Coriander Express

“Some miracles don’t come with trumpets. Just seeds, dust, and the patience to watch.”

"Where the hell did that come from?" I blurted out in my thick Swiss accent, the guttural edge of my voice slicing through the stillness. The quiet concentration that had settled over our group fractured instantly. Chris and Karen both flinched ever so slightly—shoulders tensing, eyes flicking up—but said nothing at first. They were crouched beside the tent, completely absorbed until that moment, their hands dusted with the ochre earth, heads bent low over what I now realised were tiny, impossibly green shoots poking through the dust-hardened soil.

The sight of something so alive in a place so lifeless stopped me in my tracks. I took a slow step closer, my boots stirring dry grit as I moved.

"There's a thick crust beneath all the layers of dust, and there appears to be living soil beneath that crust," Chris explained patiently, his tone calm, as though he were guiding me through a fragile discovery.

I knelt beside them, the stiffness in my knees protesting slightly from the long day. Still, I didn’t care. The sight of green—actual, living green—against the washed-out browns and reds of Clivilius was magnetic. I leaned in, letting my fingers hover for a moment before brushing gently against the leaves, careful not to damage them. They were tiny, no bigger than my fingernail, but unmistakably alive, reaching skyward with astonishing defiance.

"Fascinating," I murmured, my breath catching slightly. The word escaped me before I could shape anything more precise. There was something sacred in it—a kind of whispered reverence for life that had no business thriving here. I tilted my head, studying the texture of the leaves, the faint sheen that clung to their tender surfaces. "And the plants?"

"Coriander seeds," Karen said, her voice lifting with a mix of pride and curiosity. She raised a small zip-lock bag into the sunlight, the plastic catching the light in a soft shimmer as the contents rattled faintly within.

Of course. Of course it was something as domestic and hopeful as coriander. My lips twitched with the shadow of a smile. I regarded the couple beside me with a keen, narrowing interest. They’d brought more than just themselves through the Portal. Seeds. Possibility. Perhaps even purpose.

Chris caught the expression on my face and offered a dry little grin. "She's always carrying some sort of seeds… or bugs," he said, the tone of a man long since resigned to a partner’s quirks, softened by years of shared habits and affection.

"They're not bugs," Karen said flatly, not even looking up. It was the kind of response that had been uttered hundreds of times before—too familiar to carry offence, too certain to invite further argument.

The tiny seed Karen held in her hand seemed to pulse with possibility. Its smooth shell, inconspicuous and dry, nonetheless commanded my full attention. “May I?” I asked, extending my palm towards her. My voice came out quieter than I intended—measured, almost clinical.

In truth, I had little personal interest in the motivations behind Karen’s habit of carrying seeds. But the transformation—this transformation—gripped me. The clinical part of my mind tried to rationalise it: heat, moisture, something in the soil chemistry. But another part, deeper, more instinctive, simply watched. Watched and wondered.

Karen nodded once and gently tipped the seed into my hand. It landed in my palm with a faint tick—light as breath, barely more than a promise.

"Glenda, grab the pole!" Jamie’s voice ripped through the moment like a whipcrack. I flinched, jolted from my quiet study of the seed.

Impatience surged through me—hot and irrational. My jaw tensed.

“Yeah!” I shouted back, not bothering to look up, letting my voice carry the same edge Jamie’s had. The seed was still in my palm, catching the light like a fleck of amber. I didn’t care about the tent pole. Not right now. Not with this in front of me.

With a strange, almost childlike anticipation tightening in my chest, I pressed the small seed into the soil Chris now held cupped in his hands. My fingers trembled slightly—not with fear, but with the weight of something unknown. I leaned in closer, close enough to feel the warmth rising from the earth. The air around us felt charged, as if the space between us and the ground held its breath.

I stared. Unblinking. Willing it to move.

And then it did.

A faint gasp escaped me—sharp, involuntary—as the seed’s casing split open before my eyes. Fine white tendrils pushed outwards, tentative but determined, anchoring themselves into the grainy soil. A sliver of green emerged next, impossibly quick, rising with subtle insistence until two tiny leaves unfurled like a fragile declaration of defiance.

