Moon Flowers (Book 1 of the Flower Trilogy) #Wattys2016 #Featured

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - HALIA (Edited)

HALIA'S POV

It had been only me and Phi. Until Feyn had appeared.

All of a sudden I had wished we were still back in the alley, where we were children with no prospect of a future, where it was only the present that counted, where Phi and I were inseparable.

A gulf was now separating us . . . a chasm, filled with a boy.

I shouldn't dislike him so much, I tried to tell myself. I should be happy for Phi. It's not like she and I could be together...

Be together, what a ludicrous idea.

Two girl fairies cannot be together. The Elders always said that nature needed a male and a female component to everything. Even flowers, with their stamens and pistil components.

But the Elders had been wrong before. They thought a fairy couldn't be sick, yet I had been. I had been the first fairy to ever be sick. Could I also be the first girl fairy to like another girl?

Or maybe I am mistaken and I don't like Phi this way. How could I be sure if this had never happened to me before?

Finally, she had said goodbye to Feyn and flown us back to our lives. It was going to be me and her again.

We did not speak on our way back to the settlement. I did not dare to interrupt the silence.

And the closer we got to the land, the stronger I felt the change.

Something is definitely going on. Danger.

*

We arrived back at nightfall to absolute chaos. Humans in leather body-protectors, shirts of mail, leather helmets, and carrying weapons were sweeping through the community, searching. For what, I had no idea.

"Who are these creatures?" I whispered to Phi.

The laminaks were scurrying to build a new and large fortress, one of unusual shape. It had a circular rampart with gates in the four points of the compass, streets that divided the place of the castle into four equal parts, and in these four parts were houses.

"Has the king gone mad?" Phi said. "Why would he have another castle built?"

"I don't think it's the king's doing," I said. "It looks like if the laminaks are working against their will."

We walked around the site. Everyone was running about, yelling. Chaos. We tried to find someone we knew to ask them what was happening. We met Mrs. Merrow. She let out a yelp of surprise upon seeing us.

"Quickly!" she said. "This way. Follow me."

She led us to her nest at the bottom of the great tree. She glanced around hastily before closing the heavy wooden door behind her, as if to see if anyone had seen us get in.

"What's happening?" I asked.

She grabbed my shoulders. "Where were you?" she said. "You were gone for days!"

"For days?" Phi asked. "We were in the woods for merely a few hours."

"Of course," she said, slowing her breathing. "How could I forget? When a king leaves his land, time goes by differently. Faster or slower. It obeys no rules."

"King Siegfried left!" I said, stating the obvious. That's what the oracle meant. A king shall run.

Tears formed in Mrs. Merrow's eyes. "Yes," she said. "He did."

"Who are these humans patrolling the streets outside?"

They also were not the humans we shared a ship with during our crossing here, yet they were clearly not native to this land. They looked as if they had come from a northern region of the Old World, with their light-colored hair and attire.