Mrs Sophie Foster-Sencen (Sokeefe Tale of Two Times) - KOTLC

A Flower for You

~ Present Sophie's POV ~

"This must be the Emerinda Priscium.."
I whispered, squinting through the bright screen in awe.
How had someone done this?
And more importantly; Who had done this?
"It must be."
Keefe responded, fighting just as hard to see behind the blinding barrier of warm yellow with a faint tint of marigold luminescence.
"Do we...do we pass through?"
I asked, reaching my hand out hesitantly.
As I extended my fingers a mere few centimeters from the the light, it began to take on a pearlescent swirly kind of light.
It was like almost upon sensing me, it had changed.
Was it programmed to change based on my presence and or did it change for everyone?
I let my fingers hover in air for a second in admiration of the possibility, before I swiftly flicked my wrist and dropped my hand.
"My judgement says we should, but, y'know, I'm the king of bad decisions. So we should!"
Keefe exclaimed, extremely enthusiastic for the conundrum we had found ourselves in.
I rolled my eyes.
"Not the kind of judgement we need right now, but this is probably the only good idea. I wonder who made this. This place is just to house...flowers..."
My voice trailed off in slight confusion.
Who would go through the whole process of illusions and flowers just to house...flowers.
They didn't seem very special either.
The only reason I recognized them was because of their neon green core's which was glowing due to the nectar.
"Not just any flowers. The Emerinda Priscium. They must be important if someone went through all this work to put them here."
Keefe shrugged.
"Yeah but who...?"
I asked, voicing the question that had been tugging at my mind for the last few...minutes? Hours? Who knew how time moved in this place. I just prayed we hadn't wasted too much of it.
"I don't know. Maybe we should check it out now?"
He responded.
I nodded and forced the lump in my throat down.
"Alright,"
Our fingers entwined.
"3..."
I readied my position.
"2..."
My chest heaved as I inhaled and exhaled deeply.
"1..."
I squeezed my eyes shut, noting Keefe do the same a split second before mine had fully shut.
Together, hand hand, we barreled through the pearlescent portal.

