a memory can make a flower bloom.

“Hm?” She looked up from the register, Ava clearly helping another customer check out. She grimaced at the other calling her little witch because 1) she hated that name and 2) the other customer was obviously human. “Oh, yes, I’ll get a new pot for them. Please hold on.” She did her best to smile and assure the customer that it was just a silly nickname, ‘ last year I dressed up as a witch and my friend over there just went with it! ‘. A minute later, the other customer was walking out the door and Ava was placing new pots onto the counter. “Could you please bring them over here?”

    “You are right.” It had been two men who murdered Emily without caring what would happen to her or her family in the aftermath. The memory was not a kind one, and she rather wanted to focus on the present. “I will tell him.” And it was not what Emily usually did to those she brought over, but somehow it felt wrong to deny this woman her wish. “Aella,” she repeated the other’s name, a small smile on her lips. “Are you the defender of this forest?” She had read enough fantasy as a teenager to believe in such things even before she became a reaper.

     Sofia waited for the other’s permission before she invaded further into the dryad’s space, moving closer until she carefully knelt down on the ground. All her life, Sofia had felt very connected to nature. She had loved it, then she had studied it, and she had lived in it – both on a boat and in a van. Now she let her fingertips brush through the grass around her before she looked over at the dryad, looking like the strongest fighter Sofia had ever faced. “I am a fury, and I was blessed with power to protect the innocent and enact justice. Not too long ago, I walked through the streets of this city meaning no harm to anyone when a manticore attacked me out of nowhere. She left me to die, and I am afraid she will do the same to many other people in this town. People I care about. Innocent people. I am a fighter, as are you. But I am afraid I can’t protect those who deserve to be protected without your help.”

The mythical land where his friend had hailed from was not an island that Aster had ever seen firsthand, like so many things it was a story that he had been told second hand. “Perhaps it has been obscured.” Aster said simply, he did not like what had happened to Aella, but she was proof that it was entirely possible for their trees to be uprooted. He only hoped that Aella and Paris never met. “What was it like when you were moved?” Aster asked, curious. “Did it hurt?”

+

“Perhaps so,” she says. She likes that thought better than the idea that the human world has gotten their hands upon it, turned it into little more than another soulless trap for people to take those strange things called pictures, for the world inside boxes that Aella still does not understand as it certainly has nothing to do with actual nets. “I wonder if anything remains still, or if it has all fallen to time.” None of the Amazons are left, but perhaps remnants of their time still exist, comforts of a golden age from which she was the happiest. “I wasn’t aware of what was happening. Not truly.” She had been startled and confused, when awakening in a strange place so far from Aella’s home. “I felt it, the strike of the axes, each cut they made. Like I was being divided in half, but still incapable of moving. It took a long time before I felt whole again.” Only when her tree had regrown, Aella later figured out.

Ekho looked up when Aella walked into the house. He was busy trying his hands at sewing, but it wasn’t working out too well. He threw the project to the side, “I mean, I don’t see anyone else walking around with axes. I think we’re slightly outnumbered when it comes to humans.” Ekho gave her a half smile, “That is…wild,” he used the term Bas had used recently. “I don’t think we have the same effect as we used to, Aella. I’ve been in the presence of so many humans, and they don’t fall over for me anymore.”

Milos paused in his tracks, looking wildly through the garden for the source of the voice. A woman stood there, angry and bearing an axe— and he had begun his rounds through the yard, a watering can in hand, a joint between his lips and a silk robe tied around his waist. It was a stark, comical contrast and he looked at her and blinked, pulling the smouldering joint from his mouth to make sure that it was in fact, still just weed. No, she was real— as was the cross expression on her face. “I,” he said, gesturing to himself. “Am watering my plants. What are you doing in my yard?” The kobaloi blinked. “If you take down my lilacs with that thing I’m going to be very upset,” he noted, gesturing towards the weapon she bore. “Want to stop swinging it around like that?”

+

“I would never harm the flowers!” Aella’s voice rises in offense, at the fact that he could even suggest such a thing of her. The grip on her axe tightens as she considers the distance and swing it would take to cut the man’s head clean off his shoulders, and whether he’d have enough time to move in counter. “This tree is mine, come no further or it will be the last thing that you do.” There’s magic to his soul, she can sense it easily, a chosen of Dionysus, but that does little to endear him to Aella. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is those with magic who are the most greedy, the most eager to use her tree to their own benefit. She will not allow him to do it.

     Sofia was incredibly grateful for the chance to talk to a dryad. And to show just how important this meeting was to her, and how sincere she was, she had come without a single strapped to her body. She knew if it came down to it she could protect herself with her fists or just go to the Underworld, but she hoped nothing of that would be necessary. She approached the meeting point, but stopped a few feet away from the dryad. The last thing the fury wanted to do was overstep. “Yes, that would be me. Sofia. And you must be the dryad she spoke of so fondly.” Sofia’s hands hung loosely by her sides, before she gestured towards the woman. “Can I come closer?”

