Botanical

Chapter Two: Dandelion Fields

 The girls screamed as they fell through the air. They could see the portal disappearing above them.

 "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!" 

 Thump! "Ouch!" Lycon groaned. Veera immediately took a look around. They had fallen into a grassy field of daisy-like flowers. The girls had never seen so much color before in their lives. 

 "Where are we?" Lycon asked. Then she noticed that where the grass should've been, there were puffy, white, and bright yellow dandelions. The sky was pure blue with a few lazy clouds, and it was sunny. Veera calculated by sun that it was around noon.

 How? She wondered. It was two-thirty when we left!

 "What just happened?" Lycon asked again. She looked around. "This is pretty!"

 "Yeah!" Veera said. She picked up a puffy dandelion and found a folded note hidden in the grass. "Look! There's writing on this paper!"

 Lycon looked at it. "Wow! I can read it! But . . . I never learned to read." She looked at Veera.

 "I can read it too!" Veera said. "Oh - it must not be written in English. But I never learned to read anything!"

 "Who cares? Read it aloud!" Lycon chanted.

 Veera took a deep breath. "Dear girls, I understand you are very confused by your whereabouts, but I assure you that everything will be fine. First, I shall tell you something important. Please do not be alarmed. You are not human - you are a type of enchanter. Foresters, to be precise. Veera Terren is a Shapeshifter Forester, and Lycon Dilla is a Botanicalist. All Enchanters have a bird-shaped birthmark on their left hand and green eyes. I will tell you more, but there are some griffins on the loose, so I'd like you to just stay put for ten more minutes. Sincerely, Sire Starfielder."

 "Enchanters? What are those? And where are we? And is this real? Can we trust this guy - Sire Starfielder?" Veera asked Lycon, squeezing the letter.

 "I don't know . . . but it's not like we can do anything, can we? I don't even know where this field ends." All they could see other than the flowers and sky were a few giant boulders protruding from the ground. 

 "And what's a griffin?" Veera said. "Doesn't sound good."

 "I don't know - but I've been wondering. How did you get into the orphan mill?"

 Veera's lip twitched. "My adoptive grandmother found me when I was a few days old, apparently, and persuaded her son to adopt me. They did, and didn't care for me - they were disgraced by having a black child. So they put me in the mill. I don't know who my real parents are. What about you?"

 Lycon shook her head. "No clue. I've been in the Mill for as long as I can remember."

 "Wow. That's terrible."

 "It's okay. I'm glad I have a friend now." The two smiled at each other.

 Suddenly, something zipped towards them out of the blue. "Aaaah!" They screamed.

 The thing stopped a few feet away, and Veera got a better look at it. It had gold fur, an eagle's head with white, dark-speckled feathers and a shining beak, two front talons, a lion's back legs, a feathered lion tail, and huge gold wings protruding from its back. It wore a saddle-like leather seat, and sitting on it was a man. He had olive skin and looked around twenty five years old. He gazed at them with kind grey-green eyes shielded by round glasses, and he had dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail.

 "I've been so excited to meet you girls! How are you liking Dandelion Fields?"

🙟🙝

 Lycon stared at the man. "Are you . . ." She looked at the note again. "Sire Starfielder?"