———————————————————————-

Our entry through the portal felt like stepping through goo.
Blindingly illuminated, searing hot goo.
Thank goodness those feelings faded quickly.
It singed my skin for a few fractions of a second, overpowering my cells with heat and Everblaze would cower in the wake of.
We had overshot our step through slightly, and I stumbled, clutching Keefe for some semblance of balance, which only caused him to stagger as well.
For a good minute we both struggled, trying to find our footing.
Once we finally had gathered our bearings and were off-kilter no more, I extricated myself from Keefe's apprehensive hand hold (naturally he was tense about this new circumstance no matter how flippantly he tried to play it off) just to rustle my hair back to a non tangled up state.
The portal had caused the wisps of my blonde to fly and flare wildly, and my attempt at smoothing them down was not going well.
Finally, I settled for blowing my bangs and tresses out of my face.
"Well that was quite an entrance."
I grumbled, and Keefe smirked.
"I sweep you off your feet, Foster. We both know that's what happened."
I sighed.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night."
His smirk turned into an amused grin.
"Alright come on."
I rebooked my fingers with his.
"We gotta check this place out."
He nodded and squeezed my fingers gingerly, and then released to start searching around one of the sides of the cavernous cave.
The thing about this cave was that it simply wasn't a cave at all- we had gone through a tunnel to get here and this was the end, just with arched, cavernous ceilings and thick, stony walls.
That said, the cave- or more like a cove- wasn't small at all.
Shadows dipped every edge, leaving me cautious and on my feet at all time, ensuring that no one would snatch the two of us up like mere checks on a counter.
However, despite my unease, something about this little cave felt...enchanting.
Thick, flowery vines drooped from the cavernous ceilings in shades of vibrant emerald to match the core of the Emerinda Prisciums that sprouted out of them. They emitted a sweet, floral aroma.
Along with that, vivid root-like vines snaked up the vast and hollow walls and seeped onto the floor, crossing one another as if they were strangling each other. They, too, released a flowery scent.
Had I entered blindfolded I would've thought this place to be a perfumery.
Small patches of similarly colored vivacious emerald grass sprouted from the stone, which was strange, as grass didn't just grow in caves. But neither did flowers.
Speaking of, blossoming in the grass, along the vines, and from the roots, the ugly Emerinda Priscium thrived in sprouting.
There must've been hundreds...maybe even thousands given the large state of the cave.
This cave was larger than my room at Havenfield, which was definitely saying something, since my room took up a whole floor.
I made my way over to one of the sides and ran my fingers along the cool stone, finding it to be smooth, as fit to appearance.
My fingers delicately traced over one of the roots meandering up a wall, when I suddenly came in contact with one of the flowers.
Gingerly, I ran my hand along the petals.
It could have been a vision.
A mere fragment of my imagination.
A hallucination.
My eyes playing tricks on me.
But I swear I saw the leaves glint...
It's hard to explain.
It's like they shimmered for a second- like the glare light brings that puts a twinkle in one's eye.
And it looked like they were moving...
Their petals seemed to be curving outwards...
Adjacently, I blinked.
And it was gone.
I shook my head, disregarding it as my eyes playing tricks on me as I returned back to the task at hand.
"Hey,"
Keefe called to me from the other side of the room.
I pivoted on my heel to face him, and found his face scrunched into a concentrated frown.
"These flowers...why do you think they were hidden here? There has to be a reason right?"
There must've been.
They were nothing special, after all.
They had a rather ugly wilted appearance and shriveled ash colored petals.
Their stems took on a dead dark green tint, and the only attractive thing about them was their center, where liquify emerald nectar oozed in the center.
Somehow it was defying gravity and not dripping out.
"Maybe someone don't want others to find it?"
My words were uncertain too, the hesitance clear as day.
"Yeah but go through all this for that? They made a whole realm. That might just be part of it, but I have a hunch there's more to it."
My mind ran through possibilities, circling around hundreds of times, only to end on own question.
Why?
Why would someone go through all that for said possibility that I sorted through?
Suddenly, through all my mental calamity, an idea struck me like thunder.
I stilled for a second, my mind sprinting to keep up with my race car speeding thoughts.
"Keefe..."
My words were an eerie calm, causing Keefe to spin quickly to face me, alarmed and alerted.
"What if...what if someone picked this place because of the conditions?"
He frowned.
"I'm not following."
A hand tore through his hair, disheveling his style.
"What if..."
I started slowly, piecing together the words in a sentence in my head.
"What if these flowers can't grow anywhere else? We said that maybe someone wanted to keep them hidden...and that's possibly a side effect. But what flowers grow in such close, stuffy conditions. There's also so many flowers, and they don't seem to be competing for any resources at all. The light that the barrier thing is giving off is plenty, but all plants thrive better in sunlight. Plus the air here is humid and damp almost, but there's no water. Fresh air is always better, and how are they surviving without any source of hydration? It's just...irregular. So they must only be able to grow in these harsh conditions. They're fighters."
In some way the growth conditions felt almost symbolic to us. Both Keefe and I and all of our friends, plus the rest of the black swan, have been fighting in such difficult conditions and somehow never getting fully overpowered, even when all odds were stacked against us. We were fighters. We were warriors. We were survivors.
Keefe clearly wasn't following my same inspirational mental path.
He snorted.
"When did you become a botanist?"
I rolled my eyes.
"Oh shush, that's common knowledge."
I inspected my nails closely.
"We just have to prove it."
I lifted my head up.
"How?"
He asked bluntly.
"It's simple, really. One of us just has to go past the barrier of the light and see if the flower survives in the tunnels."
"How? That'll take forever."
"Keefe. These flowers aren't normal. They'll probably wilt right away."
"Whatever you say."
He shrugged.
"I can go."
He said, dusting invisible dust off of him.
"No-"
I started immediately, but he immediately cut me off.
"Let me go, Foster. You've done all the big brain stuff."
He wouldn't back down. He was insisting.
I sighed.
"Just be careful."
The portal had detected us and let us in, so it would let him in.
"I always am, Foster, I always am."
He assured me with a flick of his wrist, trying to dismiss my worry eyebrow crease.
Anxiously, I turned to face the front and hugged my elbows to my chest, crossing my arms tightly as if I were cold.
Keefe took a slow stride towards the portal entry, and I, too, could sense his tension.
It lingered heavily in the air in the seconds as he was stood a mere few inches from the portal.
I could feel his nervousness as if it were my own in the deep breath he heaved, his chest rising and lowering with a slight shake.
This plan wasn't foolproof.
Something could definitely go wrong.
"If you don't want do this-"
I started in his stretched hesitance.
"No."
He cut me off.
Inhale, exhale.
"No...I'll be fine..."
Without stalling another second, he stepped through the barrier.
I held my breath, watching him step his right foot through first and then his left.
The light didn't turn pearlescent when he approached which was strange...
I shook the thought of my head.
Slowly, he pulled all of his limbs through.
Slowly...
And finally...
He made it!
He made it through!
I released my exhale, my chest relaxing from the tightness.
He looked slightly taken aback too, rubbing his arm where the light had most likely burned.
The flower was clutched in his palm, and when he opened his fist, it looked perfectly normal.
For a second.
Then I blinked, and the flower had wilted.
Eerily quickly.
Keefe looked slightly shocked.
It had done just as I had said!
It wilted immediately.
That must mean that this flower is very sensitive to change of climate and condition...
So that's why someone had wanted to keep it here.
Realizing Keefe was still outside the barrier, I jerked myself out of my thoughts and beckoned him to push forward, and once again move through the barrier.
He nodded and heaved a deep breath.
One...
Two...
Three...
Confidently, he put his hand to the barrier.
But when he placed it there...
It was solid.
No swirly pearlescent light appeared.
Panic was rising in my chest, my breaths quickening.
He merely frowned and tried again.
This time with more force, he slapped his palm against the barrier.
It produced the sound of hitting your palm against glass at an aquarium, low and reverberating.
He jerked his hand back, clutching it to his chest.
The barrier had turned solid, and it would not let him back in.
I could see the panic rising in his expression as he desperately began pounding at the light.
No longer able to suppress it, my alarm and anxiety was coming out all at once.
Panic was clawing up my throat with razor sharp claws, threatening mercilessly to gouge out all of my insides.
I ran towards the barrier and pounded on my own.
No luck.
No pearlescent light.
It had become solid.
I dropped to my knees, tears welling in my eyes.
My cheats became heavy with fear and my windpipe almost became blocked off.
Before it fully could, I screamed,
"KEEFE!"

~ Hi everyone! Thanks so much for reading! Enjoy this chapter! Out a bit earlier cause I'm not free this weekend to write! Love you all so much!
- Your author 💕 ~