The Cultivated Girl

BONUS CHAPTER: Sentient origins

I am blown away by all the comments, votes and general love being sent towards Simone, Joli (especially Joli) and Sanctuary. Thank you! 

While Book II: The Warrior Princess is some way off still I thought I'd give you a little bonus chapter to keep you going. 
Ever wondered just what was going on with the dappy but loveable Due?
What is she anyway? And where is she from?
I present you with Bloduewedd's arrival on Sanctuary!

Another world and time away, a tall creature wandered through a dream of thick, tropical forest. As she moved through the jungle, her translucent form absorbed the undergrowth around her, painting her skin vibrant shades of green and hues of primary. Her shimmering movement betrayed her against a living canvas.

As her bare feet skimmed the undergrowth, she ran delicate, tendril-like fingers across the plant-life, flicking off tiny insects here, snapping a dying leaf off there. Bloduewedd had been wandering her forest for as long as she remembered, and that was over a century. Despite this, she was young and alone, as was the custom of her kind, but never felt lonely, surrounded as she was by the thoughts and murmurings of the chlorophyll choked world.

She kissed and caressed her charges good night. It was almost time. Every decade she lay down for a year and yielded herself to the rich loam, sleeping while the plants she tended ran wild. They grew over and under her, surrounding her in a bower of flowers and fragrance, protecting her until she woke. This was the last circuit of her insulated world as she prepared to hibernate.

Bloduewedd chattered non-stop, in a strange, lilting, chirping language that was a blend of insects humming and birds singing. There was no need, as her thoughts could brush any sentient being's without uttering a sound, but it amused her and the other pollinating creatures in the forest. Her feet ached. She peered through the undergrowth to decide where she would lie this turn.

A mound littered with a nest of bright leaves caught her bright moss eyes and she glided towards it, talking to the trees around it. They were strangely silent. Her wild hair mirrored the season, with rich autumn dreadlocks snaking into the air. Tired, she thought nothing more of it, and sank her feet, root-like, into the moss, drawing the leaves over her as a blanket. She sang-wove the few plants surrounding her into a screen and sank into a deep slumber.

Moons passed. Bloduewedd's hair, ever a barometer of the time passing, turned white with a snap of winter cold. Soft and cobweb-like, the tendrils spread around her shoulders and explored the perimeters of her self-imposed exile. Although in a deep sleep, the thoughts of the forest always ran through her mind, white noise that lulled her into security.

Until one day, when her hair was grass fresh and glowing with tiny yellow and white flowers, the forest stopped. A dark hush pressed down on its inhabitants, stifling their spring exuberance. If Bloduewedd had been actively monitoring the ongoing jungle soundtrack, she would have noticed the arrival of a new and sinister life form.

It had appeared after the gentle rains, popping up with the mushrooms . It was an oddity, squat and pitcher-shaped, and surrounded by a barren landscape wherever it sprouted. Trained to notice such imbalances in the natural cycle, the keeper of the forest would have taken appropriate measures to address this, but she of course, was asleep.

In her dreams, Bloduewedd tried to talk to it. If she was conscious she would have analysed whether it was selfishly stealing more water than its neighbours, or perhaps attacking their root systems. She was troubled by the unsettling silence, but not enough to wake, and so could do no such thing. Her hair, lively and untamed as ever, was the only one to bear witness to events. It bristled. Overnight a crop of the ungainly, red striped plants appeared around Bloduewedd's bower. They loomed like monsters in a moat from the bog that surrounded her little moss mound . The plants gave off a sickly-sweet, thick smell that fogged her sleeping mind and turned off all warning signals. Even her defiant hair lay limp, shedding blossoms in despair.

The following night, the blue moon watched coldly as the biggest of the plants extended a tubular jaw and snake-like, sucked the dryad-like keeper of the forest feet-first into its fleshy, succulent interior. It took most of the night, and the plant itself would take most of the season to digest her. The moon retired. It had seen this before. The primitive, carnivorous life form had a sporadic life cycle. Once the entire planet was destroyed, it would decay, its spores caught by winds and eventually dispersed in space dust to another planet.

Inside the pitcher, Bloduewedd woke up. The numbing scent had no power here and the plant's digestive enzymes burned her delicate skin. She railed at the plant mentally but it was hostile, invasive, and didn't respond like the plants she tended. Bloduewedd could read its simple mind but couldn't sway it. It had food and its species would live. Mission accomplished.

Weakening, Bloduewedd knew she had to do something to survive. As a highly sentient plant who had existed for centuries, she had access to stores of information, whispered to her by trees who had travelled across oceans and universes in seed-form. The telepath sensed the area she had chosen to slumber was a powerful and sacred site.

In her strange chirping lilt she pleaded. Roughly translated, it came across as "Mother, save me". With that, she collapsed into a coma-like state. The blue moon took it's second vigil. An infrequent traveller to these parts, from its perspective it could see across three worlds. Its arrival heralded the Turning, where the points linking this triangle of worlds twisted three-dimensionally to form a pyramid with five points.

The place Bloduewedd and subsequently, the monstrous pitcher plant, had been attracted to, was a flashpoint on the ley line linking the worlds. Her plea opened the portal between her world and another. Her comatose form slipped down the slippery throat of the carnivore, down into its tuberous root and straight through into the marshy-bog beneath it, depriving the monster of its meal.

Despite the lightness of her delicate form, the flower girl sank like a tree into the depths of the greenish slime, hair trailing behind her, tendrils flailing to grasp onto something solid to halt her descent. The thick, green peat turned more liquid the deeper she sank, its salty minerals coating the spores that she had picked up from her tussle with the pitcher plant.

Still unconscious, with only her hair as a potential saviour, vertigo took over. Her downward descent became an ascent through briny layers. The faster she shot upwards, the more coherent she became, until finally she broke free of the viscerous surface, hair pooling around her like seaweed.

Bloduewedd's eyes were the size of water lily pads as she looked around. Up until this point her entire life had been spent wandering the same ecosystem at the pace of nature – slow, relaxed, peaceful. She had surfaced in an underground grotto. The water was salty, not the fresh, clean rainwater she loved and she could hear what seemed like a thousand voices murmuring in her mind.

A/N: So tell me - what do you think?
Had you guessed this about Due? 
Book 5 of the Dragon Priestess series will feature more of Bloduewedd and bring you the exciting finale. 

Comments, votes, tell your friends - you wonderful Wattpadders know what to do when something moves you :-).
Whose arrival do you want to know about next?
Let me know - your wish is my pen's command.