Mandragora: Flire Garden

On a roughened Elathan jungle passage all beaten by seasonal mudslides that turn out from far reaching pitted hills, there was a place known by few, a place that could feel like home to the most wary of wanderers. Sania was a young girl from Detrii—the only village around. She first found this magical place while running away from the troubles of village life. It was just beyond the felled trees and hidden away—it was an unlikely splendor of the most entangled looking flowers all redolent of sweetness. She’d been making the journey that brought her skirting round the roughened hills every week for over a year now and never looked back. This time around she was concerned that she had not opened up enough and as the flowers had an intuitive over-soul that pervaded the whole garden with a sense of ease-like warm rain in the sun she was duly set on a bestowal so as to reify her furtive adulation.

She had left the path and scoured patches of moss whose strands grew out like yellow stars. Searching underneath drooping ferns, catching glimpses of scurrying bugs that hid beneath brittle leaves, she found her offering—three Flire seeds flown by the wind like lost travelers waiting to be found. She tucked them carefully underneath her orange sachem and decided to bring them back to Detrii after appraisal from their kin. Certainly the Flire flowers would recognize her open love for them by such a gesture. The further from the hillside she went the more lilting bird songs filled the air. A Bowerbird leaping from bent boughs followed her while chirping in spurts until she came upon the edge of her refuge. Like a fortress, thick red flowers higher then her shoulders swayed gently and all pointed petals flapped along their thick and deeply rooted stocks as though hoping to fly away. Taking her time to enjoy brushing by their coarse stocks she remembered having counted all thirty petals.

From out the disc shaped tops, from out the yellow granular lining where petals jutted like giant raindrops that were turned livid before curling together towards the partly canopy veiled sun, golden pollen was set adrift by blue specter wind. Sania sat with her legs outstretched to release the tension from the hillside hike and enjoyed her effulgently dyed surroundings, which wrapped around as though separate from the rest of the boisterous jungle. Engendering her admiration with a full breath she sank even deeper into the softly moss-cushioned ground. She sighed staring at their humble sway and was soon floating off through the haze of sleep's earliest ensnarement with the beauty of the flire to hold her to the last vestiges of the outside world.

As though from a still pond sunken in the night there was beset upon Sania’s mind a rumbling that outdrew discomfort into dreaming vicissitudes. The rumbling turned to a shrill and then to a piercing buzzing that loosened her eyes and it was then that the fear was seething, and like a lurid taste sliding heavily down her insides it brought her head to spinning. As the buzzing grew louder, her head ached and she fast became too dizzy to stand. Overawed and unable to move, it was a swarm of hungry Thrit Flies like a black cloud that darkened the Flire Garden and left her mired. The flies oozed out from the supple undersides of underlying stem petals. It was a disenchanting vagary to let such venomous entrapment befall her loyal heart. They had awoken from their dormant hideout and moved over her like foul smog blinding her from the outside world. She yelled and flailed her arms as they stung repeatedly, mercilessly until after swallowing some of them tasting like putrid gunk—a fire down her tightening throat; she could but pant for air. She was forced to close her mouth. As thought caught in a spell, anger grew out of her heart and steamed up from her belly for how she had been so betrayed by the Flire Garden for not warning her.

Lying flat on her back wooden-faced, gazing emptily at the sky, beckoning the spirits to bring a wave of unfeeling to wash over the twinge in her heart. She closed her eyes to escape the dread of the ravenous swarm and heard rustling further than fathomable hope. The rustling reached the environs of the Flire garden and then first a lean arm pushed foliage aside then a stranger walked to the edge of the clearing where the thrit flies had landed upon Sania's benumbed body. He took one hard look and unfastened a leather sac and untied it before throwing it so it opened, sending a green powder aflight. Like bright sand it fell through a ray of sunlight. Landing upon the flies it brought them to flinching out of control, unable to continue their feast. In a stupor the flies became too heavy for their own wings and they could but jerk about until they became too encumbered to move.

