The Flower

My brother and I walked along the flagstone path out of the desert system and into a darker, more moist area that smelled rich and deep like Earth and decay. The foliage was thicker and more of the sun was blocked out, there was a thick underbrush. Under the branches and giant leaves of ancient trees there was a clearing and a small low table. A teapot was brewing over the small glow of a single ember. The pot was black pottery, embossed with asian patterns, red relief stood out against the frightening black pottery as it brewed a single wisp of steam flowed out of it. I could smell chamomile and blueberry. "Tea time brother." Robbie said, there were two red pillows on either side of the table, we kneeled down and drank tea and ate cookies, cakes, and sandwiches. All the while the ebb and flow of the forests around us whispered silently in the background.

"I came in here to restock some herbs we need in the potions room, and the kitchen. We were out of garlic." Robbie filled me in on what he was doing. As he spoke I looked around at this little haven he had. I never realized how much of a home he had built in here. I suppose we all made places where we could find silence, find peace, maybe find ourselves. A few thousand years and things got noisy. Things always get messy. "So after I finished gathering what we needed I made a small round and found this creature." Robbie finished saying as he put down his tea and pointed to the orchid at his side."He's not sentient but he is intelligent in his own way." He pinched a little more of the powder and sprinkled it over the orchid and it sniffed it up, or licked it up. I wasn't the best at identifying mystic plant species. I thought it was an african pygmy orchid, judging by its soft purple petals that gave way to a soft white at its anther cup and mouth."So is it on the mend then?" I asked him. He assured me that it would be fine but before it finished healing Rtobbie pulled out a small glass tube and gathered up the brown and green slime dripping from its lip, he filled the tube and put a stopper in it. "Little things mucus when it's sick is helpful for treating poison in most beings." Robbie would know, he could mix anything from just about anything it seemed at times. His potions recreated all kinds of magic, nothing as strong as what we fashioned from our essence but it helped a great deal in emergencies and even we couldn't always heal a wound or eliminate a toxin.

I needed to know if he remembered anything about the story of Gilgemish or the Iliad that might not be in the written story. I recall something about a flower but I couldn't place it in context. "Robbie, thank you for the tea, but do you remember a flower from either the First Story or from the Iliad?" I asked my brother out right. There were a number of things to do before the day was done. Our Troll friend was mixed up in something, not sure what but something. Robbie started talking while I finished up the last of my tea."There was a Utnapishtim's flower, the flower of immortality. It's meant to be capable of restoring a person's youth. The only person that knows where the flower is kept is the boatman of death. Well him and me of course." Robbie smiled and touched me on the shoulder, slowly the floor under us moved, a small easy movement at first then with a bit more speed it lowered down. A small room was under everything else. It had a soft blue white glow that gave the room a perfect glow, the room was warm but not hot, it was humid more humid than it should have been.

"This is the flower from Gilgemish's story brother." Robbie said to me as the platform came to a stop. I stopped off the platform and in an alcove that was just under where the orb floated in the room above. There was a small split in the floor, the waters dripped through the crack and fell into a large potted plant, it was volcanic stone, covered in pits and pores, each divot had small sprouts of green or falling roots poking out of them. The chamber of the large pot was full of bits of wood, small parts of leaves and patchy soil that seemed to team with tiny blue,black shelled bugs. A woody stem grew up and out of the soil, it split and grew three long slender leaves about a foot long each. Perched almost like a white sun was a single bloom. The bloom was pure white, telling one petal from another in the bright light shining down on it from the crack above was almost impossible. Most striking was the center, it was black and deep. It wasn't midnight, it wasn't blue black. It was an empty black, making the white all the more brilliant in comparison. Robbie stayed where he was on the platform, I took small slow steps toward the flower as if afraid to startel it. I could see individual petals more clearly, where one overlapped the other and an almost creamy off white defined the lines of each petal adding a new dimension to the already startling beautiful flower. "How did you get this?" I whispered in the still and damp air. "Years ago I was given some seeds. It was part of a group of seeds and roots. I classified them all, everything else grew but these seeds." He explained that all of the plants had sprouted, had grown into plants and flowers, bushes and trees. All but these seeds."I knew by their shape that they needed rocky soil and good drainage but nothing I did would make them grow. No being's essence would make them grow, not a spell, or expression could get them out of their tiny case." He told me as he walked up next to me, "I remembered the orb, the expression up stairs. The one that came into being at dinner, when Steven came home." Robbie continued to tell me that he discovered that not only could the orb produce water and food, the smallest bits of which would satisfy the deeps thirst or the most gnawing hunger but the water has properties unlike anything I've ever seen. It has frequencies of every essence I've ever encountered and every dissolved element. I thought that it might wake up the seeds, and it did!" Robbie grew more excited and more passionate as he spoke. His face and his voice painted a picture that showed the level of passion and commitment has for his field of study. I imagine it's that passion that helps us make it from one day to the next in life, how could any being live a normal life span without interest, without passion or interests with the many factors that make life the adventure that it is. Witnessing my brother's bright mind at work, or Larry's commitment to his training, and Karen's keen interest and ability to heal, or David and Matt's deep but strange obsession in jokes and humor. Even Stevens drives to learn and discover and map all the realms that have been created. It was all beautiful, it was all wonderful. Somewhere along the road of life I lost my ability to desire or a drive to change or learn. I have skills, I have ability. I can paint, draw, and sing. I understand more than the arts, sciences are easy for me, natural sciences, physics, and human technology none of it is hard for me. Somehow, I lost sight of the beauty of all these abilities. I lost passion for what I can do or what I can achieve. This mystery, the not knowing, woke something in me that I lost so long ago, until recent days I hadn't realized that I felt like a tool of the world, something to be used. I didn't even know that there was something missing in me, that I was missing drive or ambition. I was lost and without use for so long it just became who I was but now with this puzzle, this strange story with missing parts, I felt alive again!

