-Flowers-

Sage stirred the cup steadily, looking back over to his notebook to read the further instructions he had copied out. "One cup rose petals...now how am I supposed to get exactly one cup of rose petals?" Sage headed outside, yet again, for more potion ingredients. The roses blooming in his front yard had not yet fully opened, but they had opened enough for him to harvest their petals. He had grabbed the measuring cup he has stolen from his kitchen and started picking rose petals. He loved all his potions homework, because it was much easier for him to learn than spells. He always wondered how these weird mixes of items would make something magic, but there was always a 'special ingredient'. His teacher would always send an item that was 'blessed' by a certain type of fairy magic, like a rock, peice of bark or this time water, blessed by water fairy magic. He came back into the kitchen and added the rose petals to his potion, and looked to his notebook for the final ingredient. "3 Lilies. I don't know if I have any of those, would they even have bloomed yet?" He already had his shoes on, might as well go for a little walk.

...

He walked down the street of his neighborhood, a couple of his neighbors did have lilies growing on their lawns but he couldn't steal from them, he had to find something growing naturally. He reached the end of his neighborhood street and took a passage out to a public street. After a while, all he was finding was dandelions, and even those weren't open the whole way, he was starting to get nervous he wouldn't find any open lilies, but then he saw one, on the grass beside the sidewalk, just before his neighbor's fence, 2 lilies, fully opened, and one fully closed. So close. Sage picked up the 2 lilies he could and stared at the last one, if only it was open, he didn't want another late assignment. As much as normal human school was hard for him, balancing it with all this other stuff was hard, nothing would have prepared him to go to 2 different schools at once. He just wanted to turn in one assignment on time. Just one. He sat beside the sad unopened lily, his hair gently blowing in the wind. "Why don't you just open?" He hovered his hand over the flower and thought real hard about it opening, as if that would change anything. He closed his eyes and sighed, looking back to the road. "I'll never be good at any kind of school." He said solemnly watching cars drive by. Well, maybe he could try to find something else, a good substitute, although he had no clue what flower would substitute lilies. But when he stood, he looked back to the white lily, with beautiful petals, an open flower. He stared at it wondering how this could be, it was closed just a minute ago...unless he did that? He picked it regardless, determined to have one assignment submitted on time, and pranced away happily. But he stopped when he saw one of the unopened dandelions...an opportunity. He sat beside it and hovered his hand over the dandelion too "Open...please?" And as he held his hand there, he saw a bit of yellow poke through the dark green, and then the petals all opened up, and the dandelion was there in front of him.

He finished his potions assignment, and had a new decoration for his room, a dandelion, in a small vase atop his shelf.