I never noticed how out of place the trees are here.

I often take the time when i’m not in our family dome to walk around the neighboring sectors. Quadrant Three has a lot more foliage and flowers than ours does. It helps me relax on busy days where I can’t keep my thoughts from racing. Especially when the sight of the dry arid land outside our windows grates on my last nerve.

On days especially rough, like today, I clock out of work early and take a walk around. It’s not too big of an area; we don’t live in a major hub, but the surrounding quadrants are a nice change of pace. Quadrant Seven has a lovely moat that encloses everyone’s dome inside it. Quadrant Eight has a cute little community garden at its center (their dirt is a lot less firm than ours). I remember planting seeds there for a school project a couple years back, but for the life of me I couldn’t name a single flower my classmates and I grew.

The thing that I always seem to come back to is the small wooded area in Quadrant Six. The wooded area has about four trees at most, but they grow apples every other year, so they tend to gather quite a crowd while in season.

I used to take my grandmother to see the apple trees. She never complained a single time. Grandmother would sit down on the benches lining the trees and watch me swing around on the branches. She used to tell me stories of things like the ocean, which was a huge hole in the ground filled with water. This “undrinkable” water held magnificent creatures that didn’t need oxygen, and they floated around from land mass to land mass. She spoke of huge gusts of wind that would either suck up everything in their path or move things out of place—she mentioned her childhood quadrant back on The Mother Planet had to relocate after twelve domes got destroyed during the storm. It makes me grateful that we only deal with dust cycles every once in a while.

I think she never minded taking me out to play because she got to see the apple trees. She never said much about them. Instead, she would sit down and simply watch them sway back and forth, side to side. She once mentioned how the trees would be surrounded by more green plants called grass.

“The smell would be so sharp some days, it would make my eyes water.” She had said.

Imagine that, nothing but green surrounding you for yards and yards. I can barely picture the sight of something so beautiful.

I think of the large chunk of rocks surrounding the bright apple trees, and how the roots are forced to dig deep into dry dirt, rather than in soil like they were designed to. Cool green against beige as far as the eye can see.

“They tried their best,” she used to say to me, “that’s all anyone could ask for.”

I look at the apple trees. The first fruit of the season is starting to bloom, bright red and shiny.

I guess their best is all this planet could ask for.