I Wish

Chapter 14

One day, Ivy and I were going to have a sit-down conversation about what constitutes a proper place to go for, you know, smootchies and stuff. The field of flowers we stopped in front of was beautiful and it looked like the right kind of place to go for a date. It did give off a vibe not like anywhere else on Earth, but it wasn’t nearly as deserted as it first appeared to be. At first glance, the place looked empty. It was like no one was there. Boy was I wrong about that.

“What do you think?” Ivy asked. Well, I say asked, but really it didn’t sound as if she needed me to answer. Smug as she was, it wasn’t hard to tell what her opinion was on what I thought.

“I have never seen anything like it in my entire life,” I told her seriously, “This is wild.” That really was the best word I could think of to describe this. There were millions, possibly billions, of flowers. There had to be, because if you turned to your left or to the right you could see the line of flowers stretch as far as the eye can see and facing forwards they went all the way to the horizon, as best you’d be able to tell. None of this was strictly true, but it was a stunning visual. Blood reds mixed with a thousand different shades of pink. There were white flowers dotted in between brilliant yellows and bright gold. Fiery oranges clashing with violent purples. Hundreds of different varieties of what all looked like the same plant, and all of them appeared to stretch on forever.

“Welcome to the Cosmos Fields,” Ivy said proudly. Forget the fields, this looked more like a flower forest and it was so unbelievably beautiful I wasn’t sure how long a memory would be able to hold up to the real deal.

“Like space-cosmos?” I inquired, tilting my head to the side and wondering at the sheer marvel before me. Some of the plants were sized the same as any normal plant, like something you would find in the garden bed of the right little old lady somewhere, others were taller than we were. Which wasn’t so shocking for me. Yes, I do realise I’m short. I just don’t care much for anyone else pointing it out, but in some places, Ivy wouldn’t have been able to raise her hands above her head and have them still be able to be seen over the top.

“No,” she said with a short chuckle and shaking her head, in the dark you could hardly see the red in her hair. It shook around her like a giant glossy rippling curtain. “Well sort of, it is its own little world in there, but the flowers? They’re all cosmos flowers,” she stated. It didn’t look like there was anyone down there, much less like it was its own little world. The only thing that gave the idea that there might be people was the lights that hung around in clusters all over the place. At first glance I had mistaken them for fireflies. I’m not sure why, especially because I’d never seen a firefly in my life. I don't even think they live in the same hemisphere as me.

“Why are some of them so massive and others tiny in comparison?” I said, doing my best to examine every detail that I could in the darkness. We skirted the edge of the flowers, coming to a stop just short of stepping into them.

“Oh they aren’t, or at least none of them are much bigger than any of the others. There’s just a spatial distortion. Which is why some look tiny, some reasonable, and others look like that,” she replied offhandedly and pointing out some of the larger ones, “It only appears so vast because you’re seeing the view from the wrong perspective.” I wondered what the right perspective was, but then quickly figured that we were about to make short work of figuring that out. An arm curled around my waist, and I leant back against her automatically.

“None of that made much, if any, sense to me,” I confessed with a sigh. That high school completion that was really the be all, and end all, of everything for almost a good decade happened for a reason, huh? I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit on that. Although I really should stop blaming anything and everything on the lack of schooling standards just because Formal was cancelled the year I graduated. Plague is justified, I didn’t have to like it though.

“It looks bigger from here, and when we go in there we will seem smaller,” she said, humming and squeezing me in an apologetic hug, “There is a village in there that holds about as many people as one of your cities, and it’s still considered a village.” Given that these blooms were about the size of my fist, no matter how large the plants grew, was making me incredibly sceptical about this. Ivy seemed bright and excited, like she couldn’t wait for us to go. I was so stuck on trying to picture what she was describing that I was drawing a total blank.

“No way, you can’t see anything. I… I don’t think you’re lying to me, but I legitimately can’t even imagine it,” I said, with my feet itching to just run in and explore. I watched the lights twinkling among the flowers, and waited. Something was going to happen, and as much as I wanted to, I wasn’t brave enough to be the cause of it.

“You see those lights, Little One?” she said in a near whisper and pointed them out.

“I’m not little,” I repeated the familiar sentiment with the grumblings of someone who was only doing it on principle this time. I was too interested in what she had to say to be truly mad about it.

