W4: My Hero Fights Hunger

Nobody can recall the exact history of compost. Some claim that it started when lightning struck a stack of spoilt cabbage, tea bags, and egg cartons in the rubbish heap behind the former refugee market. Others claim it came from an abandoned research lab, a botched soil restoration operation that simply vanished.

One thing is for sure: Compost had a purpose and was alive.

It remained silent. It had neither hands nor eyes. It crawled and squelched, leaving behind a track of black, rich earth that even caused fractured concrete to sprout weeds. Banana peels, wilted lettuce, a half-chewed corn cob and a thousand other bits, all swirling together like a living stew, were its ever-changing form.

In the bombed-out buildings and slums where people hadn't eaten fresh food in months, compost drifted. Dust made the sky yellow. The taps had ran out of water. Hunger was so commonplace that kids stopped crying about it and instead pressed their tummies in quiet.

Compost would then show up.

It didn't ask for permission or knock. It would curl up behind the rusting barrel where families used to burn plastic to stay warm in a courtyard corner. And a patch of soil would show up in the morning, soft, alive, and breathing.

The elderly were the first to notice.

They squeezed the dirt between their fingers while kneeling next to it. With moist eyes, one said, "Like the old days." The cassava, lentil, and sunflower seeds that had lain dormant in their pockets for years now found a reason to come alive.

The kids came next. They didn't fear compost. It danced and gurgled, and they laughed. Melon rinds, tea leaves, and old bread were among the food scraps they fed it, and in exchange, compost caused things to grow. Not only plants. Knowledge.

Carved into a rotting carrot was a note:

“Plant beans with corn. They hold hands underground.”

Stamped in a chunk of onion skin:

“Peppers like warm feet. Wrap the roots in paper.”

Compost was more than just nutrition; it conveyed memories. Recollections of growing, feeding, and caring. Techniques buried in drought, lost in battle, and outlawed by businesses. Peel by peel, they came back now.

However, the rot was not welcomed by everyone.

The Clean Earth Authority showed there wearing silver uniforms and mirror-shined masks. Compost was deemed a biohazard. They referred to it as "unregulated decay." "Dangerous biology." They used vacuums and drones to try and scrape it up.

Compost stayed together. It just disintegrated—into hundreds of fragments—and vanished into the wind.

Compost, however, remained.

Rich soil patches started to show up all around the city a few weeks later. in gutters. on roofs. even within tires that have been abandoned. There was a hint of growth everywhere a banana peel was dropped. A sprout. A leaf. Just a friendly reminder.

People started intentionally composting. They constructed little mounds out of tin cans and buckets. What the scraps were saying, they taught one another. Hunger soon had to contend with spinach. with squash. with strawberries.

Even now, nobody was certain of what compost was. A creature? A power? A cabbage leaf-wrapped rebellion?

It didn’t matter.

The regulations had been altered by compost. It demonstrated that waste was the beginning rather than the finish. that it might be revived by something the world discarded.

Everywhere Compost had been, someone had now constructed a Soil Circle, a communal heap where food was grown, tales were exchanged, and scraps were respected. Compost murals were painted on the walls, a churning, smiling swirl of garbage with worms for hair and roots for arms.

The phrase "Feed the soil, and the soil will feed you" appears beneath it.

So it did.