The trail of stagecoaches was on edge. The adverse weather had slowed them down greatly, and with the wind picking up with each second, some of the stage drivers were demanding that the convoy be brought to a halt so they could hammer down and take shelter.

Whilst many of the passengers were against the idea of being caught in the storm, they were more opposed to the prospect of staying in the jungle for an extended period of time without moving… the safety of the city walls were only a few miles away by the reckoning of the shotgun messengers, but the storm was approaching from that direction, and proceeding would mean they would be caught up in it more rapidly.

However, the decision was made for them when Elroy pointed out that the city would have closed their gates in preparation for the storm, and even if they managed to make it to the city walls they would be unable to get inside.

Elroy wore a white, wide brimmed hat, and his moustache seemed to be perpetually perfect – never a hair out of place. Although he liked to give off the image of a world wise adventurer and all round scoundrel, Elroy could never escape the fact that he was at heart a hopeless romantic. Ever the gentleman, Elroy’s biggest appeal to most people was also his greatest weakness – his good heart.

Although Elroy had started his life in the desert, he quickly became adverse to the idea of staying in one place his whole life, so he took it upon himself to become a volunteer shotgun messenger for the stagecoaches of Felarya.

And now, on their way to Zirik Kazul, the whole party was on edge, including Elroy.

They’d never been caught this swiftly by a storm before, and they desperately needed to find shelter… even at the risk of losing the stagecoaches.

Leon, his hat held tightly on his bald head, hurried over to Elroy, his shirt bathed in sweat.

“We have to get this convoy fixed down, but even that won’t be any good to use if we can’t find any shelter… I’m getting the drivers and the able bodied passengers to help out with securing the coaches, but we need you and the other shotgun messengers to go find somewhere out of the wind for us to hunker down!”

Elroy nodded.

“Sure thing friend.” He spoke somewhat slowly, his voice calm as he vaulted down from the lead coach and unslung the coach gun from the side of the vehicle, looking down at the three other shotgun messengers who were also readying their weapons.

The four of them fanned out through the trees, peering through the dense, dark jungle for anywhere that could possibly be classified as safe…

And then he found it. Elroy had come across some kind of vast, rocky wall. Its grey heights disappeared into the treetops as though it were some kind of monolithic guard tower…

Walking around the outside slowly, his gun clutched tightly in his gloved hands, Elroy could feel the grass beneath his boots becoming thicker. A stones throw away, he could see a doorway that lead deeper inside the monolith, further cementing the idea in his head that it was some kind of enclosure.

He approached it cautiously, his coach gun held pointing forwards, the grass now up to his knees. Reaching the opening, Elroy felt something hard under his boot, and he crouched down, parting the grass with one gloved hand. A broken door lay in the growth, so ancient and moulded that one touch from his finger caused a part of it to break away.

Wasting no more time, Elroy moved quickly down the tunnel. He could see light only a stones throw away, and he approached it with apprehension, sweat dripping down his brow.

Stepping into the light, Elroy was surprised to find himself in a place the likes of which he had never seen…

Flowers.

A vast field of flowers…

Elroy was so distracted that he momentarily forgot he was on an urgent mission, and he lowered his gun slack in one arm. He tilted his head back and peered upward…

The entire stone monolith was clearly a large ruined tower. He could see crumbling pieces of rotten stairs hanging from the walls, and far above him a broken edge as though the entire top of the tower had been torn off.

And then, when he returned his gaze to the ground, his wonderment increased. The flowers, whose glittering colours he had attributed to the light from the sun, were in fact producing their own light. Not only that, but each individual flower seemed to be perpetually morphing, their colour changing…

Elroy reached up and gracefully removed his hat with one hand, placing it on a piece of masonry beside him, along with his coach gun. Crouching down and removing one of his gloves with his other hand, the shotgun messenger reached down and stroked his bare hand across the flower petals. It almost seemed as though the flower quivered under his touch with more than the sheer force of the contact, as though it were reacting to something deeper.

And suddenly, Elroy stood up, remembering he had a load of people he had to collect, and bare minutes before the full fury of the storm hit them… and this tower appeared to be perfectly safe.

Leaving his gun and hat behind, Elroy took one last look around before he bolted outside and back towards the stagecoaches…

Inside the clearing, the flower Elroy had touched slowly began to extend from the ground, its roots unreeling to allow it free movement… the tiny plant wrapped around the cold iron barrel of the coach gun, its petals turning brown as it did so, and tugged it off the block of stone… the soil beneath the flowers seemed to ripple as the gun hit it. Slowly, the weapon was pulled from view, until it had vanished into the dirt…

Elroy returned shortly after, shepherding the relieved passengers of the stagecoach convoy into the clearing.

