As the seeds sprouted and wound through her fingers, the Forestborn’s hands danced with the seedlings, caressing and encouraging them higher and higher out of the earth. They came up into two intertwined flowers with black petals and golden edges to them, with a scent that Candra could actually smell from where she stood, it was so powerful.
She let the flowers bloom brightly for a moment, then, when they were at the peak of their potential, pulled both up gently out of the ground, their roots coming out more or less intact under her gentle touch. “For you both.” She looked at Orlando with a giggle. “Yes, males can get flowers too.”
Candra glowed a little bit brighter with her excitement, and she took the flower and tucked it behind her ear after she admired it. “It smells wonderful and they are so beautiful! Thank you so much.”
“Now you are properly adorned.” The Forestborn said with a bright smile, looking up at Orlando as he took a deep breath of the flower’s scent.
“It’s…I’ve never smelled anything quite like this before.” Orlando said with a hazy look at it, and then took another long sniff of it to try and place the scent.
“It is a rare plant, and doesn’t survive long except under very specific conditions.” She was still smiling broadly, as Orlando reached out and put his hand on the tree next to him to hold himself up as he took another deep breath of the flower’s scent.
Candra blinked a few times and yawned once as she shook her head a little bit. She started to feel a little out of it, sedated and sleepy. They had been walking and touring for awhile, and they had been very actively busy earlier between chasing and catching each other. “What conditions?”
“It only lives in remote areas. Because if it is planted near any other wildlife whatsoever, it always dies.” She sounded supremely sad as she said it, but there was something else behind her deep green eyes as she looked back and forth between Candra and Orlando, whose eyes were starting to close on their own as he lost his grip on the tree and started to fall, looking like he was drunk or drugged.
Candra felt confused as she noticed Orlando fall, so she rushed over to him and tried to shake him awake. “Orlando? Wake up. We have to go home.”
“You are going to go home, Candra.” The Forestborn said with the same sadness in her voice, and a flash in her eyes that Candra recognized too late. The flower behind Candra’s ear suddenly grew roots that wrapped around her neck. The blossom shoved itself into her face, and its scent was the only breath she could take. “Your old masters have missed you.”
When Candra gasped to scream, all she could do was inhale the scent of the flower, and it overwhelmed her quickly. She still tried to scream out for help, but it was muffled as she fell to the ground, unconscious.
* * * * *
The Forestborn female turned around and hurried to her companions in the ferns and kicked some of them awake, the plants slapping the others on her behalf to get them up. “Guys? Guys!” She whispered harshly. “Change of plans. Get moving. I’ve got ‘em.” She said triumphantly, as she turned back to Orlando and Candra’s fallen bodies, making sure the grass grew up over them both to cover Candra’s glow and the occasional spark from Orlando.
Several of them untangled to get up, but they still weren’t exactly happy about being woken. “That was easy.” Another female said as she wrapped herself in ivy. “Let’s take ‘em, then.”
A few of them grabbed the Shadowborn and began pulling out backpacks filled with electrical cables and equipment. They bound his hands and feet with the cables over the gold and silver he already wore, forcing the metal to cut into his arms. The first Forestborn was trying to take Candra, but the first few times she tried to touch the Lightborn, she pulled away with a wince. “I can’t even move this bitch. She’s been out in the sun so much she’s nearly got a tan.” The power ricocheting through her system was more than she could hold, and she leaned against a tree just to have an outlet for it. Above their heads, they watched the tree leap skyward with new growth as she got rid of some of the power she held.
Two of the males came over to her and looked down at the Lightborn as they bent down to try and pick her up. “All three of us try together.” One said, hoping that they could distribute the energy a little more evenly between three of them.
She shook her hands out and bent back down to try again, but they all dropped her at the same time, unable to handle her for long, and their small cries of pain were attracting attention from others, who luckily seemed to be amused by their antics, thinking they were trying to help a drunk comrade. “We need to move, and fast would be better than slow.”
The men growled at the fact that they couldn’t get the Lightborn up, so they just used the excess energy to cover her up completely and keep her trapped to the ground. “Come on then.” Another said quickly in a harsh whisper. “They’re useless without the other anyway. Let’s take this one and go.”
The first female was conflicted about it but she wasn’t the one in charge, so she just helped the others get the Shadowborn into a bundle and up onto her friends’ shoulders. Afterward she went back to Candra’s body and helped lock her down further, tangled in vines so thick she wouldn’t even be able to scream when she finally came to. Then she took the flower from where
