The Sorcerer

"Sorcery isn't magic, it's art. Earth's art, and though these flowers may not grant me it, they'll provide my existence." His thoughts distract him from the taste lying in his mouth, the gentle breeze brings the Azure flowers alive in motion, clear with nature's singing.

Grating crunches erupt muffled and soft from his mouth, crouched next to the waters, within a patch of flowerless dead reeds, another handful, ripped from the field, swallowing as he stuffs the new collection in his mouth.

Devouring orchids, a faint white trail in contrast to the waters, seeing peripherally by his left eye. "Hm?" Facing left, the wet figure of a small, well-crafted paper boat floats past, resisting the superior waves buffeting it."Has word spread about the discovery of the orchids? This has most likely become a public spot." He ponders, eating his fill, his liminal state devoid of pain, he pushes beyond what his stomach can handle.

"No, if it had, there would be crowds visible to observe. But they must have spread their discovery. In any case, someone knows, every second here is a danger to be seen." The mythic fields of Azure Orchids, still known to be real, but are titled so for their rarity. Vastly dangerous, very few within this world know of its existence, fewer having ever laid eyes on one, none having taken steps within one, until him.

Night arrives, the crescent moon's ascent providing a light indigo glow across the field, though one long row lies dark, dead of flowers, where he, barely conscious, continues to consume, wheezing from exhaustion.

His face hangs tired, thinking only of "Consume, consume, consume!! Survive, escape, adapt, endure," notably high off the orchids, his vision like a collection of piling moving images of what he sees, all crowded together, blurry, and shining brightly.

One morning, the rising sun, to its would-be shock, is greeted by the azure orchid field as usual. Except, large parts of a certain area of it are dead and diminished in color, like brown-greenish stains on the indigo carpet.

Day and night, the field's new grazing animal of liminality finds himself in a similar state to when he was devouring the woman, weak and bordering complete brain death, mindless-like, slugged but still moving.

The fourth week's grazing morning meets again with the Orchid field, the morning sun illuminating the indigo carpet, finding it devoid of its grazer. Floating on, fighting for its survival against the calm waves that flow alongside the lakeshore's indigo carpet, is the enduring paper boat, traveling along the entirety of the Indigo carpet wrapped around the lake, a journey of near a week, completing the rotation when it arrives back near the mouth of the river, from which it entered the lake initially.

But before it can reach the river's mouth, it floats against the side of a human head. It sticks above the water's surface, not parted from its body, which lies underneath. The hole stretching through his forehead, home of a somewhat large driving bell spider, housed within the small connection of water flowing through the head's hole.

Entangled within water reeds, stuck against the leaning log of a dead tree, which diagonally stretches from the shore into the depths, attests to the depths of even the shore area of the lake, unlike that of a sea beach with an underwater slope.

The Lake only has the shore, and then the depths with an immediate drop-off. Feeling the paper lightly grazing his cheek, breaking from the continuity of the flowing waves, awakening with a shocking

Gasp!
He takes multiple deep breaths, climbing backward up the lakeshore hurriedly, dripping wet, entangled in reeds, and covered in mud from the neck down in clumps. He stumbles lightly across the grassy shore, realizing the lush green foliage and trees, devoid of any azure coloring. He coughs out water as the spider escapes from his forehead unnoticed.

Momentarily leaning against a tree with his arm, he continues to breathe normally, the spider curling and twisting and writhing in agony silently as it falls off him, dead. Observing the lush brush of beautiful greenery surrounding him, underneath the shade of the green canopy, he sits himself, leaning back against the tree, sighing.

His beautiful, messy hair, enchanted by the water, drips and streams in drops down his face, his bare feet stretched out as the breeze enhances his wet coldness. He soothingly smiles, calm and content. "So it works, I've escaped your Azure garden, your very essence made my entirety at a second life with the escape possible."

 

"Thank you."

"See that, woman? I endured," he spoke nonsensically, arrogantly declaring himself. "Though, I guess you're only just your memories," he scoffed, sneering in his heart. Underneath the green leaf tree, sunlight bracketing through the canopy in thin straight strokes around him, appearing with the movement of its position in the sky, for the first time since before his death, in a real slumber.

Peacefully sleeping since his morning ascension from the waters, within the comfortable coolness of the shade of the tree. Thud, he awakens in a slight surprise, his eyes instantly focused on the dead crow on his lap. Illuminated by the orange and crimson from the setting sun, a leaf descends past his eyes, then another, and shortly thereafter another, the final.

The once green ground, full of life, lies barren beneath him, and the sea of dead orange and brown-greenish leaves, birds, and small rodents. Orange rays shine bright and clear, the trees around him naked of the greenery and life they once had, now just dead sticks and branches, unable to provide shade.

He slowly stands from the dead, his eyes scanning across the deceased nature with an expression of indifference, opposed to the thoughts racing through his mind, pondering, which shortly after, delivers the sneeringly soothing smile of his mind's produced fruit. His eyes widen slightly with his smirk in full realization. "This couldn't possibly be." 

"I've awakened another composition of Earth's Essence?" He ponders. "No, this isn't just Essence, can it be? Sorcery!"

"I've learned in my previous life of variations of the Oleander awakening the Earth's Essence within humans. But the Noxious orchids." In this world, humans have discovered the awakening of greater capabilities through the refinement of Oleanders.

This he knew was the birth of all Sorcery, withdrawn from nature, Earth's gift of life, the White Oleander. Harvesting of the rare flower, engaged with humanity, leading to incorporating the Earth's Essence within one's body.

The Essence is mainly the collection of building blocks, from which true Sorcery can be built, knowing this, and having experienced it within the childhood of his previous life, to his surprise, having awakened it even within this limbo state, from the poison orchid of all things!
"Not only did the orchids allow for my rebirth, but they've awakened the primordial soup for the construction of new sorcery, hehe." With his familiar mind, he began to plan.

"My subconscious seems to have lost its years, all of my blueprints engraved, branded into it, gone. I won't be able to rely on it for my Sorcery like before, Hmm." Wandering, he thought.
"Everything I had collected, my research, it's still there. In that cursed dump, I won't be able to return there, never again." His heart revolts at the thought of returning to the home that abandoned him.

"For now, I have to find shelter." Knowing of the vermin, the danger, for even hunting parties, the wilderness had to offer, the monstrosities of the forest darkness, the sun only descending further with each step he takes with his bare feet, leaving patches of lifeless gray ground.
Night falls, and what worried him most, the blinding darkness, robs him of any sense of direction. Splat! Collapsing into the mud, having tripped over thick roots, he contentedly rises once more, only to meet a distant shimmer of light in his gaze.