María Carmen wiped the sweat from her brow as she polished the ancient plant stand for the hundredth time that morning. The brass fixture had been in her family for seven generations, passed down from mother to daughter along with its mysterious burden - an emerald vine that supposedly housed the soul of their ancestor.

“You’re being ridiculous, mamá,” her daughter Sofia would say, rolling her eyes whenever María mentioned the plant’s peculiar habits - how it seemed to whisper at night, how its leaves would tremble when family secrets were discussed nearby.

But María knew better. She had witnessed the vine’s magic firsthand, had seen it weep real tears the day her husband passed, its leaves releasing crystalline droplets that tasted of the sea.

“The stand chose us,” her grandmother had told her decades ago, dark eyes gleaming in the candlelight of their old house in Cartagena. “It appeared on our doorstep one morning, carried by hummingbirds made of morning mist. The vine was already wrapped around it, already ancient.”

Now, in her tiny apartment in Miami, María watched as Sofia packed her bags for college. The plant stand sat in its corner, its brass surfaces catching the afternoon light, the vine’s leaves unusually still.

“You must take it with you,” María insisted, gesturing at the stand. “It’s time.”

Sofia paused her packing, fixing her mother with a weary look. “Mamá, please. I’m moving into a dorm. There’s no room for antique furniture, especially not some superstitious family heirloom.”

“It’s not superstition, mi amor. The stand, it protects us. Guides us.” María’s voice cracked. “Your great-grandmother used its leaves to cure fevers. Your grandmother read fortunes in the patterns of its morning dew.”

“Those are just stories, mamá. Beautiful stories, but stories nonetheless.”

That night, after Sofia left, María sat beside the plant stand, tracing its intricate patterns with trembling fingers. For the first time in centuries, the vine had begun to brown at its edges, its leaves curling inward like dying butterflies.

“Please,” she whispered to it, “please don’t go.”

But as the weeks passed, the vine continued to wither, despite María’s desperate care. She tried everything - special fertilizers, blessed water, even singing the old songs her grandmother had taught her. Nothing worked.

On the morning Sofia called to announce she was switching her major from Literature to Business, the last leaf fell. María found it on the floor, perfectly preserved like a tiny emerald fossil. When she touched it, it crumbled to dust.

The brass stand remained, beautiful but ordinary now, its magic gone with the last of María’s hopes for preserving their family’s ways. She kept polishing it daily, but it never again whispered secrets or wept sea-tears or bloomed with prophetic dew.

Sometimes, on quiet nights, María thought she could still hear the ancient vine’s voice in her dreams, speaking of hummingbirds made of mist and women who read fortunes in morning dew. But when she woke, there was only silence, and a beautiful, empty plant stand that had once held magic.