candle flickering nearby, then to the other paper with the writing prompt, then finally back to her blank paper.
Maybe it's an old photograph of your parents. Maybe it's a bracelet your best friend gave you. Maybe it's a song your grandmother taught you. We all have things we hold close to our hearts. In a well-structured essay of at least five paragraphs. write about something you find important, and why it means so much to you.
She sighed. She didn't really like to talk about her hobby, but the assignment did ask for it. At last overcoming her indecision, she picked up a pencil in her teeth and, for the fourth time tonight, started her essay.
Why I Tend My Garden
by Lily Valley
~~As you may know~~, ~~trauma induced linking (TIL) happens when a stressed pony acidentally gives its memories to another pony, usually somepony close to them. My~~ ~~dad~~ ~~gave it to me when I was 8 years old. I'm elven now, and I still wake up screaming some nights.~~
~~Things themselves are rarely important.~~
THe things we hold dearest too us are rarely important inofand [ask mom what the phrase is.] themselfs. Rather, it is the meaning we attach to them that makes them special. I do not particularly enjoy gardening. However, it calms me down, and reminds me of my father in a good way. Gardening is important to me.
When I was ~~6 years old,~~ five years old, my dad had to go to war. Equestria was fighting the griffins, and he volunteered. He said he wanted to fight for things that mattered to him, like me. ~~I'm glad I matter to him~~ He was very good at being sneaky, and he became a spy! I always thought that was really cool. But then they capchured him. 2 months before the war ended, they ~~killed~~ ~~eggs~~ executed him. After we won, Princess Celestia herself came to our house. She told us how brave a pony he had been, and that I should be a proud little filly. It made things a little better, I guess.
As you can imagine, this was hard on me. It wouldn't have been too bad, except that like ten minutes before he died, a weird rare magic link connected him to me, and I experienced the last ten minutes of his life with him. ~~They~~ The thaumatologists call it Trama induced Linking (TIL), and it was really scary.
Lily put down her pencil. She thought a lot about what her dad had gone through. They had blindfolded him, so at least she didn't see what was going on. But she somehow knew that he was being lead to his death. When she dreamed about it, the last second or two were always the scariest, even though the nightmare was almost over. They killed him with this thing called a noose, which breaks your neck. Sometimes if they are especially mean, they don't let you fall far enough to break your neck, just far enough that you can't breath. That sounded even scarier, and Lily shivered thinking about it. She figured that was stuff she should talk about with her therapist, not write down in an essay.
Before that whole thing happened, I had fallen out of gardening. My mom would drag me out to help her with her nursury business from time to time, but it was never as fun as helping ~~d~~Daddy. Of course, when he went off to fight, I couldn't help him any more.
Then when the linking happened, there was this one ~~time~~ part where he was ~~marched~~ ~~walked~~ escorted by a field of petunias where I guess he liked to hang out alot or something. It was a windy day. Apparently it ^is usually pretty windy up in the mountains where the griffons live. As he trotted by the flowers, he thought about this griffon mare who he ~~hung out with a lot~~ [think of another way to say this.]. That makes me a little sad, but Mom says she forgives him, because he couldn't write to us or anything. Then he thought about how he remembered planting petunias and other flowers with me, and he started crying because we would never get to garden together again. I was walking home from school when this all happened, and that was the part where I started crying too. I was sad for my dad.
The next 3 or 4 months were really hard for me. I had this thing called Post Tramatic Stress Syndrome, and a lot of doctors and therepists came and talked to me. I had to sleep with a candle ~~on~~ ^lit ~~still burning~~ for a long time. In fact it was only a few weeks ago I was able to stop that. Anyway, I was a mess. I was afraid of the dark, and I startled easy (still do, to tell the truth.), and I was just a general ~~mess~~ wreck.
But then one night I couldn't sleep (as usual.), and I was up wandering around the house, when I saw in the yard a bunch of lilies my mom had just gotten for her nursery, like hundreds of them. And I thouhgt about how I hadn't planted anything in month, and then I was like "Buck it!" (I know that's a bad phrase, but it's what I thought in my head.), I want to plant one of those. So I snuck out of the house, and grabbed one of the plants, and I found a nice bare spot, and I planted it. And you know what? It felt good. It felt right. And the funny thing ~~is~~ ~~was~~ is, It felt like he was right there with me.
So I planted another one. And another. And another. ^I must have been just digging and planting for hours. And before I knew it, I looked around, and I was surrounded by lilies. And I felt something speciel then. I had done something my dad would have been proud of. And I started to cry, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, they were happy tears instead of sad ones. I fell asleep curled up there in the dirt, a muddy smile on my face.
When I woke up the next morning, I had planted 261 Lilies! (I counted later.) There were some curious folk standing around me, and my mom came out and pushed through them, and I thought she was going to be cross with me, but she was really happy, because I had gotten my cutie mark! ^I was the first one in my grade to get it. You can see right on my side that it's a beautiful Lily, almost the same as my mom's! It was the happiest day of my life. After that, I never looked back.
~~I know I'm not very popular, and most ponies think I'm weird cause I get these panic attacks, but I don't really mind. Roseluck and Daisy are really good friends, and we all love flowers. I wouldn't be surprised if they get flower cutie marks too.~~
~~I got my cutie mark when I was 10. I know that I'm the only one in our class~~
~~So that's why gardening is so important to me. The end.~~
As I said before, I don't really get much ^enjoyment out of gardening, but it calms and sooths me. I know I freak out a lot, but when I'm planting stuff, I just feel this weird calmness. I'd like to think that's my dad looking over my shoulder and smiling. I don't know what I'm going to do ~~if~~ when I grow up, but gardening will always be important to me.
Lily blinked. The faintest wisps of dawn were appearing on the horizon and her candle was guttering. She must have been writing this all night. She scanned what she had wrote. It was definitely more than five paragraphs. It wasn't perfect (she had rambled on as she was prone to doing.), but she suspected her teacher Mrs. Butterworth would be proud.
Daddy would have been too.
