Chapter 2
With a cracked head and a broken heart, our hero found herself… rocky, lifeless, and a little hungry, with zero soul-realizations.
I awoke to groaning. My groaning.
Pain lanced through my head, and my body jolted with unease. Where was I? What had happened? Heavy quilts weighed down on my chest, threatening to suffocate me. I made the mistake of moving my foot and immediately remembered that I’d shredded it on broken glass.
Chasing after a squirrel.
The fog cleared as my memories came into sharp focus.
The Crown Jewel Tulip was gone. The significance of that loss settled deep into my chest. That tulip wasn’t just the centerpiece for Eldrene’s crown every three years. The tulip symbolized the hope of our realm.
A fact we mortals try to forget, lest our fear overcome us and ruin the precarious balance that has been set in place.
Everyone knew the story.
A millennium ago, the Prince—his name now lost to time—sought to end the realm with withering magic.
A dark magic that sucked the life out of everything and everyone around it, warping all it touched into an unrecognizable version of itself.
His magic seeped into the land and spread like poison.
Villages turned against each other; peace treaties were torn into shreds; war was imminent.
Mortals, magical or not, had no chance of stopping its reach.
Eldrene was the only Goddess still walking the earth after the Elden Wars—the rest had retreated to the stars.
She was the sole being powerful enough to stop withering magic from causing more harm.
So she poured her power into the land, to contain the contagion.
In doing so, she ended the Prince, enveloping him in her light—blotting out his darkness forever.
But the withering magic was too powerful.
Once her power connected to the spreading darkness, she could not break the bond.
Withering magic drank from her power, her life force, until she was almost drained dry of both.
She had been willing to sacrifice every last drop if it meant ending the withering magic for good, but even that wouldn’t vanquish it entirely.
With barely any magic and only a whisper of life left, Eldrene wove the last of her spirit into a flower, binding herself to this realm forever, sacrificing the rest of her days to fighting the darkness that still seeks to end all.
As long as she walks this earth, withering magic will be held at bay.
Though she can’t walk much of it. The day she sacrificed herself, she was in Moss Wood, and in Moss Wood she must stay.
That’s where the essence of her power is the strongest, where she channels what she can to combat withering magic far and wide.
But this takes a great toll on Eldrene. Her power is not what it once was, and withering magic tries every day to infiltrate the land she sacrificed herself to protect so long ago.
Without her former strength, she must rely on the dedication of mortals.
Belief, while not inherently magical, is a powerful thing.
Belief is what renews her life force every three years.
The flower she bound herself to, in truth, does protect her life.
But only through the people’s belief. It casts hope through the realm.
The hope that everything will be all right, in turn, funnels into the bloom, which feeds back into the land, into the people, and into Eldrene herself.
In essence, ever since the Prince died, the realm has operated on its own water cycle of hope, so to speak.
Eldrene bound herself to a tulip—a symbol of new beginnings, of love itself.
Nonmagical tulips that needn’t hold dark magic at bay while also carrying the belief of an entire realm normally bloom and die, leaving behind a seed pod for future flowers.
The Crown Jewel Tulip, however, produces only a single seed.
That seed remains with Eldrene’s Forest Train for two years until it grows into a bulb.
A precious, sacred thing. The only one of its kind, the future of Nestryia resting within.
In the bulb’s final months before the Goddess Celebration, it’s bestowed into the care of a Town Gardener.
For only those with garden magic can tend to the bulbs; luckily, there were plenty of us.
Luckier still, my garden magic also worked on the blub despite it not being quite normal.
Never once had someone lost the tulip. Never once had someone jeopardized the entire realm.
Had I just killed a Goddess? Had I just doomed all of Nestryia?
Even if the tulip served as symbol alone, the Celebration ensured that the realm knew our Goddess protected us. Without that hope, what would fill in the gaps? Fear had no place; if fear took hold, who knows what darkness could crop up that not even Eldrene could stop.
Half the realm was still reeling from the burning of Fennings Forest a hundred years ago. Dragons, infected with withering magic, had carved a path of destruction. Folk then believed that Eldrene’s power might be waning.
Which, of course, did cause it to wane. But that was a Celebration year, and the Crown Jewel Tulip reinvigorated the hope lost.