A seedling. Alive.

Right there in our hands.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jamie’s voice tore through the air like a whip, his anger unfiltered and close enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I turned my head slightly, not startled—just mildly annoyed. His boots crunched across the dusty ground, and I could feel the storm of his frustration before he even reached us.

“Come take a look at this,” I called back, unfazed. I didn’t even rise from my crouch. Whatever sharpness he brought with him was dulled by the pulse of exhilaration still surging through me. I waved him over with an exaggerated sweep of my arm, grinning despite myself. “You have to see this.”

He stopped a few feet away, arms folded, the muscles in his jaw working as he stared at the small green cluster resting in Chris’s hands. His brow remained furrowed, etched deep with irritation that refused to soften. “What is that?”

“They’re coriander plants,” Karen answered, her voice far more subdued than mine. She remained crouched at Chris’s side, one hand lightly bracing his wrist. The awe that clung to me hadn’t fully touched her—or perhaps she was simply better at containing it.

Jamie’s gaze darted between the seedlings and Karen. Suspicion flared in his expression, a familiar wariness settling over his features. “Did you bring those plants here?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, I did,” Karen replied evenly.

“In a manner of speaking?” Jamie echoed, clearly not satisfied with the ambiguity. His eyes narrowed slightly, probing.

“We found the soil beneath the hard crust hidden beneath all the dust and sand,” Karen explained, her voice gaining a little edge now—a scientist justifying her process. “A few seeds accidentally fell out of my pocket and landed in the soil.”

“And look what happens,” I cut in, unable to keep quiet, gesturing towards the miracle we’d just witnessed. I reached back into the bag, fingers finding another coriander seed nestled within, its dry shell smooth against my skin. I pressed it gently into Chris’s open hands.

He shifted uncomfortably. “My hands are getting a little tired,” he muttered, the muscles in his forearms twitching slightly beneath the weight of stillness.

“Last time,” I said with a smile, trying to be reassuring, though I was already searching for a better angle to view the soil again. Karen, without a word, slipped her hands beneath his to steady them, her movements tender, instinctive.

Jamie let out a short, scoffing breath. “Just because you’ve planted something doesn’t mean it’s going to grow,” he said. The edge in his voice was sharper now, his doubt plain. His arms remained folded across his chest like a barrier between himself and belief.

“Just watch. It’s incredible,” I whispered, almost to myself. My attention had tunnelled entirely into Chris’s cupped hands once more.

And then—there it was. The seed cracked open with the same impossible elegance as before. Tiny, threadlike roots spilled out, almost greedy in their urgency, anchoring themselves into the darkened soil. A new stem rose, tentative and pale at first, then gradually taking on colour, lifting tiny leaves towards the air.

A wide smile stretched across my face, unbidden and uncontainable. I could feel it pulling at my cheeks, the joy of it rising up through me like sunlight breaking through heavy cloud. For just a moment, the noise of Clivilius fell away—the dust, the fear, the unspoken questions about how and why we were here. All of it faded beneath the pure, impossible beauty of that unfolding green life.

“This is great news,” Chris remarked, his gaze sweeping across the vast, sun-scoured plain around us. There was a subtle shift in his posture—shoulders no longer hunched with uncertainty, but beginning to lift, as though the discovery of those seedlings had peeled back a layer of dread and revealed the faintest glimmer of potential.

My breath caught in my throat as a rush of thoughts surged forward, uninvited and unstoppable. What if…? My mind leapt ahead, chasing fragments of memory and imagination. “Perhaps this might help explain Joel’s condition,” I said, my voice tentative but alight with hope. I turned to Jamie, searching his face for something—confirmation, doubt, anything I could read. “Maybe my father’s stories still held some truth,” I added, more to myself than to him. The old tales whispered in childhood shadows—of places untouched by decay, where life thrived in the most unlikely corners. Could this be one of them?

“I’m not sure that Joel was buried in the dirt,” Jamie said flatly. His bluntness hit like a slap of cold air.

