Wishful Thinking

With a stomach full of assorted meats and vegetation, Yuler looks to the ceiling of her room. Dim rays of moonlight spill over her as they penetrate the thin veil her window curtains provide, reflecting only the dullest of blues onto the wooden beams overhead. She trails the length of each that can be seen. Stopping only when she has reached a corner of the room before proceeding to start on the next. No matter how many nights she has spent in this place, it has never begun to feel any more like a home than it had on the first. Blinking her eyes rapidly for a brief period, she rolls onto her side and peers out the window that sits level with her mattress.

Nothing but rolling hills and rows of crops are to be seen for miles; especially under the night sky. This does not bother her, however. After all, it is the one thing she has found some ease in adjusting to. Nearly a year of trekking up and down The Keep's mountain was all it would take to appreciate such a sight.

Pausing as she runs her eyes across the horizon, they snap towards something not so far off from the cottage. Near the bottom right corner of a single window pane sits a warm glow of red light. Pulling herself upright, she continues to examine it. Glancing up at the sky and then back at the anomaly, she finds it curious how much it resembles the midnight flames. It is as if a star had fallen right into her reach. Keeping as quiet as she can, she creeps out of bed and shuffles into the hall with an extinguished lantern. Once outside and with only the sounds of crickets and critters chirping and chattering around her, she ignites the wick and lets her own light cast itself over the yard. Though visible from the window, she finds that the glow is much further than it had appeared previously, but remains determined to seek it out. Keeping the base of her gown lifted above dampened soil, she passes through rows of cabbage and carrots; doing her best not to trample any as she does so. Once the vegetables are behind her and the loose soil turns to firm blades of grass, she lets the cloth fall freely to her ankles and continues towards trees and low shrubbery. As the curious luminance comes into view once more, she lowers her lantern and walks on, precariously. Noticing that the wick of her own lantern burns brighter than the strange orb, she uses it to further examine her surroundings.

Beneath the anomaly is a common stalk with leaves on either side of it. Along with several other stalks that seem to branch off the same root system. Though, they do not appear to share the same head as the one that brought her to them. Each other stalk ends with a blackened and rounded receptacle that she can only assume had started a whitish color, rather than what it is currently. Unlike those that remain less intriguing, the tallest stalk continues to draw her in. With only two or so feet remaining between her nose and the flower's shifting glow, she begins to feel as if it has put her into a trance of some sort. The fluffy pappi become its most alluring anatomy, as Yuler's awareness of them being the source of the flower's otherworldly glow embellishes the plant as a whole. She nearly misses a third source of light approaching, but the sprout opts to not allow such distractions to take over. In an instant, the flower bursts into flames, which breaks Yuler's concentration and immediately fills her with rage.

"NO! What are you doing? Why!?" Lunging to her side, she attempts to strike Lee with her lantern, but he ignores the efforts and proceeds to cover the growing, hissing flames with a thick rag. As he does so, Hael wraps her arms around Yuler and pulls her away from Lee as he continues to work on eliminating the mystical lifeform. With each passing moment that the thing burns, its grip on Yuler's mind seems to wane and her struggles against Hael lessen.

"Sh, sh, sh, sh! It's alright. Everything is fine!" Hael assures with a whisper, brushing hair away from Yuler's face as she does so. "It's gone now. You'll be alright."

"What was it? Why did you destroy it?" She begs, still looking to where it had been growing and then back at Lee, who remains fixated on its demise.

"It was Dabria. You must understand that we did this for your own good."

"Dabria?" Yuler questions, her mind beginning to slow under the abnormal stress it had so recently been subjected to. "What is it? What is Dabria?"

"It goes by many names." Lee offers with abhorrence. "This is no place to explain a thing. We must return to the cottage."

"I'll explain once you've had something to drink." Hael lifts herself off the ground, having let Yuler fall onto her at some point, and proceeds to assist in pulling Yuler back to her feet as well. "Come. We can't risk being near it if more happen to have sprouted."

Sipping at a mug of brewed tea with leaves still floating on top, Yuler faces Hael, who turns her own mug about on the table, and Lee, who leans himself as far back as his posture allows him whilst staring blankly at what embers remain in the fireplace. Once Yuler's drink clops against the table, Marne steps out from the hall and examines those who sit around it. He then proceeds to walk nearer and pull up a chair of his own. With the four of them seated and Marne being entirely unsure of why he has been summoned, Hael begins to speak.

"During the grandest days of power, when The Bethel was finding itself to be the center of religious focus, a rather unique discovery was made. Asinus Asteraceae, or "Fool Dandelion". Locally, it was known as Dabria. The Bethel's holy men discovered Dabria in the depths of a sealed-off catacomb, just below the city. Due to its ability to survive in a place, where even the sun's warmth could never touch, The Bethel saw their discovery as a beacon of hope. Only a brief time after Dabria had been brought to the light, High Priest took notice of each flower's pedals reddening and found this to be a sign of gratitude, from something that could not possibly speak for itself.

