Thistlebloom and the Secrets of Brewer's Botanicals

Chapter Three

Lysander jolted awake, the remnants of the dream lingering in his mind. The blinding white flash and the echoes of his mother's distant screams had haunted his dreams for thirteen years now.

He turned on the bedside lamp and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He pressed his fingers into his temples and stood up feeling the cold of the floor beneath his feet.

Lysander shuffled to the bathroom and looked into the large mirror. He ran his fingers through his hair and then paused as he looked at the scar on his cheek. As his fingers touched it, he could remember being bitten but by what he couldn't say. I didn't feel like a monster or even like he was bitten on purpose instead of feeling like it had been playful a mistake.

After he got dressed, he set a bowl of food out for Butterball and headed to work. As he walked, he checked for signs of the creatures he had seen yesterday but thankfully this time there were none. He felt a bit odd he had been hoping to see them and a part of him was saddened by this.

At first, he found it surprising and offensive that he'd been stuck in this dungeon since I was hired. He brought that up one time, and Mrs. Dumpfry let him run the front counter, but that went south rather quickly. It turns out customers don't take kindly to being told the truth. Mrs. Pembleton came in and didn't know what she was looking for. He suggested an herb that would help with her oily skin, which always glistened under the shop lights, especially in the summer. He was sent back to the dungeon, which he had grown quite fond of.

As he sat down, Evangeline placed a cup of tea on his desk, which proved challenging due to limited space.

"You be pleased to know there is Jollyflower in the tea this morning," she said.

He expected her to turn on her heel and leave as usual, but to his surprise, she remained.

"Do you need something?" Lysander asked.

She cleared her throat and the distant look in her eyes disappeared. "No sorry dear just got lost for a second."

She was still standing there. Mrs. Dumpfry, accustomed to getting her way, would stand there until her legs gave out if he didn't drink her strange flower tea.

He raised the cup to his lips and took a small sip. He raised my eyebrows, surprised by the taste. She was right; it had a sweetness like honey, and he found it oddly addictive. He finished the whole cup in under ten minutes. It wasn't until a half hour later when he was finally alone in his dungeon that he started to feel weird.

As he sorted herbs, a sudden grin crossed his face. A soft chuckle escaped his lips, and it was a peculiar sensation.

What could be so amusing about a Periwinkle or a simple stalk of Lavender? Perhaps there was something to Mrs. Dumpfry's Jollyflower. No, that's absurd, Lysander.

A warmth tingled in his cheeks, a warmth that seemed a tad too intense for the brisk sixty-degree climate maintained in the shop. Mrs. Dumpfry insisted that her herbs and flowers needed to be kept at this precise temperature, claiming they would lose their mystical properties otherwise.

He had always dismissed her tales of flower powers as eccentric, even though she spent all her days locked inside this shop, which was also her home upstairs.

He picked up the delicate flowers with tweezers, placing them into their respective glass jars. As he focused on this task, his attention was drawn to an unexpected sound, a subtle but persistent buzzing that hung in the air. At first, he tried to ignore it, attributing it to some mundane shop activity, but it grew more pronounced, prying him away from his work.

The tweezers had left faint imprints on his fingertips, and a mild discomfort lingered. He sat them down, leaning back in his chair as an odd sensation washed over her. It was as if he wore a mask of cheerfulness on the outside, a small, stupid grin that didn't quite align with the unease stirring within.