I Am Where You Are | Mystical Flowers#1 (Ongoing)

Chapter Twenty Seven

The skies thundered just as he disappeared into the woods and I shivered. Beside me, Viva raised her head up to the sky and started flapping her wings.
I ran to her and placed a hand on her forehand. She was burning up.
Where are you Archer?

He had left almost an hour ago and he still wasn't back. I sat still, trying to calm my racing heart. Viva slipped in and out of consciousness, grunting in pain every now and then. I thought about my sisters back at home. How could I have left them alone? They were only kids after all. I shook my head in frustration and peered into the woods.

Suddenly, I saw a faint red light approaching us and I tensed, thinking it was the wisps. The glow seemed to grow brighter as it neared us. Viva lay still, her breathing growing slower by the second. I hugged myself and squinted against the light.
A figure was walking toward us. Please let it be Archer, I prayed.

It was. I breathed a sigh of relief and ran towards him, tackling him in a hug.

"Thank god. I thought it was a wisp. You scared us both, Archer." I couldn't shake the fear out of my voice. He looked down at me and held me close against him. He felt warm despite the cold.
"Don't worry, it's okay. No ones going to come here right now. Most creatures come out only at night time. So you're safe, okay? Sorry for scaring you though."
He put a hand to my cheek and I nodded.

Viva snorted from afar, as if to remind us of her presence. I looked down at the flowers in his hand. They were brightly coloured with large scented petals. I started to touch it, but he stopped me.

"Don't. They're poisonous."

I stared at him, confused.
"What about you?", I asked. He shook his head and grinned.

"I'm immune to their poison. Forest spirit, remember?"
I blinked and nodded slowly. He smiled at me and ran towards Viva.

He knelt down beside her and placed the flowers on the ground. Taking his wand out, he whispered something to the flowers and they glowed brightly. He waved his wand over them, leaving a trail of magical dust in the air. The black star on Vivas forehead looked deadly against the glow of the flowers.

I walked towards them carefully.
"How are you going to use them on Viva if they're poisonous?"

Archer stopped what he was doing and turned to me briefly.
"I'm taking the poison out of them. The magic that was used to make them poisonous remains. That's what I'm going to use to treat her."

I nodded and stood where I was. The flowers started to melt, becoming a pool of colours on the muddy forest floor. They had lost their glow and flowed along the cracks of mud in the ground. Archer touched the tip of his wand to the liquid and lifted his wand. The liquid started to rise upwards as if it was being pulled by an imaginary force. With a flick of his wand, he created tiny droplets of the liquid. They flew towards the injured parts of Viva's body and formed a layer of moisture over them.

She lay completely still, not protesting one bit.
Archer placed a hand on her forehead and closed his eyes.

"I think she's stable now. Her fever has begun to subside." He paused, a look of uncertainty passing over his eyes. "However, the effect of these flowers will wear out soon. We still have time to find the rosanthemus. If we're leaving, we'd better leave now."

I looked at Viva, who was looking up at us eagerly. Her face was drenched in sweat, her eyes tired and sad. "Couldn't we wait a bit more? I don't think she's ready to walk yet.."

Archer sighed, thinking the situation over in his head. Finally, he shook his head.
"No, it's to risky. The longer we stay here, the more chances there are of us getting noticed. Don't forget that even in daytime, Rumelda's sense of smell is still really good.
I wish we could let her rest for a bit...but I'm sorry. That's something we can't do right now."

Viva snorted at that and started to get up. We turned to look at her as she flapped her wings hard and stood up, closing her eyes once she was in a standing position. I started to help her, but she opened her eyes and shook her head.
I walked toward her and put a hand on her forehead. Sh nuzzled against my hand but pushed me away a second later. I gasped as images rushed through my mind.

A garden filled with sculptures. There were so many sculptures there that it was hard to even count them all out. One particular sculpture caught my eye. It was a man. He held a sword in his hand and his face looked old and wrinkled. He had a crown on his head. His eyes held a look of fierce determination but I sensed something else under that. Fear. I realised that he was looking off to something in the distance and looked towards whatever he seemed to be looking at.

A woman stood there. She was bent over like she couldn't bear to stand on her own. There was a hood over her head that covered her face. She held a long stick in her hand, which she clutched tightly as she walked toward me.
No. That's not it. She was walking toward the man's statue. Her gnarled fingers were wrapped around the stick like vines filled with thorns. Her fingers looked hideous and her skin was mottled and flaky. I couldn't see her face, but I sensed her smile under the dark cloak she was wearing and it sent chills down my spine.

She stopped right in front of the man and ran her gnarled fingers over his face. She traced her fingers along each wrinkle in his face, staring at him; her eyes filled with adoration.
"You look just like me now, don't you? Well, almost...If only you had said yes...you wouldn't be like this now, would you?", she asked, tutting.

She threw her head back and laughed, and just for a second the wind lifted her hood, revealing....nothing.