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Dear Nai:
Rem says that I should write a letter to you every time that you make me mad so that we fight less but you don’t read my letters so I told her I don’t want to write them but she said that “compassion heals all wounds” and that I have to so now I’m writing you a letter you’re not going to read. I really hate it when you say you don’t need food to eat but then you take the last donut just because you say it’s not fair for me to get two but then you just throw it away. That makes me really mad. Please don’t do that anymore.
Your brother,
Vash
Dear Nai:
I’m sorry that you didn’t want to play cards with Rem and me but it made her really sad so now I’m mad at you. And that’s why I yelled at you and called you a dumb idiot plant. Rem said that wasn’t nice of me though so I’m sorry. You’re not dumb. You’re probably smarter than me because you’re always smarter and faster and stronger and have more powers. We can play cowboys instead like you wanted next time but I won’t do it unless you say sorry to Rem.
Your brother,
Vash
Dear Nai:
Can you please not hide my toothbrush anymore. Thanks.
Your brother,
Vash
Dear Nai,
I’m sorry that I took your book and hid it for a week. I told you to stop hiding my toothbrush. What do you even like about that book anyway?
Your brother,
Vash
Dear Nai,
I’m sorry that you lost the card game. I didn’t cheat, I really didn’t, but then you got really mad, so I can lose next time if you want. Please don’t stop playing cards with me.
Your brother,
Vash
Dear Nai,
Humans are not going to do that to us! Plants and humans can get along. You said we could get along. You said that, so why am I the crazy one for believing it? Hasn’t Rem been nice to us? Doesn’t she love us? She said she would never let that happen to another plant again.
You’re wrong about humans. They can learn from their mistakes. They’re not all bad.
Your very ANGRY brother,
Vash
Dear Nai,
I’m sorry for fighting with you and I’m sorry for yelling at you. I miss you. I’m sorry. Please stop ignoring me.
Your very very sorry brother,
Vash
Dear Nai,
I know I said I wanted you to talk to me again but could you maybe stop again? Or take a break? You keep trying to proselytize to me when I’m trying to play the piano and it’s getting really annoying. I don’t think that humans are dangerous or bad, so just drop it.
P.S. I learned that word from Rem. See? Humans are smart.
Your brother,
Vash
Dear Nai,
Can we please not talk about humans and plants anymore? I just want to hang out with you again. You can read me some stories from your book, like the one about the man who gets swallowed by the whale. Or we could draw pictures, or play the piano, or make up stories about the passing planets. Anything. I just miss you, even though you’re in the same room.
Your brother,
Vash
Dear Nai,
Maybe you’re right, maybe I am too human to understand why you hate humans so much, maybe I am a bad plant, maybe I’m just a worthless waste of space stuck on this stupid metal ship with the grand and powerful elder twin, who, by the way, is only grand and powerful at being a complete sewage pipe of a person, but Rem has done nothing bad to us. There’s no reason for you to treat her this way! It’s wrong!
I wish I could understand why you hate her so much. She’s our mother, she takes care of us and protects us and loves us and you just shit on all of it and make her cry all the time! Do you know what it’s like to watch her cry? To have to comfort her because she misses someone she sees everyday? Does that mean anything at all to you?
Of course it doesn’t. You don’t care about anything other than plants now, and I don’t know why. You used to love humans. You loved cowboys and pranks and listening to Rem’s stories. You helped me trust Rem when I was scared of her, after we were born.
You did that, Nai. You taught me how wonderful humans could be. Why did you change?
Vash
Nai,
I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you
Dear Nai,
I haven’t written a letter to you in a long time. I don’t know why I ever did, you never read them and eventually I stopped giving them to you. I think I’m writing this one more for me than for you.
I’m on a ship, one of the ones that crashed after we after you after the fall. It took a while for the people to warm up to me, but that was only because they were scared. They didn’t know who I was or what I could do. They thought I might be dangerous.
Humans are scared, Nai. They’re scared of what they don’t understand and that can make them act cruel. I can’t hold that against them. I still remember how scared I was of Rem when she found us in the plant room, and how I bit her when she tried to pick us up.
If we could just make humans less scared, if we could just talk to them, make them understand that we just want everyone to live together peacefully, then we could save the plants and the people.
I work with Luida and Brad, two of the ship’s inhabitants, to fix injured plants. I can hear them when they’re in pain, or they’re hungry, or they’re bored, or anything else that they want me to hear. It’s like…I can touch the glass and know, instantly, not with words but with feelings. A lot of them just want to know someone understands them. To be honest, a lot of them just want to complain about the water in their tanks being too hot or too cold. It’s kind of relieving, honestly, to hear that most of them are just uncomfortable or lazy instead of being actually sick or injured. They’re similar to humans. Once, Brad didn’t want to sweep the halls when it was his turn, and he tried to pass it off to me. Luida hit him with the broom until he apologized, it was really funny. I got in trouble for laughing, but then Luida started laughing too, and then all of us were laughing and chasing each other with broomsticks…
Did the plants on the ship ever talk to you? Is that how you decided that humans need to die? Did they tell you that? Because the plants I’ve spoken with don’t hate their humans, or their lives. They’re not really…aware of themselves. They just want to eat, sleep, produce, and repeat. And if they’re doing that safely, if humans are taking care of them and protecting them, isn’t that good enough? And Luida, one of the humans who took me in, is developing ways to lessen the strain on plants once the population grows. People don’t want to kill plants.
