Tsubaki — the tale of a scentless flower in love
2/2
The first part can be found by clicking the link below. Enjoy!
Feeling returned to me very slowly, beginning from my roots. I felt weak and wilted, barely having enough strength to ingest the nutrients that surrounded me. The soil itself felt terribly foreign, its nutrients strangely coarse to my root. A small part of my already dulled mind rebelled at the idea of these faux nutrients and a smaller chunk battled with the puzzles of where I was. The urge to survive subdued these bits of thought and I devoured all that the soil had to offer. It was a sensational experience. The pale milky taste of Nitrogen was significantly more potent than I was accustomed to. Its cool flow filled me up entirely, enriching my protein and augmenting my chlorophyll reserves. The fiery eruption of Phosphorus accompanied the Nitrogen in almost equal amounts, bringing with it a euphoria of unprecedented levels. It swirled like a hurricane through my roots as never before. Other minerals within the soil were also enhanced, a combination of which I had never had. So ecstatic was this experience that although I had gained enough feeling to observe my environment above soil, my attention was undividedly upon the lavishness below soil.
My concentration was finally broken, and a part of my consciousness became focused acutely above soil. The source of this shift in focus was not the eerie absence of wind, strange consistency in temperature of the environment or even the unusual angle with which the sunlight hit my leaves. Surprisingly, none of these uncommon phenomena succeeded in shifting my focus from the ravenous consumption of this delightfully enhanced new soil. Surprisingly, what succeeded was a slight warm feeling on one of my flower petals that seemed to create a spark within me. This feeling was concentrated but moving up and about my petals, leaving sparks of warmth in its wake. I found myself consciously drawn to this feeling and because of that, finally became aware of my surroundings. Its surrealness managed to pull me slightly out of the reverie caused by the sparkly feeling in my petals. As opposed to the beautiful collision of vast amounts of sky and grass, sun and soil, dirt and insects; I was confronted with a confined space comprising of foreign objects, walls, and wrongly coloured lighting. Again, I felt the shifting warmth on my petals, arousing a bit of longing within me. This time, I located the source. It was the little girl, now clad in orange, imitating the sun with the brightness of her smile. She caressed me gently, each soft stroke embodying her thoughts of my frailty and preciousness. As she caressed me, she poured water into the soil and all around me, bathing me in happiness. This continued for a while, pleasing me far more than the nutrients in the soil. She then plucked out one of my flowers, brought it close to her face and I recoiled faintly, instinctively expecting her disapproval. Alas, she smiled even brighter, dazzling me. Then she turned around and left. In that moment, I yearned for her. I yearned for her smile and I yearned for her touch. I yearned for her brightness as though it would provide me with the light energy to photosynthesize. She returned soon enough, in my timeline anyway. But I was oblivious to timelines then.
This process repeated itself numerous times and each time she left, my yearning for her increased. I had begun to grow towards the direction of the door she always came through in an attempt to reduce the time it took for her to stride from the door to me. I had begun to make my flowers bloom more rapidly and bigger in an attempt to match her beauty. I had begun to do many things, consciously living my life around her smiles. I had also begun to notice changes about her. Before the time it took me to grow a mere 20 inches, she had doubled in size. She wore less colours and moved more slowly. But her smile was still the same, feeding me with life. Before the time it took me to bloom a new set of flowers, she had added lines to her face and curves to her body. She changed just as the wind did; abruptly and without reason. Sometimes, my most dreaded times, her expression changed also. Sometimes, she came to me with moisture in her eyes and blue in her face. She would look at me during these times, and I would rediscover the true meaning of powerlessness. But most importantly, the frequency with which she came to see me reduced. With each added line in her face, she spent more time away from me. With each colour change in her hair; or absence of colour as her hair seemed to lose colour and turn grey, I stayed longer without her. With each added object to her being, like the transparent vines in her face or the thing she sat in that helped her move, the more I dreaded her leaving because her return would take ages. Then one time, she left and never returned. And I began to wilt. And wilt. And now, I wilt…
