The Prophet, Part 1

Daniel Wells watched the witch, Bella July, dump two sugars into her coffee and carefully swirl the mixture with a spoon. Over the past week, he’d seen her drink dozens of cups, and he pointed out— lightheartedly!— how precise she was in her mixing and stirring every single time. When he said it, he saw the familiar ominous expression wash over her, indicating she’d taken it as something of a challenge. Everything, it seemed, had some relevance to the practice of being a witch. He’d have preferred to be lectured in private rather than in a populated coffee shop here in the fringes, but if he asked her to wait, she’d only get louder. At least he had a danish.

“What distinguishes a witch from any other kind of magic user,” she started, “is ritual. Some magicians cast spells with power they pull from their bodies, or the earth, or even directly from a supernatural being.”

“Isn’t that what you do? Your patron is a time god, right?” Daniel felt it was important for him to understand this distinction if he was going to follow her around. He wanted to minimize the number of times he embarrassed himself.

“I don’t pull power directly from my patron. Think of a ritual as… asking for a favor in a very elaborate way.”

“And your coffee is a ritual?”

“Not normally, but I’m in the habit of making habits, and habits are rituals. Here, look inside.” She tapped the side of the ceramic mug lightly with her plastic spoon.

Daniel obeyed. The top surface of the coffee within the mug had taken on a reflective quality, like the placid surface of a lake might, except that it was coffee in a mug and should normally have been brown and opaque. The coffee-mirror reflected an empty flower pot, sitting on the windowsill just behind July. Daniel double-checked: Outside of the reflection, the pot was not empty at all— An ordinary bunch of yellow tulips were poking up out of the soil. Given that July was a time witch, Daniel guessed that he was seeing reflected in the coffee must be the past, before the flowers had grown.

“How far back is it looking?” He asked this as a way to demonstrate that he was learning.

“Three months.” July took a long-awaited sip, a maneuver practiced to adjust for her chinchilla snout.

This would have been all well and good, If not for something the barista had said in conversation earlier. “But this store only opened a month ago. The flower pot was in that exact same spot back then?”

July’s cup tapped against the table as she set it down. “I’ll explain it like this: Imagine you were standing by a straight road and I was walking past you.”

He did. In his head, she was twirling her magic staff like a conductor’s baton as she went.

“Now, as I pass in front of you, you can reasonably predict that I’ll reach the end of the road, and how long it will take for me to get there if I keep going at my current speed.”

“Sure.”

“But if I was to suddenly stop, or turn around, or an anvil fell on my head and killed me, then the final result wouldn’t match that prediction. The calculations were good, but reality doesn’t usually match.”

Daniel frowned. “That’s an extrapolation, not a prediction. Besides, we’re talking about time.”

July waved him off with one hand, as dismissive as ever. “Time is just another dimension. Look at the science.”

“You’re a magician.”

“A witch,” she corrected. “Anyway, it’s an extrapolation.”

“Like I said.”

“Like you said, yes.”

“But backwards.”

“Sure. It’s the same thing.” Haughtily, she took another sip of coffee. “Eat your damn danish.” He hadn’t touched it in a few minutes. Daniel leaned back in his chair and took a bite, taking solace in the sweet icing and raspberry filling.

The conversation between himself and July had become animated enough to draw a few looks, but only one other patron could be described as staring: a snake-person with bright pink scales who looked away as soon as they noticed Daniel’s gaze. It felt especially rude, coming from someone who’d chosen to look so unusual.

…On the other hand, maybe that meant they’d earned the right. They must have a lifetime’s worth of experience being stared at. Even in this part of the world, where there were a fairly even mix of ordinary and modified souls, most of the latter were… naturalistic. Just a normal dog or mouse or whatever. Nothing so fancy as a pink snake.

Maybe there was a naturally pink snake, though. It wasn’t as if he knew that much about snakes. Plus, it was too much to assume that the snake had a lifetime of experience being a snake. Maybe they’d only gotten their soul yesterday, and weren’t even used to it, yet. What would he see if he viewed that person reflected in July’s magic coffee? Would it be possible to see a baby snake metahuman? He’d assumed that infants didn’t get soul modification, but was he sure?

“Don’t stare at people like that. It’s rude,” July chastised him. It wasn’t worth fighting over.

