Sidereal Odyssey, Book 1: Zavijah

A Witch, A Human, And A Heze

The sun was setting over the trees, orange blushes touching the timber in full bloom that made up the dense enchanted forest.  The tall, hundred-man thick trunks seemed to touch sky’s gates, leaves and branches flirting with the darkening clouds.  Scattered about the trees were large yellow and green fireflies zipping about, lighting up the mood of the dark brush.  They whipped around the woods, some fast some slow, though they had no purpose but to set aglow the nocturnal.  When sunlight had heartened the forest with its warm grasp, jittering critters and dancing shadows played in the warm light painted by the friendly auburn orb in the sky.  But the sun was setting now, and the fireflies were out, so the critters found their homes and the shadows took back to the earth.  The fireflies were a sure sign that soon, creatures of moonlight and ghouls of darkness would take their turn in the steep green forest.  

Living in this uncharted forest, far from any kind of intelligence that broke the barrier to form civilization, there was a witch, a human, and a heze (named after what the human had first called it).  Together they lived in a wooden house that was hopelessly lost in the middle of the forest, built by the witch long ago when she was much younger.  Two of the hundred-man thick trunks had been laid on their sides only twenty feet away from each other, both of their ends cut off to a desirable size, making half the percentage of walls that shaped the house.  The other half was made by refined wood of the same essence, a layer that wasn’t too thin nor too thick.  This half fashioned the front and back of the home,  the back bore a lovely symmetry of glass windows, and the front dressed a door poorly carved that led to the porch and connected to a pathway, which held the witches handsome hundred year old garden on either side of it.

The garden bore a remarkable array of flora, stretching all around the house, bearing everything needed for the witch to make her elixirs.  She needn’t know the name of the spawn, as she could easily tell them apart from one another for they all had unique characteristics.  One of the most exquisite was the purple lotus that, when bloomed, shined a bright royal magenta from its petals.  The garden also bore corpse flowers, its thick red flaps thickly marked with yellow spots.  Parrots beaks grew plentiful, filling the gaps between other buds, and proved to be quite resilient, its red beaks emitting a soft glimmer, marking a pathway to walk on when a flower or two needed to be plucked.  Jade vines grew on the fence that surrounded the garden, emitting a soft blue glow to give light on the perimeter.  Pink dahlias grew as big as the head of the human inside the warm embrace of the home, and was a main attraction to the fireflies, whos luminous bodies were welcomed with open arms, especially by the venus fly traps, which grew a quarter the size of the green and brown house.  

Though, truthfully, when it came to beauty, all the bleeding hearts, the purple lady slippers, the cherry blossoms, and the rest of the life that stood guard of the house, it was all only a distraction to the witches prize possession.  The Gloriosa.  It stood not half a foot high, the petals spraying a small flame into the air no bigger than a fingernail.  It was surrounded by guardian plants, which protected the delicate specimen with their lives.  The witch had given them intelligence, but not enough to think for themselves, for that was a mistake she did not plan on making again.  On the outer defense of the Gloriosa, was a giant pitcher plant, which lured critters and small moonlight creatures into its deadly acid (she often uses the remains of the dead for a variety of potions).  Next in line was the castor bean plant, which without the right resistances, can kill a medium sized creature in a single brush, though nothing has ventured that far into the garden in the recent past.  Not far from the Gloriosa now stood three tall venus flytraps, which could instantly gobble up an unwary creature, large or small.  Finally, as a last line of defense, was the Mala Mujer, made invisible by the witch, one touch instantly kills any type of monster that could have made past her defenses.  Indeed, she’d spent many years planting such a fine defence, only to find that soon it would be penetrated by an unknown assailant.