A fence entwisted behind Gillan. She turned back to see what the noise was, but all she saw were vines riddled with flowers of pink and white scattered among a wrapping of verdant vines. They toughened — morphed into wood — and grew, and thickened by the moment. When they stopped, the girl found herself staring at a wall.
No matter, she thought. It would be a quick mission. A short adventure.
Gillan slowly made her way between the trees. It reminded her of the corridor of faeries she had just been in, although with white and pink being the only colours. The browns and blacks of the tree trunks were lost; suffocated by the flowers' chroma.
A quiet, yet overwhelming rustle filled her ears as the trees murmured among each other. Whispers of voices lost to wood and branch, to sap and twig. Whispers of voices seeping out through flowers. A shiver ran across Gillan's back. Barely moments ago she had engaged a dozen wolves atop a flying carpet made of stone toads, with faeries darting and zipping around as they fought. Silence wasn't exactly something she had expected.
For a moment, she found it soothing. The noise of the battlefield, any battlefield, that had lodged itself in her head was slowly coming loose. For a moment, she closed her eyes. The gentle gusts of warm wind running through and between the rows of cherry trees enveloped her every once in a while. For a moment, there was bliss.
She decided to stay in the experience a little longer. Just a minute. Two, at most. It flushed her with a feeling of belonging, of rest, and of regeneration. The longer she stood there — eyes closed, body stationary — the more warmth came through her.
The girl felt her feet locking in place. Her legs toughened the pain of standing completely gone. And the feeling in them was gone too. She kept her eyes closed a little longer. Just a little, just a moment. So much warmth filled her as she stood there. It didn't tire her, the standing, not anymore. The girl felt herself rooting in place.
Gillan's eyes shot open. A tiny spark, the most minuscule ember of the faerie fire she had in her lit up. She looked down and saw two trunks coming from below her kilt. Her eyes widened in fear, then recoloured into a burning blue of initiative. She suddenly knew what to do, for it was simplest and most-logical. She pulled.
At first, her legs didn't move. They stayed in place, locked within the earth, their underground branches steadily wrapping with others below. But then she pulled. That one remaining spark now burned, licking the wood of her legs with its azure flames.
The sides took to the fire. It consumed the wood, eating at it with an appetite that only grew. Gillan then felt her legs burning. She knew it was necessary, no other way of freeing herself from the roots' shackling. Nevertheless, it hurt. She couldn't hold it in any longer, the physicality of this pain being impossible to bottle up. She screamed — cried to the heavens — while the flames of freedom burned away her chains of wooden subservience.
When she finally ran out of voice to throw out, the girl fell to the ground. Her legs bent beneath her, the bare knees scraping on the orchard's earth. Gillan rolled over, now staring at what a second ago were wooden poles.
Her legs were fine. Soft and fleshy, just like any legs should be. She breathed, inhaling the air of betrayal as another warmth of wind snaked past her. She got up.
She ran her fingers through her locks and shook away what leaves they had picked up. When she noticed that — the carpet of yellowing sheets on the ground — her sight darted around in a panic.
But nothing differed. A blooming muscle of flowers still grew over their skeletons of trunks and branches. Only that snow was piled up in a few places. As if all seasons had gathered together, had a drunken escapade, and this was the city watch's report. But there were no cities in this tale as of yet.
