“But you could just leave.”

  “They said I’m not healed.”

  “But you said it yourself, you were feeling great.”

  He rolled a green fruit across the table between his hands, “well they know better than me, don’t they?”

  She watched him, “you don’t look like you believe that.”

  “I don’t know what I believe,” he muttered in a voice barely perceptible.

  The two were silent for a moment. She was supposed to be drawing a picture, but he noticed her pen stop some time ago. She was twirling it, somewhat unsuccessfully, between her fingers, which were still wrapped in warped shades of magenta. The movement of her fingers looked twitchy and tremulous as she attempted to manipulate them around the pen. One of the symptoms that the drawing was supposed to be remedying.

  “Can I see it again?”

  He rolled his eyes and tugged at his collar, revealing a patch of blue just under the dip of his collar bone. “I’m not going to take my shirt off in the middle of the courtyard.”

  “It’s not like it's cold.”

  “It's indecent.”

  Xochil snorted. “Okay, no one wants to look at your dusty ass anyway,” she muttered to herself as she leaned over the table to inspect the injury herself. “Hm. Mine looks worse,” she remarked, looking back to her page.

  “Yours isn’t dangerously close to all your internal organs.”

  “Do I detect a hint of pride?”

  The wry expression wiped off his face, “no, of course not.”

  She smirked. “I’m just saying, a day ago you were confident you were fine, and now you’re acting like an invalid.”

  “Okay Xochil, If you’re so confident in your diagnosis, why are you still here?”

  “Because I'm definitely not healed- look at this shit.” She abruptly threw her booklet at him. He caught it as it collided with his chest and looked down at the page. She had been drawing the fountain behind them in the courtyard. The lines were shaky and distorted.

  “I mean you could just be bad at art.”

  She kicked him underneath the table.

  “Anyways I’m not leaving until I can do my job again.”

  He was now flipping through her pages, glad for the change of topic. “Well if you’re an artist, you might just be a prisoner here forever.”

  “Archer, you asshole.”

  “Oh yeah I vaguely remember that,” he teased. He watched her attempt to string a bow nearly every day. He watched her for a moment as she mimed aiming at things in the courtyard.

  “I’m just saying, if you feel fine you should push back a little on their prognosis. No one knows your body better than you do. Advocate for yourself.”

  “It is literally their job to know my body better than I do.” He closed her book and put it down in front of him. “Anyways...I… may have not been a hundred percent honest about feeling fine.”

  She stopped fidgeting with her pen and gave him a sympathetic look. “What's going on?”

  “It's not a big deal. Just...little stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  He picked the sketchbook up again and suddenly seemed very interested in the back cover. “Nothing, never mind.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “Is it embarrassing?”

  “It's none of your business.”

  “Is it, you know,” she made some circular motions around her lap, “something down there?”

  “Stop it,” he laughed, throwing her booklet back at her. She caught it with a smirk. Her reflexes were so impressive even with her injury. He couldn’t imagine what she could do before it.

  “So what’s going on with your farmhouse?'' She grabbed the fruit he was rolling and split it open. He didn't remember the name of this one either. He liked the smell but he found it cloyingly sweet. He felt a wash of relief that she didn’t press the matter, “are you having it rebuilt?”

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  “I’m...dealing with one thing at a time.”

  “But it's like...totally gone right? Even if you got out of here, where would you stay?”

  “I’d be fine.”

  “Do you have family to stay with, or-”

  “I said I’ll be fine,” he snapped. She glared at him, indignantly silent. His voice softened. “Sorry just...you’re always asking me so many questions. Just relax.”

  “If you talked more I wouldn't ask so many questions.”

  “Well maybe I don't have anything interesting to talk about.”

  “Well then ask me some questions,” she snapped before dropping down to an annoyed mutter, “like damn didn’t your mom teach you how to have a conversation? Rude-ass…” She refocused on eating the fruit she took from him.

  The moment of awkwardness was blessedly cut short by another patient jogging by.

  “Hey brother, I heard you’re still going to be with us a little longer,” the man stopped in front of their stone table and shook his legs a bit, “You good?”

  Xochil didn't wait for a response. “Yeah he’s got dick trouble so they’re keeping him for observation.”

  “Oh...uh,” he looked between them slightly frantically, “that's...too bad.”

  Tamas’ humiliation was compounded by the fact that the man didn’t seem to take it as a joke. Xochil’s delivery was too hot from their previous exchange. The man stood in front of them, as if expecting Tamas himself to clarify.

  “Yep,” he gave a weak smile, sacrificing his dignity in this moment as an offering of apology to his friend.