To keep the flowers out of the public's reach, he chose to grow them in The Bethel's private garden. Eventually, these conditions allowed Dabria to grow across the garden's entirety and they consumed all that was not Dabria. With such rapid success, the holy men decided it was time to congratulate High Priest with the luxuries such a crop could provide." Hael pauses for a moment to take a swig from her own mug, which reeks of alcohol more than it does of tea. Licking the moisture from her lips, she continues. "Baths made up entirely of the blood that ran through each leafy vein, and wines fermented from the crimson pedals came in full force until High Priest began to fall ill. During this time, he continued tending to the garden, where his efforts were only met with more applaud from the holy men and God Numen's followers. In honor of his efforts to preserve the flowers, members of The Bethel held ceremonious prayer that would last for many, many hours. Oftentimes falling into the night. Much like the plant itself, a miraculous amount of life came back to High Priest in due time, but he had been irreversibly changed and fell into hiding. Dabria consumed all of his time, begging for his care when he would be absent until he'd go as far as to sleep in the gardens with them. Under the moon's mysterious glow, he would awaken one night to find that the pedals of his flowers had become yellow; as they were when The Bethel first discovered them. Panicked, he called the holy men to the garden, demanding an explanation and throwing wild accusations at those who spoke without being questioned. Come morning, High Priest was certain that someone had tampered with his work and swore to the holy men that the flowers were crying out to him, but could not say who had done it."

"Forgive me," Marne interrupts, readjusting his placement in his seat, "where is this all coming from?"

"Silence, please." Lee raises a palm to Marne and awaits Hael's continuation.

"Determined to discover the truth through his hysterics, High Priest instated the first wave of Nostrum. Assigned to the inner city, the Nostrum were to sift through each home, where they would question the occupants and search for remnants of the flowers, as High Priest was certain that those with red pedals had been stolen right out from under him. No more than a week after the Nostrum had been established, High Priest failed to make an appearance during a spiritual gathering. When concern began to grow, the Nostrum were ordered to seek him out themselves. In doing so, they found him to be whispering in a language unknown to them amid the flowers of his garden. Upon stirring him from his strange meditative state, High Priest let out a beastly shriek. The Nostrum stepped away as he began to tear at his own face, rapidly turning into an atrocious monster, unlike anything they had ever seen before. Unarmed and unaware, the Nostrum fled from the creature that was once their leader, proceeding to inform the holy men of what they'd discovered. In their absence, High Priest attempted to escape the confinements of the garden but found it far too difficult to climb the walls that surrounded him and eventually began to relax. The gardens that kept his flowers concealed... now concealed him as well.

Once the shrieking had stopped, only the bitter murmur of curious and terrified citizens could be heard outside The Bethel. Inside, however, the holy men began speaking with High Priest, whose appearance had become anything but that of the man he once was. During this conversation, High Priest spoke on behalf of the flowers; warning of a great and looming danger. He told The Bethel's holy men that humanity needed to be purged of its filthy mishaps, and the only way for such a thing to take place would be to let the flowers' seeds flow freely, far and wide. They alone could cleanse the evil of man.

With this, the holy men fell into an agreement and a new ritual was born. As the sun began to set on that very night, the flowers' reddened once more, turning their new, fluffy white forms into harvest moons as High Priest turned himself over and over, stirring the seeds from their stems as the wind would blow and send them far over The Bethel's walls. A purple sky filled with many dancing flames overtook the city, the farmlands, and the lands beyond those. Accompanied only by the chiming bells that sat atop each of The Bethel's majestic towers.

In only a few short weeks, Dabria had begun to sprout in almost every crack and crevice. Yet, outside of The Bethel's walls, they would only ever appear as an ordinary dandelion. That is... until they were ready to seed. A few short hours before, their crimson roots would come through and another generation would be off to pioneer. Yet, the world that had recently been blessed by High Priest's prized pollen would quickly fall into a darkness unlike any known before. Strange changes would come to those who chose to sniff the buds of such crops. Yet, consumption of them in any fermented or cooked form would seemingly relieve addled minds... for a brief time. This knowledge allowed The Bethel a window to come up with solutions and attempt to find answers on what was to come next, but High Priest was long gone. His mind had become nothing more than a husk of its former self and the odd mutterings had grown into gnashing and violent antics. Taking with him his great wisdom and ability to speak with Dabria.

Once holy men who had previously been tending to him in the garden had begun dying in their efforts and fear overcame those who remained, along with High Priest's own Nostrum, it had been decided that further actions needed to be taken. From then on, Nostrum would be assigned to an entirely new form of protection. Keeping High Priest trapped within The Bethel's garden, Nostrum would return to the city's streets during the night, seeking out harvest moons as they would sprout and bringing with them a set of curiously crafted weapons and masks. Their tools had been specifically designed to destroy the beasts that would splinter off from city-dwellers as the effects of Dabria took hold, while the masks prevented the inhalation of the responsible pollens. From the time of these events until the present, the flower remains in our environments, and its accursed effects persist in the minds of men and women."

Yuler and Marne look on in horror as Hael takes another pause to sip from her beverage. Neither desiring to interrupt her any longer as they await yet another continuation of the words she speaks.

"However, it is widely believed that once all of man's evils have been cleansed by Dabria, those that we once knew who remain will return to us; and their beastly states will be no more. This is why their High Priest is kept alive. A mere thought... that he can still be saved."