Mel's father has given her generous greenhouse. Earth has been soaked by rain for nearly ten years and even building a structure as simple as a greenhouse takes money and resources most families, including the Warrens are short on. Her older sister Holly is jealous of the gift and of Mel herself. Holly finds ways to torment her sister as often as possible and an incident inside the greenhouse is no different. Pre-story/memory for a yet to be named project.

A little long - sorry. Let me know what you think.

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Mel thought it strange for anyone in the Warren household to be awake at such an early hour. Her father sometimes woke near five but it wasn't yet three. She laid still beneath the warm blankets, deciding whether or not to acknowledge the feet creeping by her door. Thunder broke through her concentration and she sat up.

Someone was moving down the stairs. The creaking of the old wooden steps seemed soft for her father's. Mother maybe, most likely. She laid back and closed her eyes.

Thunder crashed again, closer this time. Of course to Mel each explosion seemed closer than the last and she had hoped after such a long time she would become immuned to the sound. She sat up again, sure that sleep would not find her again until midday while sitting through a psychology lecture at the NAS Advanced Learning Center.

A smaller crash came from a much closer location - downstairs. The backdoor, caught by a gust of violent wind, blew inward and pounded against the frame. Someone had gone outside. To Mel the event no longer seemed strange. Now it was crazy.

Everyone knew better that to step outside at night in the storms. The darkness, sealed from any hint of moonlight by the heavy cloud cover, took pleasure in confusing those daring to break the rules. A strong gust of wind easily toppled men built like brick walls and, as slight of build as all of the Warrens happened to be, one might carry them off into the proverbial sunset never to be seen or heard from again.

She opened the shades enough to see out into the backyard and caught the faint blue glow of a flashlight bobbing from side to side as the person outside darted toward the shed. Just before they reached the shed, the flashlight and it's owner turned left, right for the-

Mel opened the bedroom door and checked the hallway. No one else had heard. She didn't have time to wake them, not if she wanted to catch the intruder. She moved down the stairs not bothering to mask her heavy footfalls. By the door, amidst the family's pile of forever drying shoes, she grabbed her golashes and slipped them onto her bare feet. She grabbed the coat closest to her and threw it over her shoulders as she opened the back door. The handle flew free of her hand and the door slammed against the house over and over again, the catch not taking hold.

The wind howled through the tunnel between the buildings, whistled through the banisters on the reinforced railing of the the stairs. She hesitated for a second and put her foot down into the mushy ground where grass used to grow. Cool water crept up over the toe of her boot and before she lost any more resolve, Mel ran toward the greenhouse.

Water splashed up onto her bare knees, soaking the exposed hem of her nightgown in mud. Rain poured down over her face and through her dark, unkempt hair. She had to see who had gone inside the greenhouse. The greenhouse was her responsibility, the plants inside her pets. She needed to know everything in there remained safe.

When she came to the door, she hesitated once more. Maybe, she thought, it was her mother checking on the plants, validating Mel's ability to care for them. She took great care of her precious children. Not one of her seeds failed to sprout and beyond an occasional yellowing leaf, every plant continued to thrive beneath the synthetic sunlight. Mother, she was convinced, wouldn't doubt her. And if her father had thought she'd fail, he never would have built the greenhouse to begin with.

She opened the door against the persistent push of the wind and stepped inside.

The light blue glow of the flashlight came from the far end of the green house, back where all Mel's freshly planted seeds germinated in trays of self-warming soil. "My babies," Mel whispered.

"Who's there?" Holly said.

Mel kept quiet.

The light moved a few paces closer and Mel made out the no-good-rotten-trouble-making features of her big sister's face. Holly never came inside the greenhouse and not because she wasn't invited. Mel tried several times to get her sister to take part in coaxing life out of the small seeds her father brought home in the unmarked envelopes. Holly thought gardens to be silly, ancient notions that wasted too much time for the miniscule results that came from them. She wasn't here to help.

Mel tiptoed toward the back of the greenhouse. She needed to see what Holly's intentions might be before jumping on her for messing with her things. She closed in on her and just as she'd suspected Big Sis had found another way to torment her.

She sat on the stool in front of Mel's workbench filling up her mister with vinegar. Her mother had ordered the stuff special from an online catalog, another of the many products affected by the neverending storms. How many nights before had Holly done this? The effect of the stuff on her plants might take days to be noticeable. Mel feared her sister's poison had already seeped into the root system of her precious plants.

