I had been transported to a different place, one where lightning flickered beneath my feet and the ground was like a marsh, soft, pulling me down when I stayed in one place for more than a second. I had to constantly pull my feet out of the muck and place them again.
Waves travelled in the dark, shifting the surface underneath me, threatening to buck me over with every swell.
I took a hasty step and the rippling surface knocked me onto my butt. I struggled to rise, hands sinking into the marsh when I tried to push myself up. By the time I’d managed it, I was panting from exertion.
Flashes of light lit up the surface from below, like I was standing on a sea of storm clouds, lightning crackling within. Unlike the ambient light of the school, these flares were the only source of illumination. The sea continued into the dark in every direction.
One luminous flash was close and revealed the ruins of a building, black as the sky. It seemed to be sinking into the sea as well, but it promised a reprieve so I made it my destination.
Sweat dripped from my chin and my muscles trembled as I tried to balance while staying mobile. It felt nostalgic to really have to work to move my body in a way I wanted, sometimes with subpar results. It made me wonder if I had lost my Shaping power within this place but there was no time to experiment. Every bit of energy had to be directed to my goal of reaching the center of the Lacuna.
I looked down just as a burst of pale light came from deep below me. My skin went cold.
There was something gargantuan swimming below.
I hurried towards the ruined building. It was hard to judge the distance with only unreliable sources of light. To my dismay, only a corner of the building remained above the surface by the time I stepped up onto it.
It was then that I realized I was being watched. A Flower stood in the murk on tall, thin limbs like that of a crane. Their head was a tower of small blue flowers, stacked on one another with a supporting stem running through each one to the top. The whorls of flowers spun lazily on this axis at different speeds.
I stayed still, catching my breath as I eyed them warily.
When they didn’t move or speak, I decided to.
“What’s your name?”
The Flower made an amused sound. “Quite forward of you. We only just met.”
The solid ground was rapidly dwindling as I replied, “I met your sibling just moments ago. Iris.”
I gestured to the stab wound which luckily wasn’t giving me much pain at this point. My blood had mixed with the marshy substance, clotting the wound. “I didn’t make a very good first impression, so I want to make sure I at least know your name.”
The Flower stood tall, arms crossed in front of them. “It’s Lavender.”
“Nice to meet you, Lavender.”
The last of the building was swallowed by the sea and it began to creep up around my ankles.
“Not going to give me your name? How rude,” Lavender tittered. “Although, I do know it already.”
“It doesn’t feel like mine anymore,” I murmured as I scanned for another building. There was one in the distance that seemed to be rising instead of falling. I immediately started out towards it.
“Seems like you have somewhere to be,” Lavender called out mockingly.
I kept moving. “Are you going to try and stop me? If you are, I’d rather you get on with it.”
“I don’t have to do anything. You’ll keep struggling to stay above the surface until you can’t take another step. Then you’ll drown, or better yet…”
I was thrown as a wave much larger than any before it rolled into me.
A maw, incomprehensibly large, breached the surface. It swallowed the building and the maw snapped shut with the sound of a thunderclap.
Black sludge drove me down under the surface. I clawed at the thick morass that seemed intelligent in its desire to drag me to my doom. My lungs burned.
Was I even headed in the right direction?
Just as I began to panic, my head broke through into open air and I gasped before coughing as flecks of sludge went down my throat. I had to fight for every inch of my body I pulled back from the sea. Gravity felt like it was doubled as I desperately scanned for another haven of solid ground.
I locked in on another crumbling tower and set off in determination. Lavender walked beside me with easy strides, content in smug silence.
“Iris wasn’t doing very well…” I panted. “Maybe you could go check on them. They had too many books inside their head.”
“Each of us must play our part. Each flower is a message to you humans. You should know this, you gave them to us originally. The wild rose, for instance, is a portent for pleasure and pain. We didn’t ask to bear such burdensome meanings.”
“Sounds like you might have books inside your head as well.”
Lavender halted, flowers slowing their circling as it tilted its stem downwards. I carried on as it spoke, “Just one. A special book to Nell. It was a field book, quite old. The pages were yellowed with age. Preserved within were actual flowers, pressed by the pages, the weight flattened them, kept them bound within the letters that defined what they were.”
I stopped walking and turned back.
“Nell never told me about that one. That does sound special.”
“It was a bittersweet thing. Once opened, the flowers didn’t last. They crumbled and fell to pieces, bits of petals mixing together and giving off their last breaths of scent. And only when Nell read the pages did she know the value of each flower that returned to dust. How saddening. That didn’t stop her though. She read through the whole thing. She assigned her own value to knowing us and remembering our scents, even if she couldn’t bring back what was lost.”
A wave swelled from behind and I lost my balance. Lavender caught my wrist and held me there. The tower of flowers bent and I got a view of a dizzying kaleidoscope of colours.
“Don’t bring her back,” Lavender’s voice was tinged with desperation. “It won’t work and you’ll poison everything.”
I strove to pry myself free from their grip. “You don’t get to decide that for her.”
“Please,” they said with a tremor of sadness that rippled with the waves. “I’m afraid of what will happen when you meet her.”
I looked down at the endless sea, sparks of light illuminating only the tail or a fin of the abyssal creatures that swam in the deep.
“Fear never got me anywhere. I was scared of what I would find, but I never felt more distant than the moment I hesitated to reach out to her. I won’t turn back. Never again.”
Lavender released me and this time, I didn’t move. I let myself be pulled under the waves.
As the murk crept up my face, I heard Lavender say, “If you were a flower, what colour would you be, I wonder?”
Bits of light sprung up like neurons firing in inky blackness. I trembled as creatures larger than cities passed by, pulling me to and fro in their wakes. The folds of the marshy sea embraced me and pulled me ever downwards. At some point, the burning in my throat faded and I no longer felt the need to breathe.