Chapter 3
The Four Flowers
The Four Flowers
Fannie shuttered as the strangely strong grip of hundreds of tiny bat feet attached themselves to her clothing, hair and shoelaces. Lifted off the ground she feared her clothing would rip or her hair would be pulled out. Yet luckily, she was so wispy in stature that this was never a well founded worry.
Still it was not a secure feeling flying through the air suspended by ones clothing shoes and hair being lifted by bats. Luckily, the trip was a short one. The bats were swift and in a minute or two they had arrived at their destination.
They descended down a cavern, hidden in the tall grasses of one side of the meadow. The opening to the cavern was no more than three feet wide but it quickly opened up to ten feet and then twenty or thirty feet wide. At the bottom of this deep cavern was a great opening filled with stalactite jewels of undiscovered colors. Fannie was taken with the wonder and beauty of these jewels at once. The jewels seemed to be glowing in a strange iridescent way. In the center of the opening, seated on a chair made entirely of the brightest glowing jewels, sat a lovely ashy velvet skinned, adult human formed moth-woman. She had the figure of a human woman except that her skin was soft and in places even furry and she had enormous, incandescent infinitely colored wings lighting up the room and sending sparkles of undiscovered colors in every direction. It seemed all the light in the room was coming from her wings. It was giving life to all the colors in the room and making the jewels sparkle.
Fannie was set down at the feet of the Moth-woman.
“I am Queen Illuminia Mathia,” she stated. “I see you have sentenced four of my lovely younglings to die by plucking them from their mother vine.” The Queen pointed to the flowers in Fannie’s hand.
Fannie was so taken by the Queen’s beauty that she could only stammer a half excuse of a reply. The Queen was not waiting for an answer anyway and quickly cut her off.
“Your sentence in return is to help these younglings make the most of their remaining life. You must take them to new places they have never before seen. You must help them make a difference in the life of another. And lastly you must return them to their mother vine before their last petals fall to the earth,” said the Queen. “You will begin at once. Vladin and his comrades will return you to your world and the cave will only open for you to return when your mission has been accomplished. I must warn you however, as an incentive for you to complete your mission, your world will not look the same as you remember it looking. It will never return to the world you remember unless you complete your mission and return the four younglings before the last petal falls. Now, off with you.”
Fannie was again hoisted in the air and swept back to the meadow where again she saw reopened the cave entrance. Vladin and his bats swept her right through the opening and out in the world she knew so well and those old familiar woods.
Only this time, Fannie was shocked by what she saw.
To be continued…
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