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Liopu looked at her son, wondering what he would look like 20 years from now, when he would be 25 and she 41. She watched him playing in the street with the other neighbourhood kids, kicking a small ball made of scrap pieces of canvas sewn together and stuffed with old clothing.

Liopu smiled. She looked at the text on the mobile. Her buyer would arrive soon.

She grew a small patch of specialty herbs in the windows of her flat, taking up the kitchen, bedroom and toilet with plants potted in whatever containers she could find, including hubcaps, coffee cups, discarded sheets of aluminium foil, lampshades, street signs and vinyl shower curtains.

Liopu sat on the curb and mentally counted her sales for the week. Three more weeks and she would have enough money to buy new clothes for her son, Fexcvit. He never complained about his looks despite the chiding from adults and jokes from kids who made fun of him.

Liopu walked back into the flat and began bagging up more herbs for her next customer, a blend of Nicotiana palm d'anise, Hypericum capsaicin, and other hybrids she had inherited from her mother.

Growers had tried to steal her secrets for propagating the plants, never successful. She carefully guarded the germ that was required to cause the plant seeds to pop open and grow. She knew the places to gather the soil that contained the algal film which acted as a growth medium for the germ.

Her mother had never told Liopu the name of the germ or who shared the secret with Liopu's mother so she did not name the germ, either. She trusted that her mother's decision to store no identification of the germ in her thoughts was key to keeping others from discovering the secret. Liopu also knew that her son would not want to learn the secret so Liopu was growing and selling the plants as quickly as she could to find a new means of making a living.

Liopu did not care about the secret's worth to the rest of her extended family or to the people of her country. In fact, she did not think about others besides her son. The father of her child had shown up one evening while her mother was away and promised Liopu many treasures in exchange for one night alone together. He left with her treasure and never returned. After returning and learning what happened, her mother kicked Liopu out and died within a year from loneliness. Liopu had only her son left, as far as she knew. That and the secret with which she mothered herself and her son. Nothing else mattered.