The Deep Prick

~Chapter 12~

Grace and Caroline held hands while walking in the vast desert, with an orange sun and a dry and hot sandy earth warming up their feet. Grace had told Caroline of Telly and her stories and of Bluff Mountain. It was a journey Caroline and Grace had never thought they would make, and for the flower they never thought they would obtain. Caroline's music in her mind played Sufjan Stevens' "Redford (for Yia Yia & Pappou)." Grace and Caroline's walk always seemed to take on the strength of their surroundings and become refueled by its beauty. Several wild horses galloped their way over to the girls, as if it was not the first time they had met. Caroline and Grace each smiled at the horses that greeted them. They chose a horse that closely greeted them, by sharing a soft head touch. Grace's horse was a palomino horse, with golden tan toned fur and shimmering blonde mane and tail. While Caroline's horse, was all white, with a black mane and tail, with blue starburst-like irises. They climbed on top of the bare back of their horses and took their horses from a trot, to a canter, then to a gallop through the dry dessert. The horse team followed right behind. The speed of the galloping horses made the manes and tails of the horse's dance, in the same way Caroline and Grace's hair danced; wild, and waving at the air as it passed through, at a fearless and determined speed. However, this fast speed failed to notice the slow soaring nature of the ravens that circled up above. The horses gallop stopped mid stride, changing directions like a rodeo horse making its way fast around a barrel. Then the horses stopped, abruptly and started to dig at the ground with their hooves.

Caroline asked, softly and confused, "what are they doing?"

Caroline and Grace both jumped off their horses, to see that what they were digging at, was a flower; a bright black Iris flower. Caroline and Grace both unwillingly yielded before its beauty and were completely taken. They fell to their knees, they picked the flower and breathed it in. They both fell back to the ground, hypnotized, letting their senses weaken them vulnerable, as ravens continued to circle up above.

* * *

Caroline and Grace's limp bodies lay atop of their horses. The two girls were still very much asleep, as their legs and arms flailed about, over their horses' torsos. The horses walked them on a mossy road, lined with mossy trees. Darwin Figfoot was also on a horse in front, leading the way to Madeira's palace. It was a palace so excessively large, four stories to be exact, and it sat deep in the mossy forest. When they arrived, Caroline and Grace were still very much unconscious. So unconscious they failed to see how the palace was almost mockingly decorated with a magnitude of picked Iris flowers; and it seemed to weep with moss, the way a willow weeps over a moist swamp. The color green and black thrived at every inch of land the palace sat on. The front door of the palace was almost nonexistent, and the windows were again bombarded with moss and Iris flowers; it was a surprise the palace hadn't stopped breathing from the stifling plants.

* * *

Caroline opened her heavy eyes from their long hypnosis. She awoke on a sheet-less bed in a dark dungeon-like prison cell, which was sheathed in black Iris flower petals. Caroline sat up, dazed. She looked at a glistening and jeweled black dress, which sat next to her on the bed.

"Caroline?" Grace said softly, from outside of Caroline's cell.

"Grace?" Caroline whispered back. She got up, still quite dazed and peaked through the cell bars, to see Grace's arms reaching through her own cell bars, right beside Caroline's. As they stood in cells right next to each other, they both held hands through the cold bars, confirming their aliveness.

Grace whispered, "where are we?"

"I don't know," Caroline replied, her eyes seemed to go in and out of consciousness. The Iris pollen may not have been present so vividly, but it certainly found its way on the Black Iris petals that laid all over their cell's floor.