Drawn From Life

"I thought I was imagining things. Turns out I was remembering them before anyone bothered to explain."

The walk to the greenhouse felt different this time.

I'd made this journey dozens of times across my childhood—tagging along with Gran while she checked on things, hovering near Dad while he worked, always welcome but never quite included. I'd been allowed to look, allowed to help with small tasks, allowed to absorb the atmosphere of the place without ever being told what any of it actually meant.

But this morning I'd asked direct questions. And Dad hadn't shut me down completely. And now he was bringing me here, and something in the quality of his silence suggested today might finally be different.

My boots crunched against the gravel, and I found myself matching my steps to Dad's without meaning to. Overhead, a skein of geese passed in ragged formation, their calls carrying on the wind. The afternoon had turned into the kind of spring day Edinburgh did best—crisp and bright, sharp enough to feel clarifying.

"Come on, Dad," I said, unable to keep the impatience from my voice. "You've been experimenting in that kitchen all morning. You promised to show me what's happening with the plants."

He glanced back, hands in the pockets of Grandpa's old gardening jacket. "I didn't say I'd show you what's happening. I said I'd let you have a look. There's a difference."

I rolled my eyes but didn't push. A look with explanations was more than I usually got. I'd take what I could get and hope it led somewhere.

The greenhouse rose ahead of us, familiar as my own reflection. I'd drawn this structure countless times—the Victorian ironwork, the way light scattered through the glass panels, the particular green of oxidised copper on the framework. I knew its exterior the way I knew the lines of my own hands.

But the interior had always been something I experienced in fragments. Glimpses caught while fetching Gran for dinner. Brief supervised visits where I'd been too young to ask the right questions. The feeling of being surrounded by growing things without understanding why these particular growing things mattered so much.

Dad produced the brass key, and I watched the familiar motion—the way he fitted it to the lock, the solid click of the mechanism yielding. When the door swung open, warm humid air escaped, and I breathed it in like greeting an old friend.

Inside, the greenhouse wrapped around me with its particular atmosphere. I'd felt this before, many times, but today I let myself pay attention to it properly—the way the air seemed to press against my skin, alive and heavy with something I couldn't name. There was a scent underneath the expected smells of soil and greenery, something that made my fingertips tingle and my thoughts feel both sharper and softer at once.

I'd always attributed that feeling to imagination. To being "too sensitive," as Isla sometimes said when she was annoyed with me. But standing here now, after this morning's conversation about perception and connections and possibilities, I wondered if I'd been feeling something real all along.

The plants were arranged in the careful rows I remembered, Gran's aesthetic visible in every choice of placement and spacing. But I wasn't a child anymore, and I wasn't just here to watch Dad work while my mind wandered elsewhere. I was here to actually see.

So I looked. Really looked.

And for the first time, I let myself notice how many of the specimens matched the drawings I'd been making for years.

That one, with the elongated oval leaves—I'd sketched it in the margins of my history notes last term, thinking I was inventing a shape that pleased me. And there, the lobed pattern I'd incorporated into the menu board design this morning. And further back, half-hidden behind more ordinary foliage, something with leaves so deeply green they were almost black, shot through with a metallic shimmer I'd been trying to capture in my art since I was twelve years old.

I'd thought I was imagining things. Making them up. Being too much, the way I was always too much.

But I hadn't been making anything up. I'd been drawing from life—from glimpses caught in childhood visits, from impressions absorbed before I was old enough to understand what I was seeing. My memory had held onto these forms even when my conscious mind hadn't registered them.

I moved toward the far end of the greenhouse, drawn by those shimmering specimens I'd only ever glimpsed from a distance on previous visits. Gran had always steered me away from this section with gentle misdirection. Dad had always found tasks for me elsewhere. I'd accepted those redirections without question because I'd been a child, and children accepted what adults decided.

I wasn't a child anymore.

"Wow," I breathed, crouching beside a plant whose leaves caught light that wasn't there. The shimmer wasn't like anything that existed in ordinary nature—it was exactly like what I'd been trying to paint for years, that quality I'd assumed I was inventing because nothing real looked like that. "These are different from anything I've seen before. Are these what you use in the café?"

