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The kitchen smelled of tea leaves and fresh bread when Emil sat across from Grandfather Tomas the next morning. The greenhouse still clung to him—paint under his nails, the weight of the basil leaf in his pocket, the echo of slips that read: Trust feels like a trap.
Grandfather stirred his tea slowly, the spoon circling like the rings of an old tree. “Your face tells me you wrestled with more than speeches last night.”
Emil nodded. “We’re ready for Geneva, but… those slips. A girl wrote she just wants to walk home safe. Another said trust feels like a trap. We told the council the ledger works, but what about the roots of fear? What about the people who are supposed to protect us?”
Grandfather’s eyes softened. “Ah, the guardians of the city. You are asking if they can be gardeners.”
“Yes,” Emil said. “Right now they arrive after fights, after vandalism, after crimes. But what if their role was different—helping youth before harm? Teaching us what words can do, how rumors poison trust, how to think before acting?”
Grandfather set down his spoon. “You see what many leaders do not. Punishment is pruning. Necessary sometimes, but never enough. A gardener tends long before the branch breaks—watering, guiding, teaching. A society that waits for crime before it calls its guardians has already let the soil dry.”
Emil frowned. “But will anyone listen if we tell them this? To police, to governments?”
“Some will scoff,” Grandfather said gently. “They will say you are naive, that law is about force. But remember—law without nurture is only iron. And iron alone cannot grow anything. If you speak this truth, you will be dismissed by some… but planted in others.”
Emil looked down at his hands, scarred by paint and soil. “So we tell them anyway?”
Grandfather leaned forward, his voice a steady root. “Tell them. Remind them that safety is not the absence of crime—it is the presence of dignity. Remind them that guardians who plant understanding will prevent what punishment only mourns. That is the gardener’s task. And if they laugh? Let them. Roots do not ask permission to grow.”
Emil smiled faintly, feeling the basil leaf’s edge between his fingers. The fear in the slips still weighed on him, but now it carried a shape—an answer, fragile yet alive.