Mel, without thinking, took hold of an empty pot from the shelf and chucked it toward Holly. The lightweight polycarbonate pot weighed less than a pound and caused no permanent damage. Holly jumped up from the stool and turned toward her sister with the unfamiliar veil of fear draped over her face.

"Can't you leave my things alone, just this once?"

Holly held the jar up for Mel to see. The red and black label glowed in the low light making Mel think of pirates approaching for attack beneath a full moon. "This stuff here is quite handy if you need to kill weeds. That's what I see here, don't you Sis?"

"They aren't weeds Holly."

"Sure they are." She tilted the bottle over a pot with a young Oragangi sprout and allowed two drops to fall down on the plant's stem.

Mel tried for a moment to keep her cool and a sudden pang of regret hit her square in the chest for not stopping Holly's madness already. She stepped forward and shoved her sister off the stool. Holly fell back against the workbench and then to the floor. The bottle fell to the floor and shattered. For the first time in a long time Mel felt stronger than her sister. She weighed thirty pounds less, stood nearly a foot shorter, and hadn't ever been the athletic type, but in that moment she had won.

Holly sat on the floor and shook off the shock of Mel's attack. Disbelief had replaced the veil of fear and she appeared to be considering the right move to make next.

"Look Sis I didn't mean to mess with your precious weeds. They never did anything to me, right?"

Mel turned toward the Oragangi pot. Holly used her distraction to retaliate. She kicked Mel's left leg out from under her, causing her right ankle to twist just enough that she lost her balance and carreened toward the shelving on the left side of the greenhouse. Pots, some growing and some empty, were catapulted through the air. A mariday pot exploded against the outer duraglass wall and Mel considered, for a split second, crawling toward the fallen plant and attempting to dress the wounds left behind by her sister's war of jealousy.

Something big slammed into Mel's back, fueled in part by the roar of a savage beast, before her eyes left the horror of her destroyed pet. "Weeds," Holly screamed as she lifted the stool up for another swing. "They are all good for nothing weeds."

Her breath went out of her on impact. Mel grabbed a handful of dirt littered with fragments of ceramic from the mess on the floor and threw it up at Holly before she came down with the stool again. She stumbled backward, the weapon falling out of one hand, which went immediately up to her eyes.

"You ruin everything," Mel yelled.

"You didn't deserve 'em. You cry and whine and Daddy gives you whatever you want. You're a spoiled brat Mel."

"You're the one who's spoiled. You get all the new stuff - clothes, shoes, gadgets, and not to mention the car. All the while I'm stuck with your out of style hand-me-downs. This was the one thing I got new and you had to ruin it?"

Holly ran her hand along the shelf behind her, knocking four pots filled with maturing veravine to the ground. "Always the perfect little princess aren't you?"

"What did I ever do to you Holly?"

"You were born!"

Mel picked up a spade, which had hit the floor when she'd fallen into the shelf, and threw it towards Holly. The edge grazed her cheek, leaving a thin crimson line an inch beneath her eye. She wished the thing had gone through her eye, then maybe all this would be over. She changed her mind when Holly's hand went up to the wound. She might not always like her, but they were still sisters. She loved her even if she didn't love back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"Now you want to take away my face too. I don't have everything you have Mel. I'm not popular like you or fun to be with. All I've got is my looks and you want to take them away too?" Holly reached down and fumbled on the floor in the dark. She came back with a hand rake.

Mel backed up as the rage in Holly's eyes sered through her. Holly took a step toward Mel, then two. Before Mel had a chance to turn and run, the rake cut through her father's jacket, the tender skin beneath, and, looking back afterward, she swore it scraped bone. Mel screamed. Holly threw the rake to the floor and ran past her, screaming "Mommy."

She clutched her arm, not sure whether she should try and stop the bleeding or get back to the house first. She didn't want to go in the house, not where Holly was talking her way out of her attempt at sabotaging Mel's garden. Right now she wanted to be with her precious plants, to suffer with them because they were her children and she would not leave them alone, not when they were all so weak and vulnerable, not when they too were in pain. She struggled to reach the young Oragangi and took hold of the broken stem. The plant seemed to whither between her fingers. Holly had what she wanted.