The question wasn't quite honest. I'd seen them before—brief glimpses, half-registered impressions. But I'd never been close enough to really look. Never been allowed to crouch here and study the way the leaves shifted colour as I moved my head, green to teal to something nameless, transitions so smooth they seemed to happen between blinks.

"Some of them," Dad said, and I heard the careful measuring in his voice. "They're hybrids—special varieties we've been cultivating for generations. Hardy in their way, but particular about their care."

I reached out to touch a leaf without thinking, the way I always touched things I wanted to draw—learning texture through fingertips, building understanding through contact. The surface was silk-cool against my skin, and something pulsed through the contact. Not electricity exactly. More like recognition. Like the plant knew I was there and was deciding what to make of me.

I pulled my hand back, unsettled and fascinated in equal measure.

"What makes them so special?" I asked, straightening to look at Dad properly. "The way they look, it's almost like they're not quite real."

The pause before he answered was barely perceptible. But I'd been watching my family pause before answers my whole life. I knew what it meant when they chose their words this carefully.

"It's primarily in the soil," he said. "We discovered its unique properties decades ago. The plants that grow in it develop... distinctive characteristics. Enhanced flavours, unusual resilience."

The explanation was a door cracked open exactly one inch. Enough to glimpse something beyond, not enough to actually see it.

I wanted to push. Wanted to ask where the soil came from, why these plants and not others, what it actually meant that they had "distinctive characteristics." But I'd learned that pushing too hard with Dad made him retreat into that careful silence, and right now he was actually talking. Actually explaining, even if the explanations were incomplete.

So instead I moved deeper into the greenhouse, letting my eyes catalogue everything. The arrangement of specimens. The tools on the workbenches, some modern and some that looked older than Gran. The way certain plants were positioned in full light whilst others were tucked into shadowed corners, as though different specimens required different degrees of visibility.

Near the back, in its own section, I found the plant that had to be the Skye variation.

I knew it without being told. Its blue-tinged leaves were reaching upward with an eagerness that seemed almost hungry, straining toward the glass ceiling like they were trying to escape. Tiny buds were forming along its stems—buds that clearly didn't belong there yet, based on the tension I'd felt in the kitchen this morning, the worry Gran and Grandpa had carried with them like weather.

"Sometimes they respond to conditions we can't immediately perceive," Dad said from behind me, his voice quieter now. "Like now. That plant shouldn't be showing signs of blooming for another three weeks at least."

"Is that what Gran and Grandpa were worried about this morning?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.

Dad's surprise flickered across his face before he could mask it. "You notice too much sometimes," he said, but there was warmth beneath the words. Pride, maybe.

"Yes," he continued after a moment. "The journal documents patterns over generations. When the plants behave unusually, it often... correlates with other events."

Correlates. The word sat between us, heavy with everything it wasn't saying.

I thought about asking what kind of events. Thought about pressing for specific details. But something else was nagging at me—a question that felt more immediate, more personal.

"And where did this magical soil come from?" I asked instead, watching his face carefully. "Or these plants? They can't exactly be typical Scottish flora."

"That's a tale for another time." He moved to adjust a vine that had strayed from its support, the gesture automatic and dismissive. "What matters now is understanding why they're changing their patterns."

Another time. Always another time.

I swallowed my frustration and pulled out my sketchbook, settling onto a nearby stool. If he wouldn't tell me things, I could at least record what I was seeing. My pencil found the page, and I began trying to capture that impossible shimmer—knowing I'd fail, knowing the attempt mattered anyway.

The greenhouse was quiet except for the rustle of leaves and the soft sounds of Dad working. I drew without thinking too hard about composition or technique, letting my hand follow whatever felt true. The lobed leaves. The reaching stems. The quality of light that seemed to come from inside the plants rather than outside them.

An idea surfaced as I worked.

"What about using some of these for the festival booth?" I suggested, looking up from my sketch. "Just a few of the smaller ones? It would make the display unique."

Dad's hands stilled on the plant he was tending. "We need to be careful about drawing too much attention," he said slowly. "People notice these plants. They ask questions we can't always answer."

"You make it sound like we're guarding the Crown Jewels or something." I meant it lightly, but the words fell flat against his expression.

"In a way, we are." He moved to a workbench where several smaller specimens sat in terracotta pots. "These plants represent generations of our family's work. They've brought the café success, but they've also brought... complications."

