Chapter 1
Poison ivy grew through the wall they said was impenetrable.
It didn’t happen overnight. There was no poison ivy near this wall when the humans just built it. There was not a single other plant in sight either.
There was a scorched earth where the wall rose, a barren land, stripped of all life, but humans. They built the wall, dozens of meters tall, and it stretched to where the naked eye could not see. All the way to the horizon it went to the left and to the right.
Time passed, and the earth recovered slowly, and the winds brought the seeds.
Years passed, and the wall became surrounded by grass and plants. Some of them stretched their leaves toward the wall, but the wall was impenetrable, and once touching the cold stone, the plants retreated back.
Years passed, and the fires, which had made the earth barren before, which had made the humans build the wall, rose again. The fires burned, and they burned the plants, and the grass, and they burned through the earth, leaving it dead again.
They didn’t burn through the impenetrable wall, and so it stood, once again on scorched earth.
Time passed, and the earth recovered again.
The winds brought seeds.
The plants sprouted through the seeds, and grew high, but the wall still stood taller.
Time passed, and no more fires came, perhaps because there was no one to bring the fires anymore.
A poison ivy grew by the foot of the impenetrable wall. It clinged to the cold stone and rose as high as the highest trees. It covered the wall, but it was not enough. Where the winds and time had made the place between the stones thin, the ivy spread.
Year after year, or maybe century after century, the wind made the stone weaker, but the poison ivy grew stronger.
Time passed, and one thin leaf pushed its way through the thick wall and peeked out on the other side.
But there was no one to cut off the poison ivy that grew through the wall someone said was impenetrable.