They appeared in general to share is initial awe of the place. Some were less interested than others, simply being relieved to have somewhere out of the storm to seat themselves, whilst others were immediately enthralled by the place.

“Well Elroy,” Leon commented in his trademark drawl, “You’ve done a fine job finding this one… I’m surprised nobody ever marked this ol’ place on any maps, it seems to be a little slice o’ paradise to me.” The chubby coach driver wiped sweat off his brow and seated himself on the masonry block supporting Elroy’s hat. The shotgun messenger scooped up the hat and placed it on his head.

“It certainly seems peaceful enough.” Elroy responded quietly, wandering off to the far end of the enclosure. Leon was right, the clearing was positively dreamy… and dreamy was the important word in that sentence.

The shotgun messenger was exhausted from the full days ride, and he badly needed some rest. He turned with his back to the stone wall, and lowered himself into the flowery grass. Being as careful as possible, Elroy stretched out on the soft ground, smelling the intoxicating fragrance of the multicoloured flowers…

“Beautiful.” He muttered as he took off his hat once more and tilted it down over his face, leaning back to nap…

“Thank you…” The field whispered back… but before Elroy had a chance to stand, a small burst of pollen had reached his nose... and it was lights out.

When Elroy awoke half an hour later, he struggled to rise, but he found he couldn’t move… he struggled for a moment as he blinked sleepily, but his arms and legs were constricted by something. A quick glance down revealed his entire body was being constricted… by roots.

Flowers seemed to cover every inch of his body, save for his head. His hat was upturned a few feet away from him, and he looked around frantically for any sign of other life.

“They’re long gone.” A sultry female voice filled the clearing, vibrating from the very ground beneath Elroy.

“You have good taste in companions…”

“I didn’t know any of them well enough to call them companions.” Elroy said nervously, trying to locate where the voice was coming from.

“Oh, sorry, my speaking skills aren’t what they once were – people don’t visit me much… what I meant was,”

As Elroy heard this, the ground in front of him seemed to bend and bulge, growing and shaping before his eyes… At first he wondered if he was hallucinating as the flowery soil began to move and take shape, but the pain he felt when he struggled against his bonds told him otherwise…

“Your companions tasted good.”

On these words, the moulding soil took shape… and began to fall away in places, revealing skin… flesh… eyes….. teeth.

Elroy found himself staring into the enormous face of a young woman… or at least, that’s what it appeared to be… Streams of flowers rolled down as hair from her scalp, and her skin… her skin shifted colours just as the flowers did. It was far slower and less sporadic, but it was there… along with the glow…

Despite the grip of fear on his heart, Elroy found himself enchanted by that glowing face… by the glowing field of flowery hair, which seemed to be staring at him serenely.

“Am I to assume you ate them?” Elroy asked, trying to free himself from the binding strands of flowery hair that had him pinned.

“Clever one aren’t you?” She responded sarcastically, her warm voice rich with resonance.

“I shan’t bother asking why you ate them… there’s typically only one reason any predator eats, and it doesn’t require much explanation… but… you haven’t eaten me yet, which I assume there’s a reason for. So assuming you don’t intend to consume me immediately, might I be permitted a few questions?”

The woman raised her eyebrow and said in a very different tone of voice,

“Now that genuinely is clever… a gentleman and also clever? I knew there was a reason I didn’t gobble you up straight away…” She grinned, baring two perfect rows of glistening white teeth.

“You may ask your questions... but only because I like you.”

“Alright…”

The truth was, Elroy hadn’t the first idea what to ask. He wanted to buy himself time, to try and find some way to talk himself out of this situation. But the cards were heavily stacked against him, and he wasn’t sure where to begin… so trusting to fate, he began with the basics.

“What are you?”

“I am a dryad, of sorts… there are few enough of us left now, but I am a bloom dryad.”

“I was under the impression Dryads were… well, trees.” Elroy flexed his fingers and tried to reach for his pockets… but the roots were too tight to allow the movement.

“You need to get out more.” The Dryad flashed her teeth and continued, “No, not all of us are. There are cactus dryads and beanstalk dryads… though I can’t really blame you for not hearing of bloom dryads. For the most part, our bodies are too weak to survive out of the ground on their own, so we need to remain in one place for a very long time before we have enough roots in the ground to allow us to move…” A huge hand of flowery soil erupted from the ground beneath Elroy, and the long fingers wrapped around him… not so tightly that it hurt, but tight enough to tell him that even without the roots he was still stuck.

