Leaving the Cactus Tree

It was the perfect time of the year. The lightness of the air, the sweet smells, the moderate sunlight... The Cactus Tree had all the ingredients for a good long nap. And a long nap was all that Naptus needed to be happy.

As he was slowly entering the Castle of Dreams, as his grandfather called it, some distant sounds dared to keep him awake:

"Naptus, Naptus, wake up!", said one.

"Naaaappptuuusss, are you napping?", roared the other.

But "Grngn, grrrr..." was the best attempt for the sleepy Cactus to form words as his eyes were forced to meet the afternoon light.

A quick glance around brought Naptus back to reality. Everything was moving around him. Left and right, Cactus were sliding accross the surface of the Tree in a controlled frenzy. Anyone who would look at the Cactus Tree from a distance could think that it was very much alive moving its thousand spines to scare an imaginary predator. And even Naptus trained although half-opened eyes could barely follow them.

Naptus might be napping - a lot - but the Cactus Tree was never sleeping. Everyone was working hard to collect and prepare the precious Cactus Blossom, a core element in the manufacture of all sorts of products used all around Space like the Extra Light Speed Gas, the Blossom Uptime (a very strong alcohol) and the Dark Grey Matter. Far from being completely lazy, Naptus had tried to help them many times in the past but he just couldn't. Physically.

Born with feet, the napping Cactus was the only Cactus that wasn't tied to the Cactus Tree, making it impossible for him to execute even the simplest tasks down there. Well, he could, but he was simply too slow or it was too dangerous.

At the age of 10, Naptus had been to the Blossom Factory to help his mother with the brewing. The task had been simple: cutting in half some buds, running as fast as possible to the gigantic Blossom Oven and deliver the package to his mum. As he had been doing the run for the first time, two Sliders had charged straight into him with fresh gathered Blossom making him lose his balance and fall. Trying to protect the buds, he had held them tight against his chest but hadn't been able to avoid crushing them to the ground. The Sliders had lost their precious package trying to avoid a quite unexpected running Cactus. The batch had been ruined and he had been injured. Despite the incident, he had tried again and again doing some other tasks some other times without any more luck. So he had just given up. Napping was the best thing he could be doing since then. At least, he wasn't putting anyone's life in danger.

"Naptus, you neeeed to wake up! We're going to be late."

"Late to what?", mumbled Naptus

"The Cactus Elders are gathering everyone and they insisted that you needed to be there."

"Me?"

"Yeah, you... Weird, eh? Come on dude, let's go", demanded Ulan while grapping Naptus hand and pulling him out of his Blossom bed.

The three young Cactus were now on their way to the Harvest Place where the gathering would take place. Here and there, Cactus hurried to finish their tasks: cutting, gathering, moving things around. Nothing should be wasted. Some others seemed too concerned to finish their work and were sliding at an impressive speed towards the Place. Naptus was looking at all this haste with detachment. All he could think about was the conversation he had earlier with one of his few friends.

"Why me? What have I done again?", thought Naptus. In the past, when the Elders had wanted to blame him, at least they would have waited for the end of the season to tell everyone. This whole gathering thing didn't look very promising on the face of it but deep inside, Naptus had a strange feeling that something was different this time.