Dark Shards: An Anthology of Fear and Wonder

Short Story: Blossoming Alice

Author's Note: I wrote this short story around September of 2022, specifically to fit the theme of my university's student literary magazine which I was trying to get my work accepted into at the time. The theme was "blooming, blossoming, and branching out," which I took quite literally in this interpretation. This story is also loosely inspired by a shoujo manga called Black Rose Alice (https://myanimelist.net/manga/11678/Kuro_Bara_Alice), which had somewhat of an incomplete ending so this was sort of my headcanon "final ending" to that series, though not fully fanfiction since it differs in some ways and is not fully based off the manga. It is more of an ekphrastic piece, and while I did not get accepted in the end, I still think this story is worthy of showing off here~

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Blossoming Alice

By Alexandria Francetic

A Short Story

That's right. It's time for me to go. It is my time to blossom. I wandered through the forest in a hazy cloud of bliss. My vision seemed lost in a mist, as though obscured by tendrils of undulating white smoke. I didn't have much time left. I might as well soak it all in now, in the last few moments.

Before my sister blossomed, she told me it wouldn't hurt at all. I knew she would never lie to me. Mere humans would be terrified, but this is our cycle of life. It is as natural as living and dying itself. We are born, live to produce our offspring for the future, and return to the earth from where we came.

We wear human skin, but our true selves are saplings, beautiful trees waiting to blossom. Once we breed, the male withers away, and the female blooms into a wondrous blossoming tree to spread the future seeds of our kind.

Dimitri had long since withered. I cradled him in my embrace, whispering sweet nothings in his ear and comforting him like a mother rocking her child to sleep, as his earthly form dissolved into autumn leaves, cast away by the wind.

But it was okay. Neither of us could have imagined breeding with anyone else. Our fates had been bound to each other since the day we bloomed, our roots intertwined.

My blossoming had taken much longer. As the days slipped by, my human form began to wither as well. My skin turned pale white, thin and tight around my shrinking bones. It seemed like my body had taken on a corpse-like visage. When I walked, every step made my legs feel like wobbling twigs prepared to snap. Food and water became a poison that caused my digestive system to evict its contents in a noxious deluge.

By now, I was impatient to blossom. "Please, take me away from all of this. Allow me to spread the seeds of my destiny."

When my vision began to rot, I knew my time was coming. So I fled to the forest in my blissful daze, weaving between the maze of trees, my hollow laughter echoing in the atmosphere. The fallen leaves crunched beneath my bare feet as I wandered. Perhaps Dimitri's remains were among them. With every quivering step, needles of pain stabbed into my soles. The tips of broken twigs punctured the frail skin. A trail of blood drizzled behind me. "It's okay,"

I whispered to myself. "Just keep going. You're almost there. Dimitri is waiting for you."

I emerged from the sea of trees, entering a circular-shaped clearing of fresh green grass, the only spot where it received the life-giving light of the sun. Rather than the harsh crunch of sticks and leaves, the plush grass felt soft beneath my feet. I stood in the center of the clearing, where my legs buckled, and I fell to my knees. I tilted my head upward to face the sun's blinding rays. A beaming smile spread across my face. "At last...it's time."

I lifted my arms toward the sun, as though grasping for it. Upon the touch of the light, the deathly white of the skin on my arms darkened to a warm brown. They morphed into branches, my fingers spreading apart and elongating into limbs sprouting fresh green buds. Roots erupted from my rotten legs, weaving their way into the earth in a tight tapestry.

My body rapidly changed form, shifting from a human-like countenance to something barely recognizable as a living being. Of course, I wouldn't be living much longer, not my soul anyway. But my body would be left behind to spread the seeds of the next generation of saplings.

While my body rooted itself to the ground, my spirit prepared to fly. My wavy blonde locks stood on end, hovering on their own as if by will, branching out into a web of long brown limbs studded with flower buds.

As my physical form shifted and morphed, I got to witness my buds blooming. In my last few moments of vision, the buds burst open in tender eagerness, revealing vivid, blush-pink flowers. They were like the tender pink cheeks of a newborn baby. But just as a human mother would give birth, this was how my offspring blossomed.

Stiffened and numb, my body appeared much more like a tree now than a person. As my soul prepared to depart, I witnessed my seeds being spread. Crystalline butterflies erupted from the centers of the flowers, casting off into the air around me.

The seeds would travel the world, searching for a new home to bloom within. I hoped that the seeds would produce many fine saplings like Dimitri and I, one day blooming, blossoming, and branching out for themselves...

The End...

September 4th, 2022.