“Maybe not,” I conceded, the words small on my tongue but still clinging to their thread of optimism. “First, it was the lagoon water, and now the soil.” I looked down at the small patch of disturbed earth where the coriander seedlings stood like tiny green flames. “There is definitely something different about this place,” I murmured. My thoughts swirled—scientific reasoning jostling with half-remembered stories and strange possibilities. The land was silent, yes, but not dead. Never dead.

“Chris and I will make the study of the soil our priority,” Karen announced. There was a new current in her voice—clear, steady, galvanised. “It may be possible to get a controlled ecosystem up and running.” Her eyes sparkled as she spoke, not with naïve excitement, but with a kind of professional clarity. She wasn’t chasing wonder—she was preparing to document it.

“Hold up. Don’t get too ahead of yourselves,” Chris cut in, his words firm. “We should still exercise a great deal of caution. Sure, these plants are a great sign, but we don’t know what the conditions here are really like. You and I have been here for less than a day, and the others not much longer. We have no idea what dangers we might yet face. Cracking the surface could release more than we realise.”

I nodded slowly, understanding the warning beneath his words. Cracking the surface… The phrase lingered in my mind like an echo. He wasn’t just talking about soil. Still, I couldn't help myself.

“With miracle soil like this, it can only get better from here,” I said, the grin returning to my face before I could stop it. Somewhere, in the dim corridors of my medical training and rational mind, I knew Chris was right. We should tread carefully. But the thrill of seeing green—real green—rise from this blasted dust outweighed my wariness for now.

I looked up at Karen, meeting her gaze with a fire that matched hers. The sun glinted off her glasses, casting a quick flare of light between us.

“I’m ready to paint that masterpiece with you, Karen,” I said, and I meant it. In this strange and broken place, we had found a beginning. However small.

All four heads snapped in unison toward the sudden roar of an approaching vehicle, the sound ripping through the silence like a tear in cloth. Just moments before, we'd been wrapped in the fragile cocoon of discovery—life springing from dust, hope blossoming between strangers. But now the world jolted back into motion, and with it came the jarring reminder of where we truly were.

"I’ll go," Jamie declared, his voice low and clipped. He released a disgruntled huff, like a man perpetually called to put out someone else's fire, then turned on his heel and strode off without waiting for comment. His figure grew smaller against the glare as he moved towards the disturbance, shoulders squared but rigid—coiled like a spring.

I hesitated for a breath, my gaze lingering on the shimmering horizon where dust clouds now stirred. Then I turned back to Chris and Karen, the tender shoots in their care feeling suddenly far more precious in the wake of that mechanical intrusion.

“What do we do with these plants now?” I asked, voice hushed but urgent, as though the sound of the vehicle might crush the seedlings as easily as tyres over sand.

“We keep them safe,” Chris replied, already lowering his cupped hands with deliberate care. He crouched low, fingers sifting the soil as he planted the fragile coriander seedlings into the shaded earth. “The tent should provide a little shade and protection from the sun.”

I nodded, a small frown tugging at the corner of my mouth as I took in the state of our partially raised tent. The canvas flapped lazily in the breeze like an unfinished thought. “We had better finish putting it up,” I said, dusting my palms against my trousers. I stood, then extended a hand to Karen, who accepted it wordlessly, rising with the quiet grace of someone already measuring the next task.

Karen turned to Chris, her brow lifting in silent question—are you with us, or still chasing the horizon?

Chris didn’t answer immediately. He remained crouched, one hand pressed into the soil as though trying to feel its pulse. Then, after a moment, he rose to his full height, his movements purposeful. He placed his hands firmly on his hips, his chest lifting with the inhale of a decision made.

“I want to see how far this soil spreads,” he said, the weight in his voice underscored by curiosity, but also something firmer—intent. His eyes scanned the barren sprawl before us: that vast, empty expanse of ochre and grey, lifeless at first glance, yet now laced with possibility. The dust shimmered faintly in the heat, and for a fleeting second, I saw what he must have seen—a chance to uncover something buried not just in soil, but in meaning.

Around us stretched a land that had given nothing... until now.