Dahlia and the Garden of Light - Chapter 19: Chapter 19

The sun over the village was not soft. It scorched.
Dust curled into the air like breath, and the dry scrublands stretched in every direction. The help center was little more than a cluster of buildings made from sun-baked clay and corrugated metal, the walls painted with faded murals of peace and prayer. In the mornings, the village children would trace the birds with their fingers and chase the goats through the fields before school.
Dahlia stood in the shaded corner of the small clinic, gently lifting a bandage from a child’s leg. The boy winced but didn’t cry.
“You’re brave,” she murmured, her voice cool water in the heat. “Like a lion.”
He squinted at her, cheeks streaked with dirt and dried tears. “Are you a lion too?”
She smiled faintly. “No. I'm just the one who patches them up.”
Outside, Amy bartered with a supply truck that had arrived two days late, trying to explain — in broken Swahili — that the bags of rice had holes in them. Several young women from the village watched her, giggling behind their headscarves as she pantomimed ‘rat.’
Inside the clinic, nurses moved between beds — Auntie Halima, mid-50s, fierce and wide-hipped, barked orders in Kiswahili and clucked disapprovingly at Dahlia’s sleeplessness.
“You’re too pale,” she said, placing a cold cloth against Dahlia’s neck. “You work like you’ve got no bones left.”
“I’m fine,” Dahlia replied. “Just tired.”
“You say that every day. I think your bones are just hiding now.”
In the next room, Samuel, a lanky Kenyan in his late twenties and the clinic’s only full-time pharmacist, swept dust from the floor with more vigor than strictly necessary. He liked to lecture Amy about local herbs she couldn’t pronounce.
“Everyone thinks healing is about needles and pills,” he said. “But ginger root has memory. And neem bark can shame the fever right out of a man.”
Amy raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying your bark shames people?”
Samuel grinned. “I’m saying it works.”
Their rhythm was beautiful, even amidst struggle.
Until the night the militia came.
The Warning
One hot night, Dahlia emerged from the back room where she’d treated a child with a fractured leg and an infection that nearly took him.
She walked out slowly, hands stained from tinctures and gauze, exhaustion pulling at her ribs. A soft lantern glow lit the dusty courtyard, where Louis — the clinic's quiet logistics manager — leaned against a support beam.
He looked up.
“You stitched that child’s wound with a steadier hand than me,” he said.
She didn’t startle. His voice was becoming familiar.
“You’re just tired,” she replied.
He stepped closer, smirking. “Then I must always be tired around you.”
She gave a soft laugh. “You always have a line, don’t you?”
“Only for people who carry the world on their shoulders.”
Her smile faded. “I’m not carrying the world.”
“No?” he asked, voice gentler now. “Then why do you look like you haven’t exhaled in weeks?”
Dahlia said nothing.
Instead, she looked up at the moon, round and pale, suspended in a breathless sky. Louis watched her, but didn’t press.
That’s when the ground began to hum — low and steady, like thunder from far away.
The Militia
Louis snapped upright. “Engines. Multiple.”
He sprinted to the roof and raised his binoculars.
Amy climbed up moments later, breath ragged. “Six trucks. Armed. Red armbands. It’s the gang from Nari District. They’ve been raiding outposts for weeks.”
“They’re heading straight for us,” Louis confirmed. “We’ve got minutes.”
Dahlia was already moving, pushing aside a curtain to the makeshift nursery where three toddlers were sleeping. “Evacuate the children into the cellar under the generator shack. Now. Halima knows the way.”
Amy grabbed a radio and shouted orders in three languages. Samuel passed out water and salt tabs to those helping, muttering prayers as he worked.
Outside, Dahlia crouched low behind the water tank. Amy joined her.
“Stay quiet,” Dahlia said. “We end this fast.”
“Got your back,” Amy whispered.
The first soldier raised his rifle toward the clinic doors.
Dahlia pulled a pouch from her belt and flicked it toward him. It hit the ground and burst—lavender smoke unfurling.
The man staggered, coughing violently.
Amy lunged forward, sweeping the legs from another guard. His rifle clattered across the dry earth. “Two down,” she murmured.
From the shadows, a third man aimed his weapon — then froze.
The trucks groaned. Tires spun.
Dahlia crouched, whispering into the dirt: “Rise.”
From beneath the cracked earth, vines exploded upward — thorny, iron-thick, wrapping around axles and tires. Trucks lurched. Men shouted. One fired into the vines, only for green tendrils to twist up and slap the gun from his hand.
“Fall back!” someone yelled.
And they did — wheels dragging vines, headlights zig-zagging into the horizon.
Aftermath
Silence returned slowly.
Villagers emerged from hiding — a young girl clutching her mother, an old man with a walking stick stepping shakily into the courtyard. Auntie Halima crossed herself and whispered, “Mungu ametuma mti.”
(God sent a tree.)
Louis stood frozen near the well, his lantern flickering.
“What... was that?” he asked, his voice low, stunned.
Dahlia dusted off her hands. “Defense. Nature’s version.”
Amy stepped into the light, shrugging. “Told you she wasn’t just a doctor.”
Under the Stars
Later that night, under a vault of stars, Dahlia sat on the clinic steps, barefoot and quiet. The sounds of night creatures hummed around her.
Louis joined her, a folded blanket in one hand.
“You saved us,” he said, sitting beside her.
She didn’t answer right away. “We saved each other.”
He studied her profile in the moonlight.
“You’re not afraid of them, are you?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid of what happens if we stop showing up. If we let people like that become normal.”
He leaned forward. “There’s something about you. Something you’re not saying.”
Dahlia’s breath caught.
“I can’t,” she said, finally.
“Can’t... or won’t?”
Her fingers twisted in her lap. “Both.”
Louis didn’t ask again. He simply placed his hand on the step beside hers. Not to hold — just to be there.
“I’ll wait,” he said.
And for the first time in weeks, Dahlia exhaled.