Chapter 1
A Coconut Bash
A young girl hummed with a watering can in hand, she was tending to a bed of buttercups.
"Oh, hello there." She said, glancing down at the wild pretztail who sat in her lap, licking her hand.
"Haha, I guess you think I'm a bunnycomb!" The 16-year-old gardener giggled and pulled out a hand full of treats, setting them onto the ground beside her and watched the pretztail as it happily ate.
'Come to think of it... I haven't gotten a second pretztail yet...' She thought and stood up, walking to her garden storage unit.
"I should have at least one tartridge life sweet left in here." Rummaging through the seemingly endless amassment of seed bags, fruit, produce and fertilizer, she finally managed to grab hold of her life sweet bag and hauled it out of the storage unit. She pulled out a life sweet and fed it to the wild piñata.
The young gardener watched as the piñata's confetti changed from monochrome into vibrant oranges and yellows as she ran her fingers through it.
"Hey Laila!" Her head quickly whipped around to see a young man, around the age of 17, leaning against one of her apple trees.
"Alex?!" Laila then ran to the mainlander and flew into his arms.
"I missed you so much!"
"Whoa there! Ya nearly knocked me over mate!" Alex smiled, hugging Laila.
"Sorry, wait a minute... you were here two weeks ago." Laila said with a puzzled expression, she knew that Alex only came once a month so why was he visiting again in February?
"Well... you forgot it was going to be Valentine's Day in the next 2 weeks, so I thought I would spend it here."
The young gardener blushed, not only with embarrassment but also with love. If he meant what she thought,
then this was going to be the best day of her life.
"Oh, I completely forgot!" She laughed, nervously rubbing the nape of her neck.
"So, in the time being... do you want to stay at my place? Not like it's any different from the last visits." Laila fiddled with her chestnut-brown hair, twirling it around one finger like a nervous schoolgirl asking her crush out for the first time.
"Sure!" The mainlander smiled, nudging Laila with his shoulder.
"Hey, I heard that there is an ice cream stand in front of the Oasis coffee shop."
"Ok." She nodded and began walking.
"You are going to love the road ahead! There is some strange snow and sand combination, it feels great and when you walk on it makes a really nice crunching sound, but it strangely isn't cold, and the snow never seems to melt." Laila said with a skip in her step.
"Look over there! There is a flock of jucygoose!" The young gardener pointed to a pond filled with purple birds with white stripes, they were fighting over a newtgat.
The two of them spent a good 15 minutes before they arrived at the ice cream stand, Laila asked to pay, she said that was it was the best she could do since he had come all the way from Russia to spend Valentine's Day with her. Alex ordered ice creams for both, they sat down on a bench in front of the water.
"Wow this ice cream is delicious!" Laila said through a mouth full of ice cream, but Alex was too focused on eating that he didn't hear anything she said.
"What did you say again?" The Russian said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"N-never mind, want to play in the water?" She said and tossed a hand full at Alex.
"Oh, it's on!" Alex then pushed the gardener into the water and splashing her. Laila got up and made a huge wave of water come down onto him. The two of them laughed as they sent and received numerous splashes of water on each other, soon growing tired.
"Good game, but Lai-Laila... Pl-Please warn me before Ch-chucking me in." He then leaned against one of the palms trees, panting from exhaustion.
"Um... Alex?" Laila said staring at the tree he was leaning against.
"Wah-what is it Lai-." And suddenly, a rush of pain flew through his body, vision growing increasingly hazy as the ground seemed to be coming towards him, and after that everything... went dark.