Elena filled up the worn, tired, creaking sneakers with soft loamy soil. The toes were padded with pebbles from the yard and bits of fine gravel that she’d scooped out of the fish tank in the kitchen. Sarah didn’t mind. Sarah was a fish.

The laces were loose. All but one of the ends had lost their little plastic sheaths, and were fraying and beginning to unravel. She gently tied up the left shoe, so that a little of the soil squeezed out of the top, but most of it compacted itself safely and securely inside, and then she did the same with the right shoe. She pulled the tongues up a little and prodded into the opening of each foot a few little seeds. And then she covered them up with the last of the loam and sprinkled on some river water, and left him by the bank to grow back.