Bottom Grass

Bottom Grass lies in a quiet seam of the earth, a rug of short emerald blades that seem to hum with a patient, damp energy when you press a palm to it. The tops pick up the morning light and glow a soft jade, while the undersides are the color of rain-slick stone, almost blue-black in the shade. It feels waxy and springy under the fingers, not brittle, with a faint scent of pine resin when cut and crushed. When you walk through a field of it, the blades part like a quiet crowd, and the air carries the faint rustle of tiny roots tangle-dancing beneath, as if the ground itself is listening. Lorekeepers speak of Bottom Grass as a plant that knows how to listen back to you, a survivor that settles where the earth was broken and makes a quiet pledge to heal the wound a little at a time. In the old journals tucked into market stalls, Bottom Grass is named as much for its habit as for its usefulness. It grows in the shadow of disrupted soil—the sides of a worn wagon trail, the edges of a collapsed mine, the margins where a campfire has burned down to coals—and it seems to cradle the memory of those who pass through. Gatherers say the plant remembers, too, though not with words, by the tilt of its blades toward the good shade of a rock or a root. When the green carpet is pressed into a bundle, a subtle resinous scent blooms, and the texture shifts from silk-like to a pliant, almost leather-like softness, a property that lends it to a dozen humble crafts—from binders for harnesses to the heart of a nurse’s tinctures that ease a fever’s grip. For those who walk the caravan routes, Bottom Grass is less a novelty than a necessary companion. A pinch of its powder—soft and pale—tints a healing tea that quiets a rider’s tremor after a long ride, or steadies a horse when a storm rattles the camp. It’s included in simple salves that heal chapped skin after a night in the desert wind and is whispered about as a binding for broken bones when other remedies fail, a reminder that nature’s small, steadfast gifts can slow the churn of fear and pain. Traders know it by its price in the light of dawn: a modest handful, a fair exchange for other herbs, a barter that keeps the wheels turning and the fires warm. On market days, you’ll find Bottom Grass at the edge of the saddlebag stalls, tucked in with dried nettle and field salt, its price negotiating with a craftsman’s patience. The Saddlebag Exchange—a name spoken with a nod and a smile—often hands over coins in exchange for a shaded bundle, weighing every leaf as if it were a promise. A vendor will tell you that what you give is what you get, and what you get is a piece of the road, a thread of kinship, a reminder that every plant, in its quiet, green way, keeps the world from tipping too far toward wildness. And so Bottom Grass becomes a small, living story—a stitching of soil, breath, and the roads we travel together.