Mira pressed her hand to the cold greenhouse glass and watched her breath fog it up. Outside, the station turned slowly around Veil, a dying red star whose weak light always arrived late and faint. But her bean vines weren't reaching for that tired star. Every leaf and curling tendril had turned the other way, toward the empty dark. Mira frowned. Plants follow light. So what light were they following?

Mira didn't trust the readings yet. Instead she pulled up the station logs and searched the word 'greenhouse.' Most files were boring. But one was locked, marked with her grandmother's name — Eda, the station's first gardener, dead twenty years now. Mira's heart thumped. Why would a garden file be sealed?

Mira couldn't break the lock, so she went looking for someone who could — the station's quiet librarian-bot, Cass. Cass rolled out of its alcove, scanned the file, and went still. "This file is keyed to a heartbeat," it said. "Your grandmother's. And yours is close enough to match. It wants you to open it, Mira."

Mira pressed her thumb to the scanner. The file unlocked, and a map appeared — a path through the station ending at the greenhouse, with a single marked spot under the floor. Cass beeped softly. "Your grandmother buried something there," it said. "And the plants have been guarding it, pointing the way, ever since she left."

Mira followed the map to the greenhouse and dug under the floor where it was marked. Her fingers found a small glass jar, sealed tight, full of soil that glowed with slow light. A label in her grandmother's hand read: "The first seed of the next garden. Yours now." Mira held it to her chest and finally understood — the garden had been waiting all this time for her.