  “Did you see the stars last night?”

  “I don't see the need for small talk, just tell me where you’re injured.”

  “For god’s sake.”

  Tamas watched as the sprouts on his windowsill split apart to take their final form. It amazed him how nearly all leaves look the same when they first burst from the seed, but quickly, in the course of a week even, become the most themselves they will ever be. Like little humans. The leaves may grow taller, but they never change shape after that first metamorphosis. Beyond that point, they could forever look at their own shape and know themselves.

  A few of his sprouts still had their seed leaves, long and uniform like grass, but most had dropped down to begin revealing their true form. These newer leaves were jagged and irregular. The deep grooves made it difficult to determine if they would be one ragged whole leaf, like epazote, or a stalk with several small leaves clustered together, like mesquite. The plants were mere centimeters tall. Their transformation was not yet complete. At this point it was impossible to tell.

  “How are your seeds?”

  He turned to find Xochil leaning in his doorway. He shifted over so she could see the tiny plants. His hands lay on the windowsill, warmed by the sun. He rested his chin on them, still studying the clay box. “They have yet to reveal themselves to me.”

  “So you don’t remember what they are yet?”

  “I just forgot,” he snapped, picking his head back up, “It has nothing to do with what happened. I’m a farmer, I plant a lot of seeds. I just forgot what these were.”

  “Okay, sorry,” she responded softly, taking a step into his room. She set a bowl on the bedside table next to him and took a seat at the desk on the far wall. He glanced over at it, a yellowish porridge of corn streaked with some kind of vegetable stewed in a bright red chili oil. A variation on what they ate every morning. He didn’t take too well to spicy food, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone else there.

  He turned from the windowsill and brought his feet up, crossing them on the bed where he was sitting. He plunged his hands in his pocket and felt for the seeds. His fingers found two as he rolled them between his thumb and index. Only a few went to the flowerbed at this window. There were plenty left; he kept a woven bag filled with them in the drawer of his bedside table.

  He barely remembered being in the hospital the first week, but when he awoke, he coughed up seeds. They were all the same- long and tender, like wild swamp rice. His caretakers disposed of his old clothing, having been damaged beyond repair, but when he asked for what was on his person when he arrived, a small bag of the same seeds were the only thing they could produce. Fished out of the breast pocket of a jacked otherwise reduced to tatters. He came to realize he liked the comfort of having a few in his trouser pockets. Something to occupy his hands while his mind reeled.

  “They look healthy,” Xochil offered finally.

  He sometimes rolled the seeds between his fingers until the individual grain crumbled into the mystery blend of pocket lint.

  Xochil gave a resolute sigh. “Listen, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I didn’t mean to snap yesterday.”

  He gave a somber nod. “I was inconsiderate of your feelings.”

  Her eyes were on the planter but her nose wrinkled in response, the same way it always did when he said something strange. She likely didn’t realize how much these reactions affected his willingness to speak plainly to her. She turned her attention back to him and gave a smile as a peace offering.

  “I can’t help it, you know? Big Monarch Sun energy and all,” she gestured to herself. “I’m literally a social butterfly.”

  “It’s really fine.”

  “What's your sign?”

  He thought for a moment. “I uh, don’t really believe in all that stuff.” He shifted off his bed and began busying himself with the cedar chest at its foot.

  “Oh come on! Don’t be a snob, it’s just a hobby,” responded Xochil to his back.

  He shrugged. “Why don’t you guess then?”

  “Rabbit.”

  He turned. “That was quick,” he sneered, feeling like he should be insulted but wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “What? Rabbits are great. You’re kind, dependable, salt of the earth...”

  When he turned from the chest, she was standing in front of him with the bowl in her hand. He took it from her sheepishly.

  “I hear a big ‘but’ coming.”

  “But you’re too trusting,” she continued, “you’re like two charismatic friends away from joining a cult.”

  “Thanks.” He took an apathetic bite of the porridge, suddenly feeling too nervous to have an appetite.

  “Hey, it's good to know your blind spots.”

  He rolled his eyes and leaned back on his bed.

  “So I'm right?”

  He seemed to consider this. “One off,” he smirked, poking at the bowl.

  “Damn! Jaguar? Really? You must be on the cusp.”

  He shrugged.

  “I can kind of see that though,” she reasoned, “You are a bit short tempered.”

  “I guess so.” He stopped playing with his food and set it back down on the bedside table. “Hey, I gotta get going, I have rehab later.”

  “But you barely ate,” she remarked as he was already standing to make his exit.

  He knew he couldn’t keep dancing around these conversations for much longer until Xochil noticed something was off about his answers.