. . . means forsaken, as the blood of Adonis.
"Seems to me they could learn a few things about manners!"
Here's where she went wrong: Saika automatically assumed that she would only have to deal with crows and creepy plants.
Not long after she met with that mysterious demon, she came into a clearing in the woods. She was nearly swooped up by a gigantic condor.
That is, it looked like a condor.
It's not to say that she knew her birds, but whatever it was, it had talons large enough to pick up her stepfather's expensive American car. She leapt with all of her strength and barely missed its deadly grip.
Releasing a tree-shaking screech, the bird came around and tried to attack her again.
Instead of moving away like she should have done, Saika summoned all of her focus, nearly cracking her teeth with her concentration. Even with the risk, she had to try something.
A tree to the right of her began to tremble, and as though releasing the hold on a long closed door, a chilling power flooded through her like ice water.
The tree came quickly across the field, striking the demon in its side and toppling it to the ground with surprising force.
Approaching its body slowly, she watched the crushed bird twitch for a while, then stop.
Before she could think too much on this, several more screeches rang from the woods, and the bird she nearly brushed called out to answer them.
Instinctively, Saika ran through the trees, adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Yes; it was there! She felt it.
Like liquid energy, she felt the world around her becoming closer, less frightening. Her senses were strengthening.
Yes! She would find that man, reclaim her journal, and return to her world. She knew she would.
Just as she promised herself this, Saika fell over her feet and reacquainted herself with the ground.
-I can still remember the exact look on her face when she noticed the purple fire in her hair. Kind of like, "I wish we had gone to the other sushi place", but way worse.
Hiei shuddered and shut his eyes tight.
It wasn't often that he laughed, and when he did, it was more for sarcastically rhetorical purposes. He would not laugh at the musings of that human girl. He would not.
By mediated self-control, he held his chuckler as he read on.
I'm pretty sure that teacher never came back. She's in an institution now, I think. But that was about the time I was learning to control
Then the words cut off.
Humans, Hiei decided, were most afraid of those things they did not understand.
Squeezed in between the prophetic dreams were vignettes from Saika's life, collections of her thoughts and experiences. Most were illegible, considering he barely had the capacity to read the writings of humans.
But the escapades of this unyieldingly nonchalant human girl wouldn't cease to amuse him. Though he would not admit it, he was enjoying the act of reading her thoughts more than he wished he would.
It would be more incentive to penetrate her mind later, he told himself.
At present, he walked alone through the tree, keeping tabs on her energy. Surprisingly, he took pleasure in what he read.
Once, my mother enrolled my in ballet. It was only one class. She said it would help me grow into an "elegant young woman", but I just think she didn't want me falling over myself anymore.
I can remember standing before all of those pretty girls with my eyes wide. The teacher asked me to demonstrate what we'd learned, but everyone knew I couldn't do it. Right when I blinked, somehow all the mirrors in the room broke in big pieces and fell to the floor, all around the studio. I never took ballet again.
Wandering idly with a deflated pride, Saika came into a place that seemed to resonate with more wonder than evil.
The grass seemed shorter and better tamed. The black trees contoured beautifully, framing the visage before her. The lavender sky softened and all manner of indescribably lovely plants grew along the path that Saika walked.
Delicate yellow blossoms with oranges lips lined the ground. An absolute spectrum of flowers that Saika had never imagined grew up to the tree tops. Some grew on short stems like purple spurts of fur, others like straight silver daggers. A bulbous blue flowers with subtle yellow markings grew tangled with dark blue leaves. Some pink flowers had spiny petals that grew out and around from the head like a glass orb. An array of pastel florets grew around each other with wild, flayed petals.
And yet all of these foreign flowers sat up high, taller than Saika.
In the center of the garden hung a large willow tree, with moss falling over the garden and uniquely patterned butterflies fluttering around the branches. Cactus vines wound around the ground, somehow imperializing the flowers in their untouchability.
Yet upon closer inspection, the flowers seemed to have shadows of faces, with peculiar markings where one might imagine eyes and mouths to be.
Still, in shape, size, and color, they all looked like wild creatures, foreign yet distinctive.
But more, Saika was drawn in by the scents. Each alluring, each exotic, the flowers all called to her without noise.
Self control alluded her, and she fell under an illusion; what was life, but a dream?
And the more she looked on the flowers, the less they seemed unfamiliar.
They felt like something from a dream, something that she remembered and could finally see with crystalline clearness.
Illusions often work that way, with fearful intimacy.
And though somewhere in her mind she knew it wasn't wise, Saika walked closer and closer to the flowers, stroking the petals as she passed. They seemed to move with her.
She began humming a tune, a repetitive melody she could have sworn she never heard in her waking.
Just as she caressed the head of a yellow-brown striped flower, she heard the melody coming back to her in a purr.
"Are there any words for to song?"
Dream over.
Saika jumped back, making a small shriek of shock.
"How rude! It's a simple question."
"You- you can talk?"