The stranger was dressed in cat skins. He had a long brown tousled beard and long broken hair all clumped in thick strands, tied away from his hard face with thin bands of cracked leather. He walked tall and crouched over Sania's outstretched body; at once noticing her youthful beauty he marked the innocence in her sleeping face with a source for tears that could not quite form. As though unearthing grey memories of what he had left behind he was tempted by a kiss. He could tell by her orange veil across her shoulder that she too was from Detrii. He was well acquainted with these contemptuous Thrit flies and went through an inner pocket where he kept a few elixirs brewed with his friends the mushies. He took the one with a green potion, took a whiff and recoiled. He whispered in her ear, forgetting temptation while telling her that he could help if she would trust him. She lay frozen and he hoped for the best while pouring the green potion into her mouth. Her eyes moved forgetting to open; they fluttered to a squint and then slowly peeled still blinking revealing her reddened green eyes. She remained still for an hour or so before the corners of her mouth turned up with her cheeks. Her body was stiff and she spent another hour twisting about. Her first words were of gratitude and were whispered with care. She sat up to look upon the stranger and was struck by what she saw—the flowers had all vanished.

As the drifter sat by her side in quietude, absorbing the pith of the place, it wasn’t long before he recounted its genesis. It was after vowing never to return to Detrii for the sake of allowing a cure that he had brought from the most remote part of the jungle to remain potent. Since then he wandered without destination throughout the Jungle, getting to know every plant and its companions and how to use them to survive and to heal. He found that the more that he thought of Detrii the easier it became to think of it to the point that he was tempted to return. He feared this could rekindle the embers of the strange illness that had once befallen the village so he forgot about Detrii and at that moment it seemed further then ever. But he had lost something of himself, something in the way of feeling, and so with the magic the spirits taught, he planted the Flire Garden as an effigy of his feelings. It was the only place where he could cry. He couldn’t talk for long as his voice had grown weak over the years, so they enjoyed the chirping and the whistling breeze together.

She only asked him his name, but try as he did he was left aggravated at his own ignorance. It was when she could stand and look around that she wondered why it smelt so wondrous. With conviction he reminded her that it was the Flire and that for some reason they appeared distended and larger then ever. He told her that they were missing something and she barked back at him that they had all gone and not to confound her bewilderment for such a loss. The more he tried to convince Sania that the flowers had not disappeared the more angry she became until he decided to accept the kind words that she had passed on at her waking and vanish also. She called out to him in the jungle asking where he was going and he told her that we was going home. The soreness in her throat worsened and yet she wondered if he ever thought of kissing her.

It wasn’t until her mysterious protector departed that she noticed the potent smell of pollen. It washed over her in waves that tossed her attention back to why she falls back on escaping village life. She lay back down, stretched out, and watched the clouds through the canopy move across the cool sky and breathed deeply. The sweetness spread out and was overpowering. It was reminiscent of all the times she had taken refuge in the Flire garden and reaped a sense of vastness in her spirit. Not even while falling through grey memories could she see any flowers. Try as she did she could not see them lying in the soft, moss-covered ground where they once had brought her such contentment.

The flowers were there however and they were growing larger and larger by the hour. All the while, lying on her back to keep from aching, it was the redolence that kept her coddled in the sway of euphoria. The more she lay still the more she was enamored until her head began to spin slowly for hours and hours, noticing of the outer word only the intensifying sweet redolence that poured out further from its source. She was taken away into daydreaming as the sky moved fast above her through the drooping golden leaves glowing with their own sunlight.

She could not hear the flowers calling to he—their pleas for her to see them. They kept growing until they were almost about to topple over and yet she was caught in the stupor of their growing scent. She was still and grinning woozily at shimmering fantasies that had wrapped all round. The Flire flowers began to wilt and browned at the base. The infectious dryness climbed higher until there were only the last whirring pleas of forsaken persistence. Their passion went unmatched until they finally toppled and withered onto the ground, letting the remainder of pollen drift out beyond the jungle canopy taking with it all it’s precious aroma.

She came away from daydreaming out of an insatiable hunger for more, and when she did her tears drew out for seeing the dead flowers splayed before her. She wondered if her blindness was a spurious cloak. There they were, and she cried over them grabbing at the earth upon which they had fallen until her nails were grated and bloodied. She let the soil fall through her fingers and mourned until her eyes were emptied of passion and she remembered the three seeds that she had found on her way. She carefully planted them with her heart in the right place, all the while hearing faint whispers of spirits.

On returning the next week to the environs of the Flire garden she was met by a faint buzzing. There were a few stray Thrit flies that must have been sleeping. Stunned, there was no time to escape, and they stung her and it felt like thorns puncturing deep, but that was all and she retained her strength. She swatted the damned things, watching them fall out of the air, and there was nothing else of a reaction. She continued to her refuge and saw the specters of her silent confidants return to life with great strength, hardy and brightening in shades of brilliant red to the dedication of her gaze.

Dedicated to Peggy

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