Had I just lost the world’s physical manifestation of hope?
Why did it have to be so small? Small things love to get lost.
Oh Goddess.
I let out another groan.
“Shhh,” a soft voice cooed. “You always overdo it.”
Despite the possibility of the world ending, I smiled. I would know that voice anywhere. The panic creeping up my spine subsided at the familiar scent of honey from Sylvie Alderson.
At least I’m home; at least I’m safe.
Even if I was a failure who needed to get to work right away.
I tried to lift my head, but gentle hands forced it back onto the pillow. There was no use in fighting this battle. I fancied myself to have quite the iron will, but it was nothing compared to one of my dearest friends.
“I don’t think so,” Sylvie admonished. “You were dealt quite the blow this morning. And for what? To run after an innocent squirrel seeking refuge in the forest?”
“More like a villainous vermin stealing my tulip,” I corrected her. Speaking worsened the pounding headache.
“Oh, so now you’re going to blame the squirrel? That’s a new low, even for you, Miss Curmudgeonly,” she said with a loving lilt despite the ill-seeming nickname.
I’d earned it on my first day in Moss. As soon as she saw me trying to sell the tunic off my back for an apple, Sylvie had taken me in. Well, she tried to take me in. I fought her all the way down the main street, until she plopped me down on a bench next to a child presumably my age.
“Look after her for one moment, will you?” Sylvie had asked.
“Yes ma’am,” the child said softly.
“And don’t you run away, or I’ll send the bees after you.” She pointed an accusing finger at me, then darted off into the nearest dress shoppe.
That’s when I noticed the child’s green skin. They were an orc child. A folk I only ever read about, was taught to fear. To hate. I was mostly skin and bones and had nothing to protect myself other than my nails and teeth. Fear gripped me.
I made to run, but the child grabbed me by my tunic. I struggled against them, but it was no use.
“She really will send the bees after you,” the child whispered.
“She’s got honey magic.” As if on cue, I heard faint buzzing around my head.
I went rigid, terrified of being attacked by a swarm of angry pests.
“Don’t worry, they won’t sting you.” The child shooed the bee away.
“Honey magic really makes things extra sweet, doesn’t do much by way of controlling bees.
Just gives you a chance to talk to them if you wanted to.
That’s if they even listen to you. I’m sure you know that, though! ”
I didn’t. The only thing I knew about magic was that it was impossible.
The child had large saucer eyes with a round, sweet face. Back home, I saw children with faces like mine—gaunt and haunted, fending for themselves as soon as they could walk. But the face that met mine that day was full of life.
Of love, I came to learn.
All of the children running along the streets each had that same roundness, that same easy smile. What must that be like? I wondered. They ran not for fear nor survival. They ran for joy. There was laughter, there was even music. Was I in Haven’s Halls?
“What’s your name?” the child asked.
“Cla—Clara,” I stuttered.
“I’m Rosie.” She beamed, letting go of my tunic and reaching out her hand to me. “Would you like to be friends?”
Friends. I read that word before. In books about grand adventures, books that took me far away from the sad little life I lived.
Friends, love, family. They were all just words, though, only found in stories. In the real word, they were nowhere to be found.
But there was a child holding out her hand to me, asking me to be friends. I hesitated, worry gnawing at the blooming hope in my heart. What if she’s playing a trick on me? What if she’s like Mother and Father? What if she only offered me this kindness to take it away again when I need it most?
I could run. She had let go of me, and while I couldn’t fight her, I could outrun her.
And it seemed the bees wouldn’t come for me after all.
I’d make for the forest, steal what I could on my way out of town, and keep to myself until I figured out the rest of my life.
That’s what I wanted anyway. That way, the only person who could ever hurt me was myself.
Fate had other plans, though. Much better plans.
I placed my small hand in Rosie’s, and the blooming hope in my chest exploded.
All I remember was one moment we were sitting on a bench, and the next, there were so many tiny yellow flowers around us that the world looked coated in sunlight.
“Neat trick!” Rosie beamed.
“Very neat, indeed,” Sylvie replied, suddenly appearing, a small smock just my size in her arms. “So you’ve got garden magic then?”