“The crocuses push up through the dense crust of spring snow like baby birds hatching, their butter yellow and velvet purple noses insisting it is time. Every year it feels like winter will last forever. That we've finally fucked the climate up so badly we don't deserve the thaw. But here they are again, after waiting in the cold and hard-packed earth, waiting in the dark, weighted down by heavy wet snow and stepping boots. How do they do it? Escape, grow up through the dirt without light to feed them? From somewhere in her brain, Ada remembers – it's the challenge of the soil itself. Their slender stems thicken as they encounter resistance to their growth. They transform under pressure, become exactly strong enough to break up and out, drawing on their last reserves of energy to sustain them before they can open, finally, to the sun.”
