A Week of Blossoms (Part 1)

Beren clutched the scar on his right arm in his left idly as he walked through the hallway of Melvin Academy. It’d burned and itched that entire day prior along its whole length: from midway up his forearm to just beyond his wrist, about an inch across.

That was never a good omen.

His eyes were trained on the ground beneath his feet, the peaceful consistency of the school’s tile floor broken only periodically by another plodding step forth. Though weighed down by his heavy backpack stuffed to the brim with books on all manner of flora, fauna, myths, and monsters, he kept a good pace. He glanced upward here and there as he went—for fear that he might run into someone—but staying so long after the school day had ended meant that he found himself alone.

Mostly alone, anyway.

“Beren!” came the voice of Toma, his older brother, from behind him. “You aren’t trying to get away from us, are you?” he called, running up to Beren and slapping him on the shoulder.

“Ow!” Beren cried in surprise. “No, I… I thought you all left…!”

“Well, not when we have such important stuff to do,” came another voice. A girl, Syl: a friend of Toma, and Beren’s favorite among his group. She strode up to Toma, giving him a slap on his shoulder, too. “And we weren’t gonna leave you behind. Ready?” she asked, turning her gaze to Beren now.

Beren nodded in response and smiled at the two of them.

The sound of a loud laugh pulled his eyes down the hallway to his left. Two more figures emerged from the brick corner: Rufus and Grace, two more of Toma’s friends from his class. Rufus clutched his book bag in one hand by the loose fabric about the topmost zipper, like a dog carrying her newborn pup by the scruff. He sauntered down the hallway, swinging his arms out wide and straight, his large frame teetering with every step. But as he stepped past a water fountain, some runoff set him slipping. His legs spilled out from underneath him, breaking the illusion of coolness he curated so carefully. He cursed and tried to right himself, but just slipped further and nearly fell flat on his face.

Beren couldn’t help but smirk.

“Oh, yeah, shrimpy, what’s so funny?” Rufus asked, smirking himself after finding his footing. His cheeks flushed red with something between anger and embarrassment. One of his abnormally large hands reached out, snatching Beren into a clumsy headlock and ruffling his hair. “Man, you must be a whole ten pounds with this backpack attached to you!”

”N-Nothing!” Beren wriggled free, brushing his hair aside.

“Oh, leave him alone, Rufus,” crooned Grace from beside him, her regal aura washing over them all as she spoke. She was altogether more composed and cool than any of the rest of them—owed primarily to her wealthy upbringing. Not a strand of her long, blonde hair was out of place, falling to just below her waist before curling back. Her eyes shone with youthful elegance, and her features were sharp on her face.

“Oh!” Beren’s eyebrows shot up at her kindness, unexpected from her, then bowed his head. “Thank—”

“He’s so… little.”

Beren’s mouth hung open before his next word. He blinked, then his eyes moved to meet Grace’s gaze. “I’m 13 now…” he muttered indistinctly.

“Nerd,” Rufus muttered.

“Shut up, Rufus,” Toma snapped. “Dumbass.”

“They’re jerks, guys.” Syl muttered to the two of them, glaring at the both of them. “Just ignore them.”

Grace looked down at Beren with the vaguest sneer, her nose turned up a bit—much the same way a conceited lord might when viewing their subjects.

Finally, with a curt nod, she turned to Toma. Her demeanor shifted completely as she did: she became warm, and the sneer fell from her face as quickly as it’d appeared.

“Hello, Toma.” She bowed her head to him.

“Hey, Grace,” he replied with a thin smile. “You guys done horsing around? C’mon, let’s go.” He smacked Beren’s shoulder again and waved them all on, then turned to walk out of the building. Beren hurried to keep up, jogging a bit to get to stride with his older brother.

“You got football practice later, Rufus?” Toma asked, glancing back at him over his shoulder.

He grinned toothily. “Nope! Coach is still on vacation!”

Toma nodded. “Nice.”

Their idle conversation carried on through the halls, but Beren’s mind was preoccupied. He had been anticipating this day too much to get caught in what they were saying.

The late spring breeze carried a pleasant scent on it this time each year, wafting from the nearby flowers’ full bloom. They lay just across the street from the school parking lot: a clearing rich with blossoms of all colors, shrouded by trees on three sides and exposed to the world on only the one.

And as they approached the door of the school, in spite of knowing and remembering what awaited him, nothing could ever rob the sense of majesty from him, renewed with all the more vigor with each passing year.

“Woah…” breathed Beren as they stepped outside. He couldn’t help but slow his pace a bit to absorb the view—each and every time was as breathtaking as the last. A spectacular rainbow of different varieties, different colors, different smells, all within such close reach of the school. And in bloom for just one week.

The group’s important business normally had other venues, but this was too beautiful—too exclusive—to pass up.

“Come on, Beren!” cried Syl back to him as she crossed the street. She waved back to him frantically, breaking off from the others to get his attention.

“R-Right!” He jogged over, sliding to a stop before the two-lane street. And with a careful look each way, across he went, with a final leap sending him over the curb and down the slope just beyond, into the field.

He landed hard on his feet, his knees giving, but his body naturally pitched itself forward into a roll. Then, with a hop, he was on his feet.

The field was truly… beautiful. No other words could do it justice in Beren’s mind. And so long as they promised the mayor, Grace’s father, that they would do no harm to the natural majesty of the area, they were allowed to do their “business” there.

“C’mon, Beren, Syl!” called Toma to them. “Rufus and Grace already got started!”

Beren ran to him, and he could feel Syl on his heels.

