In this dream, I'm dancing right beside you...

Digital Love – Daft Punk

Chapter Three: The Smiling Flower

The painful landing to the bottom of whatever pit I had fallen into had knocked me out cold…

By the time I had come to, I was staring up at the dusky light of twilight. I could see a few stars twinkling down at me through the opening I had fallen down from. It looked very high up. How had I survived such a fall?

With a groan, I struggled to sit up, testing my limbs for any broken bones or misplaced joints. When I found everything to be in working order, I sat up further and took in my surroundings. From the limited light from the opening above, I seemed to be in some kind of cavern. I was resting on a bed of golden flowers, just like the ones from my field. I looked up once again, trying to see if there was a trail I could climb but the walls were jagged and there didn't seem to be any footholds one could grab onto without risk of falling to the jagged rocks directly below. It was a miracle I had landed on these flowers and not on those rocks.

Tearing my gaze away from the opening, I looked around for my picnic basket and found it lying a few feet away from me. Moving carefully, so as not to disturb the golden flowers, I crawled over the mound toward the basket and grabbed it. Surprisingly, when I opened the top to the basket, I found that the contents were essentially undisturbed. The sandwiches I had made was worse for wear but still salvageable, the two plastic bottles of water were somewhat dented but OK. My smart phone and beaded pouch were fine, a little tangled around the blanket but fine.

Feeling some measure of control over situation, I pulled out my smart phone and pressed the home button to turn the screen on. It was late in the evening and I had no signal down here in this pit. I had three quarters of life on the battery. I had my power cord and an external battery in my beaded pouch so I had about a day and half of life to my phone. I had food and water if I conserved it well to last me about a couple of days.

Stuffing everything but my phone back into the basket, I latched it closed and got to my feet. I brushed off the blades of grass and dirt from my jeans and pulled down the hem of my green hoodie. I pulled back the hood and brushed away a few frizzy curls that had fallen from my top knot from the fall. I didn't know what I was preparing myself for but I was preparing for anything at this point none the less. Following a hallucination of my son through forest trails and falling into a deep cavern was not what I would call the ideal situation but…

Here I was.

Taking my phone, I turned on the screen and scrolled through the touch panel to turn on the flashlight capability. The LED light broke through the darkness, the little white glow making things a little clearer. I moved the light around, studying my surroundings in further detail. The bed of golden flowers I had landed on were in the very center of this cavern, surrounded by grass the shade of emerald green. Further ahead of me, there seemed to be a well worn path in the dirt that led away from this spot and deeper into the cavern.

How strange…

This path looked as if it saw saw daily foot traffic. Perhaps this place was frequently visited? If so, I may just find a way out of here.

Regardless, I could not stay here. The hallucination of my son was no where to be found, maybe the fall had knocked some sense into me…

Deciding that going somewhere was better than staying here, I tucked my basket in the crook of my elbow and held my smart phone with the other, the white light shining the way. I took in a deep breath and walked forward..

-o-

The darkness of this cavern was broken only by the little white LED light from my phone. As I turned the light this way and that, I found that the walls of this part of the cavern were smooth, as if someone had spend years carving out this cavern to look like a corridor. The path continued on this way until I turned a corner and a light brighter than my LED broke through. Turning off the light to conserve the battery, I walked ahead with renewed vigor, hoping against hope that I had found the way out so soon.

When I finally reached the source of the light, it was to find nothing more than another, smaller cavern with a hole to the surface high above shedding light down. There was a smaller mound of grass in this place, no golden flowers to be seen. I looked up at the small hole and found the light of a half moon shining down through the opening and down towards these depths. I heaved a sigh and shook my head slightly in disappointment, of course this would be too easy if the exit was so close. I wondered how I was going to find a way out of here...

"Howdy!"

A cheerful voice broke through my troubled thoughts and I started in surprise, my gaze traveling about the small cavern. I tried in vain to find the source of the voice and it wasn't until my wandering eyes had looked down that I caught the sight of a smiling flower staring back up at me.

A smiling flower…

A… flower… was smiling up at me from the mound of green grass that had been empty just a moment before…

Why was there a flower smiling at me? If I had wondered if I had lost my mind before, this was the definitive proof I needed. There was no way this flower had actually said something to me. I blinked a few times, trying to see if it might disappear but it did not. It continued to smile up at me, its beetle black eyes studying me with a sort of manic gleam.

I was immediately on edge and could feel my muscles tensing in anticipation of something terrible to come. I don't know why but there was something about this flower that set my heart to pumping triple time. Something about it just… wasn't right. Even for a smiling flower.

"I'm Flowey," it continued it its squeaky voice, its black eyes never straying from mine. "Flowey the Flower!" It still had not disappeared and its squeaky voice grating my ears was enough to inform me my physical senses were not deceiving me. This flower was indeed smiling and talking to me in real time.

It studied me after it had introduced itself, its manic eyes sending a chill down my spine. I had not responded to its introduction and it did not seem to expect one in turn. It tilted its head and hummed to itself thoughtfully, "You're new to the Underground, aren't cha? Golly, you must be so confused..."

I held my ground though I was still wary of this flower. There was some part of me, deep inside, that knew that this creature was much more dangerous than it looked. I didn't know how I knew but I was not going to ignore my gut feeling.

"Someone oughta teach you how things work around here. I guess little old me will have to do..."

I took a step back as I felt a tug at my heart, a faint deep green glow emerging from my chest in response to whatever this creature was intending. I quickly shook my head and took another step back, not liking the pulling tug at my heart nor the green glow. This was not normal…

"No," I said as I moved away from the mound and quickly made my way around the smiling flower, trying to put as much distance between us as possible. "No, thank you. I have to find my son. I hope you find your friend. Goodbye."

It paused, a look of confusion on its face, and whatever it had been preparing to do suddenly stopped. The tug at my heart stopped and the green glow faded away…

"You're… not my friend…," it said, the tone of its voice implying that it had been expecting someone else to have emerged from that cavern with the mound of golden flowers. "Who… are you?"

I didn't answer it.

Instead, I kept walking forward, the light from this cavern fading with each step. I turned the light to my phone back on and continued to follow the path deeper into the cavern. I did not notice the sad look on the flower's face as it watched me leave it behind...