“In there, is the Flowering Sea of Light, and for every one of those lights there are about three to six people,” she explained, resting her chin on the top of my head. It brought to mind tiny fairies that little girls believe in. The kind who live in gardens, and are inches tall at best. Full on Tinkerbell-style, tiny be-winged people, with a higher percentage of them girls rather than boys. For future reference, all of these things are stereotypes. Not even accurate ones at that.

“That’s a lot of thousands of people,” I murmured before starting and speaking up louder, “Are you sure that you guys considered it a village? Where did all those people, or all this, come from?” She laughed and I felt it on my back and carving out its own little place in my chest.

“Once upon a time,” she spoke with a distinct mocking edge to it, “There were a pair of rulers. One presides over the Summer court and Spring court, and the other over Winter and Autumn. Although on opposite sides, they were happily mated and married, and when the distortions came to the Summerland’s they intervened. The season’s cycle, as do the ruling courts, Winter was in power at the time and they built this place out of their loved ones favourite flowers. It contained the danger well enough that it was no longer a danger.”

“Sounds beautiful,” I commented happily, “And all these people what? Just showed up.”

“It’s a good place to hide. As soon as they settled it, people started to move in,” Ivy says, shrugging, and stepping back to detangle from me. It sounds like a good place to explore. “Do you want to explore?” she cajoled.

“Yes,” I admitted without preamble, or waiting for it to occur to me to do otherwise. We stood there for a moment before she took my hand again.

“Can you hear that?” she asked me. I strained my ears and shook my head, nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. Rustling leaves, insects, birds, and a light breeze. Nothing that stuck out as obviously what she was talking about. “Listen, right at the edge of where you stop being able to hear anything,” she instructed in a silky smooth voice, and her thumb traced lines over my knuckles. Little goosebumps popped up all over my skin, and I couldn’t even claim that they were from the non-existent cold. There, I thought suddenly with my head snapping up to search for the source of the sound.

“Is that drums… and a violin?” I said in surprise, or some kind of string instrument. It was fast-paced, and the longer I concentrated the more it sounded like there were people singing. Lots of people singing, laughing, and talking. I’d heard this before.

“It’s a party. You want to come?” she offered. It wasn’t smart what I did next, but suddenly I was that brave. Shooting her the widest grin I could, yanking my hand from her and absolutely legging it into the field. Risking a glance behind me, I saw her tip her head back and laugh. A genuine smile lighted up her face, and it was more beautiful than the marvel that she'd brought me to.

“Five,” she called, beginning to count down, and it sent a spike of adrenaline to rip its way through my entire body. I started this as a game, because I thought it was fun. She followed up because it was as easy and normal for her as breathing. The further I ran, the more bizarre things became. If you ran in some directions, but not all of them, it appeared as if you were shrinking. Except... that wasn’t it. That wasn’t how it worked. What was actually happening was that everything, not a person, was getting bigger. Plants, rocks, bugs, and all of the rest grow until the petal of a flower becomes enormous enough that it can make an entire dress. I darted past a colony of what should have been tiny black ants, and they were the size of a large pony. It was enough to almost make me stop, but the music called and Ivy followed. I wasn’t even sure why I was running so fast away from her. She was going to catch me, and somewhere deep down inside I acknowledged to myself that this was the point. There was an electric kind of wonder buzzing so bright that I didn’t notice her until we hit the ground, that is. We’ll gloss over the loud oomph noise I made connecting with the floor. It was undignified.

“Cheater,” I accused teasingly and so out of breath, lying flat on my stomach and looking towards that party I could see in the distance. There weren’t just drums and violins, but now that we were closer, you could hear wind instruments thrown into the mix. I didn’t recognise the words to the song, or any of the words, even though I was sure that they were in English. People were hanging out the plants and flowers, the tiny golden balls of light were now the size of beach balls, and dancing. Oh my god, the dancing was insane, and beautiful, and ebbed and flowed with the beat of the music until it was everything. Beginning to push myself up, I didn’t expect to be pulled back into the soft grass hiding us.

“Mmn, no. If I’m going to let my treasure over there with all of those people, all of them that are not me, I will need kisses first,” she declared with a glint of mischief that said I was free to decline if I wanted. I looked down at her from where I had landed on top when Ivy had dragged me back to her. Yeah, I wanted that, I thought. Looking down at her sparkling green eyes and gorgeous smile. I did not have a problem with that at all.