Considering Aloe had traveled plenty of kilometers into the desert just to visit the greenhouse, it was a bit awkward that it took her half a day before stepping foot in it. Her late grandfather’s property was composed of three structures. A modest three-room house, a greenhouse, and an outside latrine. She could only be thankful for the latter being far away from the house.
The most important and remarkable of the buildings was the greenhouse, of course. And it was far bigger than the house itself. It was mostly made out of glass, which was as inexpensive as it could get in the desert. Though Aloe doubted a greenhouse could have been constructed here if it wasn’t because this area was known for its lack of sandstorms. Otherwise, the fragile and rather cheap-looking glass wouldn’t survive for a day.
And even if there weren’t any sandstorms, the wind was strong enough to carry copious amounts of sand over time. It looked like Karaim hadn’t cleaned the panels for a very long time as it was impossible to see anything beyond them. At this point, they weren’t translucent, but full-blown opaque.
The foundation of the greenhouse was composed of hardened sandstone, and the glass panels were held together by bars of iron. The metal was probably the most expensive part of all the property. There may be twice her weight in iron in all the supports combined.
The greenhouse had no key lock whatsoever, but it did have a simple lever lock to keep the door closed. The instant Aloe opened the door, a foul stench assaulted her nostrils.
She quickly ran away and stopped only after moving ten meters away making puking gestures as she recovered her breath.
“What in the nightmarish nocturnal dunes is going on in there?” Aloe could almost see the stench escape from the doorway. “How long has that been closed? Far more than a month, I tell you. What in the nine hells has Karaim done with the greenhouse?”
Aloe wasn’t spitting curses out of rage, but to delay the inevitable. That smell had hit her like a sledgehammer, and she wouldn’t want to try it again.
“I have no choice, do I?” The girl sighed, but she refused to enter without making some preparations.
Firstly, she went back to the house and grabbed a pot labeled ‘Jasmine Flowers’. They were dried by now, but thankfully not rotted, and they conserved part of their fragrance. Aloe wrapped the dried flowers in a handkerchief and then slightly wetted the cloth in the oasis. Finally, she put the makeshift smell filter between the cloth sheets of her garb that she used to cover her face in the desert.
The attire was quite thick and she couldn’t almost breathe, but at the moment of truth, it mostly blocked any incoming smell. A hint lingered in her nostrils, but it was tolerable.
“Hmm, I think I need a duster.” Aloe’s muffled voice came out of her mask.
The glass walls and ceiling were covered in a considerable layer of sand, impeding her to see most of the greenhouse interior. She could only somewhat visualize the silhouette of a tree in the center of the structure, and whilst it was curious that her grandfather decided to waste this much space of the limited that the greenhouse offered, it was better if she at least illuminated the place first.
Karaim didn’t have a duster, which was downright moronic considering where he used to live, but he did have a broom. With broad and uncaring strokes, Aloe removed most of the sand in the lower parts of the greenhouse’s walls. Her short stature didn’t allow her for much, nor she was in the mood for cleaning. Even in the section she cleaned, a lot of dust still lay stuck to the glass, but leastwise the interior was visible now.
The worst part of the ordeal was that she had to do it under the harsh sun with her heavy garb and the facemask because the stench reached even the opposite wall the door was located in.
Aloe sighed, leaving the broom supported on the glass wall. “Well, I think I see green.”
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The glass panels had a brown tinge to them that she doubted it would go away unless she did some intense cleaning and used some actual water.
“The smell is... not better, but not as worse.” Even as she said so, Aloe was vehemently against removing her cloth mask. She slightly closed her eyelids, her eyes irritated by the smell.
A lot of bad things could be said about the greenhouse. Saying the current conditions were nefarious was an understatement, but all of her curses and bad thoughts were substituted by the striking image of the tree in the center.
“What the...” The words died in her mouth as she observed the impossible plant.