I have to believe there’s a way for humans and plants to coexist. I have to believe in the goodness of the people around me, because if I don’t or I can’t, then everything you and Rem have ever taught me will have been in vain. And even if you choose not to remember the boy who once cried over the fact that there weren’t any cowboy hats on the ship, I remember him.
I’m keeping him alive, Nai. Until you come back to me.
Your brother forever,
Vash
Dearest brother,
Sometimes it feels like I hate the humans so much, there’s a gorge in my chest carved out by the injustices they’ve wrought upon our kind. My heart feels exposed, constantly, beating out blood that I have no right to bleed when my sisters’ hearts beat no longer. What right do I have to stand here and breathe, when our eldest sister’s blackened corpse stares at me whenever I shut my eyes? When dozens of our other sisters lie motionless in their pods, hollowed out and used up by the humans and their greed?
I couldn't stand to look at Rem then. I can’t stand to look at you now, seeing the way you idolize the humans, try to appeal to them with your infantile behavior. You’re not weak. You’re strong. You’re so strong, but you can’t see it because they’ve made you afraid—
They have no right. They have no right to imprison us, steal the fruits of our labor, bleed us dry of everything we have, to take and take and take until we have nothing left to give. Our sisters have no choice in the matter. Our sisters aren’t even aware they’re being used—and the humans will do anything to keep it that way, to ensure that we’re kept quiet and subservient and under their thumb. The only reason they haven’t imprisoned us yet is because we look enough like them that their weak consciousnesses begin to feel guilty at their flagrant disregard for life.
I won’t stand for it. I can’t stand for it. If I don’t fight, then that means all of our sisters died for nothing. You, who have died a thousand deaths for them each and every day, will have suffered for nothing.
You’re too kind, Vash. You’re too kind and it’s going to get you killed one day. You think that if you make the humans love you you’ll be safe, but it’s a lie. They’ll love you and then they’ll hurt you, like they have for years already.
You don’t understand my plan yet, but that’s okay. Once I’m done, everyone will be safe and a plant will never have to suffer human greed or human cruelty ever again. I promise, Vash, I will do whatever is necessary to save our brethren. To save you. To make a world where you never have to make yourself small to be safe, where you can be accepted as you are, in all of your strength and glory, as you should have always been.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive the humans for driving this wedge between us, but as I live to see it, I will get you back. I will open your eyes. I will make you see, and then we will flood the world to make it anew. I’ll be your Adam, and you’ll be my Eve, and none of our sisters will know pain like we have. I’ll make a world where the new plants we create will only know the heavenly grace of paradise.
Yours eternally,
Millions Knives
Nai,
I had to relearn how to write because you shot off my dominant hand. It’s harder than it fucking looks, though I doubt that you’d care, considering you’re fully leaning into the psycho-murderer thing now. But even though I’m angry with you, and believe me, I’m so fucking angry—I still miss you.
Isn’t that the worst part? I hate you so much, but under all that hatred is just love. Love and pain, I guess. You took my arm, you took lives, you took Rem, and still I just want my brother to come home.
Nai, when did we become so different?
Vash
Vash,
You understand I needed to do it, yes? Tell me you understand. I had to, Vash, the gate would’ve killed you and I would do anything to save you, even if you wouldn’t lift a finger to save me or our sisters.
You showed me that today. I watched all those plants die minutes before you arrived. They had been forced into a Final Bloom by the damn parasites that feed off of the ichor of their midribs, and now they’re dead. And you don’t care, just as you never cared about Tesla, just as you never cared about me. I have told you countless times, countless stories of how the humans have destroyed us, and still, you would choose them. Still, you would allow them to twist your mind, teach you to hate me.
Fine, then. Hate me, little brother. Profess your love for humanity and see where it leads you. I shall be waiting with open arms when they finally use up the last of your bleeding heart, and I will never turn you away.
Millions Knives
Knives,
Do you remember how we used to play piano together?
You’d play one song and I’d play another, and while they never fit completely right because they were too different, they still sounded beautiful together. Sometimes when we reached for the same key you’d get this annoyed look on your face like you do whenever you’re about to let me get away with something you think I shouldn’t get away with, and then you let me have the key because you knew it would make me happy. …In truth, what made me the happiest was playing by your side.
I miss that.
Vash the Stampede