Botanical

Chapter One: The Discovery

A girl sat on the floor of the Work Mill's hall, scrubbing the floor with a soapy rag. Her light, elbow-long brown hair hung in her pale face, hiding her golden-green eyes. The rag had rubbed her hands raw and they stung the more she dipped them into the bucket of lye and water.

 Every day was the same old work routine: Wake up, put on your apron, eat a slice of bread, mill grinding, sewing machines, weaver's room, liver-and-cornmeal, and fall asleep on a pile of rags in the "dormitory". That was the way things were at the mill. And for the work girls, nothing was fun. They didn't know the meaning of fun.

 But Lycon Dilla wasn't like them.

 She had a gift.

 She could control plants.

 Make them.

🙟🙝

 A cowbell rang out for breakfast. Refried liver-and-cornmeal for the umpteenth time. Lycon groaned. She'd better get going to the lunch room, or she'd be in trouble. She hurried down the hall after wringing the rag and dumping out the water, but it was too late. 

 "Dilla, you're two minutes late! You know the rules. Now you're on floor duty for the rest of the week - no exceptions," Miss Shira said. She was the mill's forty-year-old cook, with auburn hair streaked with gray and a sooty, stained apron. She always held a wooden spoon in her hand. Lycon always wished it would make her cooking better, but it didn't. 

 "Yes, ma'am. It won't happen again." Lycon said, sitting on the long, splintery wooden bench in front of the table. She stared at the spoonful of cornmeal on her plate. All the meals were the same tiny portions of food, with the occasional slice of moldy bread. But Lycon was always hungry and had been since the day she arrived at the mill when she was a baby.

 After Miss Shira walked back into the kitchen, the "Big Girl" scooted up next to her. 

 The Girls Work Mill gave homeless or unwanted girls shelter and food in exchange for work, like operating the dangerous weaving machines, spending hours in dark rooms hunched over a sewing machine, cleaning, and grinding the grain in the loud, hot mill next to the building. There were about three hundred girls crammed into the dormitories, which were just long halls with piles of old rags to sleep on. Girls died every few days from the common diseases that swept through the mill. No one had died of starvation yet, but a few were close. The girls went from ages five to seventeen, and were kicked out of the mill at age eighteen. Lycon couldn't wait for that day, but she still had five years to go. And Elizabeth, a fourteen year old chunky girl with red hair and freckles, humiliated Lycon every day.

 Lycon stared at the mouthful of food on her plate. Her stomach churned as she looked at the Girls Work Mill brand on the top of her right hand. Every girl got them when she arrived, and even though Lycon came as a baby, she could still remember the fiery pain. She sighed. She knew what was coming anyway.

 "Oh, no!" Big Girl said sarcastically, jabbing her finger into the birthmark on Lycon's left hand, which looked oddly like a bird. "Looks like the little slob has some chores to do!" She cackled, spit spraying Lycon's face. She wiped it off and tried to ignore Big Girl's taunts, filling her mind with images of plants as she finished the food.

🙟🙝

 Lycon got right to work on the chores. She didn't have a choice. She sighed again and squeezed her rag. The floor seemed dirtier than ever, and she wondered if Miss Shira had somehow made it harder for her.

 At this point, all Lycon wanted was freedom.

🙟🙝

 Veera felt sick as she stared at the unappetizing mush on her plate. She hoped she wasn't getting one of the horrible diseases the other girls in the mill often got. She was small and thin, with not enough meat on her bones to last her through a sickness. But she needed food, so she dug her spoon into the old liver-and-cornmeal dish she'd been living on her whole life.