“You see the way these flowers pulse with colour?” A mystical quality had entered her voice now, and Elroy was gazing at the faintly glowing flowers that wrapped about the Dryad’s fingers.

“Yeah… they’re something else. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen anything quite so fair and radiant in all my life.” Elroy spoke the words as though in a trance… as though for a moment he had forgotten he was in the presence of a voracious predator that had just finished gulping down dozens of people.

Maybe it was the constant morphing of the colours, or maybe it was something about what Elroy had said to her… but the Dryad’s cheeks flushed a deep shade of crimson, and she closed her eyes for a moment.

The truth was, the Dryad had her own little secret reservations about the conversation…

What she had said about hers being a dying breed wasn’t entirely true; she had only said it because she couldn’t leave her enclosure… without a link to the outside world, she had lost contact with others in Felarya, and the long periods of isolation left her with a deep paranoia about the state of affairs regarding her kind… but that wasn’t all.

“You really are a gentleman aren’t you… Elroy.” She said slyly, her eyes opening narrowly as she gazed at him with her glittering eyes.

“How did…” Elroy began, but the Dryad interrupted him,

“I overheard your conversation earlier… don’t worry though, I only wanted to know the name of the man whose hands are so gentle.”

A strange sensation began to creep over Elroy…

“This Dryad has a thing for me… is that even possible? The thought flashed through his head and he peered at the Dryad, his mind racing…

Just as hers was…

“And just to be fair, I want to tell you my name,” The Dryad said quickly, as though afraid Elroy would reprimand her, “It’s Sasha.”

When Sasha had explained that it had been a while since her last visitor, she hadn’t been joking. Unfortunately for her, her immense hunger had a tendency to override her desire to socialise… even if it was with her food. Even if she had just had a decent feed, which could last her several months of isolation, she could only bring herself to hold very short conversations with the people who wandered into her enclosure before her will power would snap… then they’d get gulped down just like the others…

“Pleasure to meet you Sasha.” Elroy said in as suave a voice as he could muster.

“I’m sorry about the roots…” Sasha said, her face adopting a pouting expression and looking apologetic. “I just didn’t want you to run before I got a chance to talk to you, like everyone else does…”

A pulse of pity ran through Elroy, and an unfamiliar sensation began to claw at his nerves…

Unbeknownst to him, Sasha was quite a bit more devious than she was letting on. He had been right when he had thought she liked him… what he didn’t realize was the lengths she was going to in order to ensure that the feeling was reciprocated – willing or not.

Though she forged her flesh from the soil to give her substance, her roots contained her blood… blood which slowly ingested the nutrients of the soil and transported the essence of her prey. It ran from the very base of her roots hundreds of feet down, all the way to the tips of the flowers that sprouted on her. And from these flowers she secreted her pollen… her mind affecting pollen.

Of course, she didn’t consider it cheating… all’s fair in love and war after all. Elroy might not have agreed if he had the presence of mind to know he was being manipulated, but his mind was already becoming sluggish…

“Why would I run?” As he posed the question, he genuinely began to ask himself for the answer… the pollen had so deeply taken hold of his brain that he was struggling to remember why he would run.

“Maybe because you don’t think I’m beautiful enough to be around…” Sasha suggested, her voice feigning sorrow and her head turning away to look at the ground beside her. Elroy felt his heart pounding in his chest as all thought of escape departed his mind.

“No, that’s not true at all m’lady… you’re a vision… a glorious sight.”

Sasha focused her full gaze back at Elroy, and a warm smile crossed her face.

The roots around Elroy began to loosen, but the long fingers held him in place… he was moved slowly towards Sasha, her lips parting ever so slightly and a hint of tongue was seen beneath them.

“But wouldn’t it be selfish of you to keep such a spectacle to yourself?” She said, her sultry voice filling Elroy’s senses and causing his lips to part as well.

“Of course…” He murmured, completely lost in her perfumed thrall.

“Then do not waste a moment more my darling Elroy…” She smiled and tilted her head back, her tongue flicking out and moistening her lips, “Go to Zirik Kazul… bring more… fetch more little people, so they can share your joy…”

And with those words, she closed her eyes and dropped Elroy into her gaping mouth.

The ground began to tremor once more, and Sasha sank back into the ground, leaving behind no trace but a white hat in a field of flowers…




Some time later, Elroy awoke outside the monolithic tower, his clothes filthy and his hair tussled, his moustache askew. He coughed and spat dirt from his mouth as he struggled to rise…

Pollen filling his veins and instructions filling his mind, he stumbled away towards the hidden city, knowing only that more must come… more must come and see the field of flowers and the maiden that dwelt there…

And it would be an experience that would be with them for the rest of their lives…