Chapter 3
Flowers
The sun is bright. There are whispers telling him to run. Instead, Vos lays on the ground with his head buried between his knees screaming at the top of his lungs as his eyes sizzle. He cries for his mother, father, even Minerva, but their minds clouded, too dull to hear him. The voices demanding he go hide are telling them what ears of corn to pick and which row of greens needs watering.
The effects of the elixir did nothing for him. It was as if he drank from the stream near their village. Sufficient, but only enough to keep his hammering heart from exploding.
As the searing pain dulls, Vos presses his hands close to his chest and murmurs for the gods to protect him. A gentle wind blows and cools between his thighs, soaked with urine.
“Take cover.”
“Run.”
“It draws closer.”
“See. The watcher. It comes.”
Vos slowly lifts his head.
The village.
Their homes are made of wood chopped down from the forest mountains and carried here by the gods on large pallets the villagers use to stack harvested crops for trading. He can see a group of people miniature out in the distance picking strawberries and tossing them in woven baskets strapped to their backs.
To the far right, past the fields of sunflowers with twitching human mouths whispering in unison a warning, are four towering stone-built statues in the middle of the lake, each representing a god. The water is only waist deep. When morale is low, villagers listen to the echoes besides their own conscious, keep their blindfolds on and whisper back to the stone gods their request, desires, and worries. Nine people are in the water, bowing low that the tips of their noses touch the water’s surface
Vos digs his fingers into the loose dirt underneath him with a clenched jaw.
They’re nothing but stones?
He stands up with crusted knees covered in dirt and walks out into the field of flowers. The blindfold is still in his sweaty hands. A line over three dots to represent a closed eye but for what? To conceal what looked like a normal commune?
Fifteen years ago, Vos, his family and thousands of others boarded on weather-beaten ships and traversed through ocean storms to Celestara. Lead by an old man who promised them safety, community, and liberation as long as they bowed down and remained blindfolded and that’s what they did for years.
Vos scans the area for the old man, sprinting between cabins, tearing down the vines that covers the doors and angrily shouts at anyone who’d listen. No one looks his way and continues to pick, water, and praise. They worship formless deities made of stone.
“Go inside.”
“Turn back now.”
That drink. Vos snatched a flower by the base of its stem and tears it from the ground, hearing a high-pitched shriek of agony seep from its mouth. We’re all being drugged. We never escaped slavery. We were relocated. He throws the plant to the ground and slams his bare heel in the mouth.
A shadow larger than his own emerges from behind and a long hiss so great it vibrates the ground sends a shock wave of goosebumps all over his flesh.
Trembling, Vos turns around and opens his mouth to gasp, but a thick tendril wraps around his body in an instant and shoves it end deep down his throat, slithering around his insides as if to taste which organ to consume first.
He can’t scream. His arms are bound to his side, and he can’t look away from a massive, single green eye resting in the heart of a Sunflower.