    Emily wasn’t entirely sure if the women meant that the trees thanked her — surely not, she hadn’t even done anything except show up to collect a soul. She probably meant they were thanking this stranger for killing said man. “They are lucky that you protected them.” And she wished someone had protected her in that alley those two years ago. “I hope it won’t happen again,” she added, offering a small smile. “I’m Emily,” she added, though she wasn’t sure if this woman even wanted to have more of a talk with her.

     Emily’s plans for the night surely hadn’t entailed being called to the woods to bring a soul over to the other side, but here she was, wrapped up in her hoodie and sweatpant combination for a quiet night in. She hadn’t expected anyone else to be there,  and she stopped a few feet away as she came face to face with the other woman. “I’m not here to judge your actions,” she said simply. Emily was no fury, and while she herself had been murdered, she had not tried to set any trees on fire. “I’m just here to do my job.” And it wasn’t like she was thrilled to do it. “But I am glad he did not get a chance to burn the trees down.”

“I still have not figured out the ice, except that it makes the coffee cold. Traditionally, it is hot.” Eurydice had learned much from bothering the ‘baristas’ of Corinth, some were more accommodating to her questions than others. “This is an ‘iced coffee’. The coffee comes in all shapes and forms and the mortals even have a table they dedicate to it that they put before their couches.” She takes a sip from the cup in her hand after nodding to affirm this tidbit of information. Her and Ekho had hunted down one of the tables themselves and she reached to set her cup onto it. “There is much for you to learn, but Ekho has been very knowing and I have made mortal friends.”

+

“Why would they want to make it cold, if it is meant to be hot?” Mortals are so strange, with their penchant for making things needlessly more complicated than they must be. It is one of the many things she does not understand about them. Hesitantly, Aella brings the drink to her lips, taking a sip of the strange concoction. It’s more pleasant than she is expecting, if very strong, and her face twists slightly as she considers her feelings on it. “I think that I like it,” she announces, still eyeing the cup in mystery. Such an important drink, it has it’s own furniture dedicated to it? Her nose scrunches in Eurydice’s direction. “Mortal men seldom make good friends. I would not willingly choose their company.” No, she would take her questions to the other dryads first. “But I am glad to not be alone here. My tree was isolated from other dryads, before. I seldom saw any.”

She had been painting— the watercolours sat in her bag, the tops still gummy from the water that she had used to activate them, but as the day had pressed on she had found herself further and further in the woods, chasing the appeal of a vibrant flower, or a butterfly that darted into a dappled clearing. It was only after an hour or so, (though it felt more like only a couple of minutes) that she realized that she had gotten out of her depth, and the entrance to the thick cluster of trees was lost to her, leaving Sydney to dart through the woods, unsure of which way would bring her home. Wide eyes tried to find anything familiar, going one way and then the next, and after she was sure that she was going in circles, she wrapped her arms around herself to comfort whatever panic was clambering up her throat. A voice made her whirl around, and the words made her stumble. The woman who delivered them looked regal, as though she belonged in such a place— and for a moment, Syd forgot her fear and wished to paint her as she stood there. Instead, she voiced what was obvious. “I’m lost.”

+

“Yes, you are.” This is no place for her to wander heedlessly, and she is fortunate it is only Aella to find her. Others would not be so forgiving of such trespassing. She jumps down from her place atop the rocks, landing barefoot on the grass below with feline-like balance, before closing the distance between the two of them. She looks frightened, not an unwise reaction to the situation the girl finds herself in, and Aella thinks perhaps she is somewhat aware of the dangers that lurk, even if the complete truth is obscured. “Come. You must leave, while it is still available to you.” Aella will make sure to it that she sees her way out safely, even if it means leading the woman herself. Few would be so bold as to attack the human, so long as she is in the presence of a dryad. She begins to walk in the direction she knows the nearest so called highway to be, turning only once to make sure that the human is following behind. 

Alvaro wasn’t used to the entitlement of the creatures in Corinth, waiting for him to reap the souls of the people they’ve killed. It was a little too forward, something he didn’t particularly care for. As he approached he assumed right away that this one had killed the body he’d been summoned for. Steps echoing off the hard ground as he stepped through the alley, head tilted slightly as he listened to her question while he approached. “It’s not as romantic as the stories make it out to be; it’s grounding.” it was a strange question, one he hadn’t thought of before. Being a reaper now just came so naturally, he never considered himself to be a servant of anything but perhaps, for death it made sense. His eyebrows furrowed as he watched her, “What do you mean? You want to know what happens after you die?” a ghost of a smile touched his lips as he shook his head, “it’s much more complicated than pearly gates or a firey pit if that’s what you mean.” 

+

“Yes, I wish to know.” Because it is not something Aella has experienced, and not something she thinks she ever could, not truly. Though her body has been dealt mortal wounds, to the dryad, it always meant simply returning to become one with her tree again, reemerging into the world once she has healed. Even when they had faded from this world, it felt as if she were simply lying dormant, a half-conscious slumber to pin her down. “I have friends who have moved through death. I would like to know what became of them.” All the Amazons left this world long before Aella had been reawakened, their voices fading to the wind over the years, but she still thinks of them often; wonders what paradise they have been guided to on the other side, and whether it is better than to be here.