"Why, of course she can talk!" a thick pink flower crooned pretentiously.
Her twin beside her added, "If there's anyone worth talking to!"
They both giggled, if that was at all possible.
"You're- you're demon flowers," Saika reminded herself.
"As opposed to what, exactly?" a high up violet-looking flower asked, as it was grown around a tall tree.
"Have any of you seen a dark-haired man?" Saika asked, ignoring the violet.
"What's a man?" the thick pink flower asked.
Saika gathered her thoughts, then asked, "A- a short stemmed moving thing with black petals, and black thorns coming from its head. It's not all too polite, either."
"I suppose that's how most motile flowers are!" the violet called out to Saika.
"I haven't seen anything like that," a few flowers called out, while others shook in agreement.
"Why don't you come over here and sing to us?" a lotus called.
"Come sing to us!"
"Come sing to us. . ."
"I can't right now," Saika said, though she was seriously tempted.
"Why not?"
"Why not?"
"Why not?"
"I've got to find that- that flower, because he's got something of mine."
"Sing us just one song. Please!"
"Just one song." They cajoled and begged.
"No, I can't-" Saika was in the middle of turning them down when their combined scents drifted shrouded nose, somehow stronger than before. "Maybe just one song," she decided dreamily.
Sitting down slowly against the stem of the striped flower, she asked, "What kind of flower are you?"
"I'm a flower of Sorrel Thicket."
"Sorrel Thicket," many other flowers echoed.
"I mean, what sort of flowers?"
"Sorrel Thicket," the flower continued to murmur.
No songs that she consciously knew came to Saika's mind, but she began to sing the words, "All my little plans and schemes, lost just like forgotten dreams. . ."
The flower slowly enfolded her, and Saika shut her eyes. As the flower held her, the rest of wild garden moved, as though to make room.
"Seems that all I was really was doing was waiting for. . ." Though she remained awake, Saika could no longer form thought. The scents were pouring over her, pouring into her a euphoria she had never known.
"Who are you?" Saika spoke thoughtlessly.
An elegant brown flower cuddled closer to Saika and spoke with equal blankness, "I think I was the Queen of the Nile. What was my name?"
"Sorrel Thicket," a smaller blossom answered.
"Sorrel Thicket," the brown flower repeated.
Another flower, beautiful and red, mourned, "I loved Aphrodite, I did. Where are you? Where am I? I'm blood spilt for you, I'm. . ."
"Sorrel Thicket," some scattered flowers continued to whisper.
"Sorrel Thicket," Saika repeated.
Sorrel Thicket, and the words echoed in her empty mind, against walls within her conscious. The emptiness and pressure formed a crack in those walls, though, and another thought shot through her mind like lightning.
It was an image: the image of a long forgotten dream, of a beautiful yellow flower, of beautiful adorning vines, of gently closing jaws. . .
When that thought banged against the inner side of her forehead, Saika leapt up, and broke a few vines that had come over her.
"What are you doing?"
"Sing us a song. . ."
"No, I've got to get out of here!" Saika said more to herself than anything. With her wrist held to her nose to keep out the hypnotizing scent, she tried to run to the other end, but a vine reached out and grabbed her wrist.
"Stay here. . ."
"Sing us a song. . ."
"The spores will bring you peace."
Looking up, Saika could see that the moving vines all connected and wrapped around the willow tree in the garden's center. In a deeper, more menacing tone, the tree seemed to chant, "Sorrel Thicket."
"Hey!" Saika kicked the vines off of her ankles, and stood up. "Hey, stop this!"
She ran to the tree's gigantic trunk and began tearing the vines off of it. A deafening roar rang out, and the vines began to entangle her like snakes.
"Let- let me go-" But before she could think to do anything, the vines wrapped around her neck, and pulled her against the tree's trunk, ensnaring her around.
There were no plans to be made. All Saika was aware of then was the vine that choked her and the painfully sweet scent that violated her senses.
Her body rejected the smell, and she struggled futilely against her bonds. To no avail. Saika's strength began to give out, and her vision blackened. She was passing out, and if she did, she knew she would never wake up.
Still, she could feel her conscious slipping from her, and she reached the point where she was no longer capable of caring. She was falling into a peaceful sleep.
Eyes shut, ensnared in vines: her body fell limp.
Then, without precursor, the eyes behind her fallen lids glowed with purple. Saika's aura burnt against the willow, and it cried out again.
But the purple essence continued to burn against the vines of the tree and the black bark with sizzling ferocity.
The rest of the flowers, throughout the garden, cried out as the vines that trapped them were burnt away.
Saika didn't see any of it, because she was hunched over on the ground, holding her bruised throat.
She did, however, turn up in time to see the petals fall away from all of the flowers, and blue lights drift slowly from their centers into the sky.
As they passed, some whispered, 'thank you'.
Saika stood and walked away from the whining tree.
She went to an already withering red petal, picked it up, and said to herself before leaving, "I'll never look at anemone the same."