The tree was completely out of this world. Everything about it was alien. The canopy, the trunk, the colors... nothing made sense. It had long branches with countless leaves, the canopy making the shape of a bell. The leaves themselves had an antinatural blue hue. Flowers could have blue petals, but they at least had some green in them in their stem.
This tree did not have a trace of green.
But that was still understandable, the worst offender was the trunk. It had a sickly white color, not much unlike that of the ashes left by a hearth. The trunk deviated from the rules of nature as it coiled around itself like a spring.
Such a tree was impossible to exist. It was an abomination, and yet...
Aloe was bewitched by it. She subconsciously approached it.
It had an outstanding aura, so much so that the sick, decayed, and fetid greenhouse vanished from her senses. Aloe had thought that the Aloe Veritas was an act of magic, and it truly was. A single leaf possessed knowledge beyond her comprehension. But this tree... She couldn’t put it into words, but this truly was...
“Magical.” It just felt right to call it so.
It was a work of magic. It was almost as if she could stand all day looking at it. It induced an otherworldly calmness... A timelessness of ageless status... And then... fetidness.
Aloe rushed outside the greenhouse as her head spun around, lowered her mask, and threw up the contents of her empty stomach on to the sand.
“Oh... oh, gods.” She cursed in her respite, but then a second wave of vile came.
She raised her head, looking at the cloudless sky and feeling her lungs with clean air. The sun was a little too high. She also didn’t fail to notice that her nausea appeared to be because the aroma of her jasmine filter had run out.
“How much time have I spent looking at the nince-damned tree?” Aloe groaned as she cleaned the puke out of her lips with her dirty garb, the awful taste almost provoking her to puke again. “Time... time? The water!”
Aloe rushed to the oasis shore where she had left the water boiling. She saw the column of steam before the fire, but thankfully, it was a thin strip.
“Oh, gods, it’s still there.” She gazed into the cauldron, a lot of water had evaporated by now, but still, half of the contents remained. “I’ll still need to do some more rounds though...”
Carefully as to not burn herself, Aloe placed the cauldron in the ground, far away from the grass lest it instantly combusted for some reason. She doubted it would happen, but she did so just in case.
“Hmm, I should grab a jar or something, I don’t want to wait for the water cool down. And cooling down the cauldron on the oasis sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
Karaim had a lot of filled jars of varying sizes, but not a single one was empty. Aloe decided to look at the kitchenette cupboards for anything she could store the water into, and she almost slap her face when she found a clay kettle.
“I didn’t even need to take the boiling kit out of the bag!” Aloe groaned in her stupidity. “Of course, he would have a teapot! He grows plants and only has access to dubious water! Blessed heavens, I am stupid!”
She still wouldn’t have used the hearth on the house to boil the water as it was incredibly dirty, but the kettle would have been appreciated. At least she now knew it for later.
Aloe marched out of the house with a water vase and poured the boiling water of the cauldron inside.
“I should have rinsed the vase before pouring the water in, shouldn’t I?” She asked in lament with the empty cauldron in her hands. “Oh well, damage’s done. A little dust won’t kill me.”
Then she dipped the cauldron back into the oasis and put it in the stand to boil another batch of water.
As her stomach growled, Aloe remembered that she had only had a single date to eat in more than half a day. She grabbed a pita from the rations she had packed and munched it. She sat on the grass and delighted herself with the beautiful sights of the lonely green and blue paradise trapped amongst the mountains of bronze and golden.
“Not the best breakfast, or lunch I guess,” she said between bites, “but it’s good. I think I’ll have some cheese too.”
In the end, she downed two and a wedge of cheese.
“Hmm, I have more than enough food for a day or two. But it’s worrying seeing the food decrease when it’s all I have access to...”
As enough time had passed for the water in the vase to cool down, she refilled her waterskin. Only a few drops of water remained in the vase. Aloe took a heavy gulp as she no longer had to worry about her water running out.
“Rest’s over.” After being satiated, Aloe stood up from the grass and stretched her arms. She passed her hands through her hair, feeling it a bit sweaty. “Gotta see what that greenhouse holds beyond that tree.”