Complications. Another word doing heavy lifting, carrying meanings it refused to reveal.

His fingers traced the edge of a leaf with something close to reverence. "The leaves you saw me grinding this morning—the ones in that small jar—they come from these plants. They're what make certain blends at Leaf & Bean special."

"Special how?" I set down my pencil, giving him my full attention.

For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer. Then he turned to face me, and the gravity in his expression made my breath catch.

"They enhance perception, in subtle ways. Help people see connections they might otherwise miss. When properly prepared, they can reveal possibilities, paths not yet taken." He held my gaze, making sure I understood. "But that's also why we must be careful. If the plants are changing their patterns, the effects might change too."

Perception. Connections. Possibilities.

The words rearranged something in my understanding. I thought about my drawings—the doorways I'd been sketching since childhood, the threshold spaces, the figures caught between one world and another. I thought about the way I noticed things other people missed, the way feelings hit me like weather, the way I sometimes knew things without knowing how I knew them.

Too personal. Too emotional.

Olivia's criticism surfaced, and for the first time it didn't sting. Because maybe being too personal, too emotional, too open—maybe that wasn't a flaw. Maybe it was exactly what these plants required. What this family needed.

"What kind of changes?" I asked, my voice coming out smaller than I'd intended.

Dad adjusted one of the pots, not quite meeting my eyes. "The kind that make you realise some knowledge comes with responsibility. You'll understand more when—"

"When the time is right." The frustration broke through before I could stop it. "You always say that, Dad. I'm not a child anymore. I can keep secrets."

"I know you can, love." His voice softened, and I felt some of my anger dissolve despite myself. "But some secrets are better understood when you've had time to prepare for them. Your grandmother believes you have a natural affinity for the plants—like she does. That's rare, and valuable. But it also means we need to be careful how you learn about them."

A natural affinity.

The phrase settled into me like a key finding its lock. Gran thought I had an affinity. Gran, who had been tending these plants her entire life, who understood them in ways no one else in the family quite matched—she thought I was like her.

I wanted to ask more. Wanted to know what affinity meant in practice, what it would look like to develop it, what Gran had seen in me that made her believe I had it. But something in Dad's posture told me I'd reached the edge of what he was willing to share today.

So I bent back over my sketchbook, letting the conversation settle into silence. My pencil moved across the page—not drawing the plants anymore, but something else. A doorway. A threshold. A figure standing at the edge of understanding, about to step through into whatever lay beyond.

I was adding texture to the frame when I felt it.

A wrongness. Subtle but unmistakable, like a note played slightly flat in a familiar song. The hair on my arms stood up, and my pencil stilled against the page.

A moment later, the sound came: a distinct thud from outside, followed by the crunch of gravel under foot.

Dad's reaction was immediate—his whole body going tense, his eyes fixed on the door with an intensity I'd never seen from him before. It frightened me more than the sound had.

"Did you hear that?"

I nodded, unable to find words. My hand had tightened on my sketchbook without my deciding to.

"Could be the wind," I offered, though the words felt hollow. "Or Grandpa coming to check on things."

"Could be," Dad echoed, but he was already moving toward the door, his footsteps silent on the stone floor.

Dad stood at the door for a long moment, scanning the grounds. Whatever he saw—or didn't see—he kept his expression carefully neutral when he turned back to me.

"We should head back," he said, his voice deliberately light. "Still plenty to do before the festival."

The casualness was forced. I heard it. He knew I heard it. But neither of us acknowledged the performance.

I tucked my sketchbook away and followed him to the door, casting one last look at the plants that had occupied so much of my imagination without my ever understanding why. The Skye variation pulsed with that strange internal light, its premature buds straining upward like warnings I couldn't read.

The cool air hit me sharply as we stepped outside. Dad locked the door with careful attention, testing it twice, and I noticed the way he positioned himself between me and the tree line as we walked back toward the house. Protective. Watchful.

I didn't ask what he thought was out there. Didn't ask why a sound on the gravel had transformed him from my father into something warier, something that moved like it expected threat. The questions could wait. Would have to wait.

But as we reached the house, I couldn't shake what had settled into my bones.

We hadn't been alone in that greenhouse.

And whoever had been watching knew exactly what they'd seen.