After visiting Robbie in his work I need a break. There was so much information happening all one time, I felt driven, motivated but also lost and confused. I even felt the smallest bit of fear, I feared not knowing the complexity or depth of this mystery but I was still diving head first into it or at least walking very fast into the center of it.

As I left the greenhouse and passed the stable I saw Steven watching the different creatures in the pens. We had an assortment of mundane and fey creatures that were kept and looked after. Among the pens there were pigs, sheep, a mule, and a pollywog, a will-o-wisp, a fire hearth newt, and a Grindylow, A Caladrius egg a pure white bird not much is known about what they are capable up but they show up when things are going to get odd in life. If that means a war or an auspicious birth had equal chance. On the other end of the spectrum we had young Amphisbaena, a snake with a head at both ends of its body, it is twice as likely to kill you.The last two seemed like they wouldn't make good pen-fellows but here in our stables and pens on our land, an expression that looked like a weather-vane had the passive ability to encourage all species to be peaceful and accommodating to one another. It was passive in that it didn't need essence for its ability to work. "What are you up to brother?" I asked him, as I walked toward him. He was watching the mix of animals play and eat their very different foods. Live mice for the Amphisbaena, grain and buts for the pigs and goats, a bed of ice and water for the Caladrius egg, which was just starting to wiggle and crack as the shell was being picked and pushed to escape. "I felt the tiny bird trying to escape his egg and thought I would come down and watch, to see if it needs help." Steven said to me. The egg rocked and splashed in its cold, watery nest. As I stood next to him a tiny beak broke through the shell and was sticking out like a pin in a quilt of off white stone. "Did you know that the shell is harder than marble or granite?" He asked me, a fact I actually didn't know. Even in my long life I had only ever seen three, maybe four. "It's almost like a metaphor in life. All new birth is hard,painful, and a bit bloody at times." I repeated words I had heard my grandmother say to me a few thousand years ago. It was after the spell aged me into my late teens, it was less than a month after I was born. My body and mind were growing so fast that my personality couldn't keep up. I struggled to find my place in the world where my ability was helpful but my age and lack of real life experience. I could split a tree in half with my bare hands but I couldn't do it without putting people in danger from the results. I could lift giant blocks of ice to build an igloo but understanding the nuances of building one that escaped me. Knowing that if the blocks weren't a perfect fit that snow could be packed hard to level the sides, or that hot water or fresh urine could be used to bind the blocks as they went down. "It's true, being born is always hard, hard on the mother, hard on the baby and at times it's painful." Grandmother understood that all transitions in life were hard, painful, and at times it felt like everything that made you a person felt like it was bleeding out. It seems like Steven understood that all along and now I was learning the deeper meaning of it too.

As I left the stables and the pens behind I walked the well worn path back to House. It was an overcast day, not sunny but not raining either. The trees swayed in the light wind of the afternoon and the birds sang lazy songs in their distante nests. A garden gnome and a wood pixie were traveling from our home to the woodshed, a shed we didn't store wood anymore but kept tools and implements in for the grounds, gardens and wooded areas. They seemed deep in discussion, the wood pixies' tiny bell-like voice chimed in response to the gnome's smooth and soft deep voice. What they were talking about was lost to the breeze. I assumed they were trying to determine what needed to be planted or what paths in the woods needed clearing. They may be small but between their abilities and some basic tools they both had more than enough ability to keep the grounds and surrounding woods clear and in good health as well as beautiful. Everyone doing their best to help the grounds and House function and run. House was powerful, House could take care of itself and the grounds but that didn't mean that it had too. Everyone can and does help in their own way. All of us follow our own paths but do it together. "It takes a village." I said to myself as I smiled and walked the path to the back door, it swung open as I came up to it. "Thank you House." I said to it as I walked inside. The door closed behind me.