“What’s the plan for today?” he asked Toma, sliding to a stop and dropping his backpack on the path at his feet. A small cloud of dust puffed up from it as it landed among the other four—one for each of his companions.

“Same objective as yesterday: kill—er, defeat—dangerous Aksa that have gathered here.”

Syl chuckled. “How do you come up with these things, anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” Toma said, shrugging. “They just… come to me. Ready?”

Beren and Syl each nodded, enthused.

With a nod in return, Toma held out his hand: part of their daily ritual. As Beren slapped it, his vision roared to life with all of the things Toma imagined: creatures roamed about the ground and sky; blasts of light tore across the open field. He wasn’t sure how Toma did it, or why such a short explanation and a slap on the hand could reveal this to him, but he didn’t care.

It wasn’t important.

In his mind’s eye, almost as vivid as if they truly were, beasts great and small roamed the lush field. Various parts of them glowed bright colors, ethereal light spilling forth across the petals. They romped about, leaping, jumping, and flying every which way. Many fired off bursts of magical energy in the form of spells intuitive to their being.

The Aksa.

A large elephant Aksa stomped through the field, larger than any real-world counterpart. Beren nearly forgot that it was make-believe, the only clue being the flowers left pristine in its trembling wake.

Several small woodland creature Aksa darted in and out of the forest of stems shrouding them, investigating the five children, their surroundings, and even the other Aksa.

Beren peered behind Toma, who dashed away past him. In one of the paths carving through the field, Rufus and Grace stood back to back. Rufus held up his fists like a boxer, grinning, but Grace still maintained her regal poise, hands straight at her hips and face completely deadpan. But Beren thought he caught a glint in her eye—perhaps some passion that was not otherwise there.

Standing opposite each of them were two distinct Aksa: a snake as wide as Beren was tall and a hundred feet long, with fangs as long as traffic cones; and a bear the size of a typical elephant, with small horns and magical energy arcing through its fur.

At once, Rufus and Grace split from each other, rocketing apart down the path toward their opponents.

Rufus loosed a fierce punch, catching his serpentine opponent squarely on its jaw. It was sent reeling, its head flying up and over the rest of its body, before crashing down in a cloud of shimmering dust on the bed of flowers behind it.

Grace’s opponent was the bear-like Aksa, now reared up on its hind legs. Both of its car-sized paws bore down on her with ferocity. In a burst of graceful speed, she dashed forward. Its claws passed just above her head. She passed between its pouncing arms, then struck upward with a rock she’d snatched off the ground. The bear was, just as the serpent, sent careening upward and backward with the force of her blow. Its head reared high.

Beren couldn’t help but wince as he watched the two Aksa tear up the flowerbed, but… when they dispersed into mana—Toma’s name for the fluttering particles defeated Aksa shattered into—the flowers were as unperturbed as they had been moments before.

The only disturbance, in fact, came from Rufus himself falling headfirst into them, carried onward by the force of his own strike. But before long, he jumped back up.

She didn’t say anything, clearly annoyed, but Beren could see a faint smile on her face.

The front of Rufus’s shirt was plastered with flowers. He brushed himself off, petals of all kinds raining down from every crevice in his shirt. Grace giggled to herself as she watched them shower the dirt all around.

Syl and Toma fought Aksa of their own behind Beren. Toma slung chunks of imaginary matter with his trademark telekinetic abilities, whereas Syl, per usual, lacked a proper form for her magical ability: she fired off blasts of raw power in frantic swings of her hands.

They were all having so much fun. Beren had never had a magical ability, as Toma and his friends all did. He’d never chosen one. It wasn’t for any reason, he just… couldn’t come up with one that suited him.

He scratched idly at the scar running along his arm. Though it was old, he always found it itching or aching at times like these.

A gust of wind passed over Beren then. It swam up his neck in just the wrong way, setting his hairs standing on end as it went. A tickle ran up his arm, and then down his back.

He jumped forward from the sensation, twisting, and tumbled down off the raised path. His shoulder lit up with pain as he crashed down on it among the blossoms.

There was nothing behind him. Just the flowers…

And… one flower, in particular.

It stood just taller than the rest. Its petals… glowed. When the wind blew, it did not sway. When leaves and petals rustled, this blossom remained perfectly still.

Something wasn’t right about it, but Beren couldn’t describe what. He surveyed the scene around him again and again. But each time his eyes scanned over his surroundings, falling back onto the otherworldly flower, he felt he understood less and less the source of his unease.

The more he looked, though…

Each time he looked away and then back, it felt as if it approached. As if it dragged itself closer while he’d looked away. No, he thought, looking at his feet for a moment as they took another shuffling step forward. I’m—

A hand fell on his shoulder. He jumped, but it held him tight.

“What’s got you so jumpy?” Toma asked him, surprised. “You aren’t playing today? And… we should get off the flowers.”

Beren didn’t reply. Before he could even gesture, Toma had followed his eyes. A glance his brother’s way revealed that he was as transfixed by it as Beren was. As confused.

As afraid.

And he, too, didn’t know why.

“Was that always there…?” he muttered, his hand slipping off of Beren’s shoulder limply.

“Guys, what’s…” Syl trailed off as she approached. “Woah.”

Beren glanced her way, and then at his feet, pulling them back as they tried to step forth again.

“You guys see that too?” she asked. Her hand reached feebly and imprecisely for Toma, finally finding him within a few swipes back and forth. “Stop.”

Toma blinked, shaking his head to clear it. “Right.”

It was gone—a figment of their imaginations, in the most literal sense.

Beren took a deep breath, letting it sigh out. He heard Toma and Syl do the same. And though it was relieving… his stomach still felt that foreign tugging sensation.