“So, if I’m understanding this correctly, the god of time is more about time as a dimension?”

“Essentially. Causality matters, mind you, but I don’t deal in fate. I just isolate an object or concept and either move or observe it through a displacement ana or kata.”

“What or what?”

“Those are the words for backwards and forwards in time.”

He didn’t want to get distracted by fancy words. “Is there a god of depth, then? Width?”

After another drawn-out sip, she answered. “Maybe. I don’t know every god.”

“But then…” Daniel put his head in his hands, trying to wrap his head around this new information. It almost made sense, and yet it didn’t. “How does it all work? What exactly constitutes a ritual?”

“Don’t think too hard about it,” she suggested. “A ritual is just a set of instructions and a sincere belief. It’s like writing a letter to my patron, asking for something, and I have to make sure I sign it off all formal.”

“And it— your patron— it teaches you them?”

“Nah. I made most of them up myself. Like I told you, I make a habit of making habits, and that means I have rituals onhand. A good intuition is the most important tool for rituals.”

Daniel’s head hurt. “I’m never going to understand this.”

“You don’t have to. I can’t see someone like you ever becoming a witch; You’re too thoughtful.”

He decided to take that as a compliment.

The pleasant jingling of a bell signaled to everyone in the shop that another patron had entered, activating the primal instinct to check for predators. In fact, the two who were entering couldn’t be further from the top of the food chain: they looked as much plant as animal. The one in front was a bulky and stern-faced man with skin like a young succulent. A few stray leaves even seemed to grow off of his hair, sometimes falling onto his suit. Behind him was a small woman of round features whose body was party covered in thorns. It didn’t seem very comfortable— even her dress was resting a centimeter or so off of her skin.

Daniel took a quick glance and then turned back to the table. No more staring for him— After all, it was just a new kind of person. He’d been having this experience over and over again since leaving home. It was only when he took notice of the uncomfortable shuffling going on around the room that it occurred to him to wonder if there was more to these new people in particular.

He risked looking again. In the gap, the two had apparently walked directly at himself and July’s table, and now they were just out of punching range— not that Daniel was inclined to do so. The man spoke with a voice that was smooth like aloe. “Miss July, the Tolling Witch. Am I correct?”

July gave him the courtesy of returning his gaze, but offered no softness in any other way than the natural qualities of her fur. “That’s me. Famous here, too, am I?”

“We were told you’d be here.”

“By who?”

“I’ll explain. But first, my name is Wreath. My partner here is Briar— Forgive her silence; her tongue is temporarily unusable.”

July gave a glare so withering that Daniel thought he saw one of the leaves on Wreath’s head actually wither. “Why is she here, then?”

“Only to keep me company on the road. We weren’t aware that you also had a companion.”

Oh, right. He had to be part of this conversation, too. “Um, I’m Daniel. Miss July’s… assistant.”

“Charmed. May we sit?”

“You may.”

The two plant-people took seats opposite each other, such that each of them was flanked on either side by two strangers. At times like this, he worried there was something he just didn’t know. Like, all plant-people are poisonous, maybe. That would explain how uneasy the air was in the store at the moment, where even the baristas had backed off a bit. As it was, the plant people were intense but not exactly threatening. Their names were a bit much, but that wasn’t a crime. Plant-people seemed like a ridiculous thing to be calling them, too. Nobody had told him the language of the outside, and he’d just been winging it for his internal monologue, but he really had to be careful with that. It was entirely possible that he’d say something terrible if he didn’t, and then he’d look like a real asshole to everyone. Plantfolk? Plantkin? Was it more proper to just call them people who happened to be a little leafy?

“I don’t want to waste your time, so I’ll be direct,” Wreath began. “We represent a organization called the Family of the Twisted Rose, and we’d like to acquire your services for a certain ritual.”

With one last chug, July’s coffee was finished. “What kind of ritual?”

Both Wreath and Briar’s eyes darted around the room before he answered. “It’s not something I can discuss here. We were hoping you would come and experience some of our hospitality at the compound. And Master Daniel, too, of course.”

“Not interested.”

Wreath paused, hands in mid-air as he was just about to sell whatever luxuries were on offer. “Excuse me?”

“My instincts tell me that this isn’t worth it.”

The plantkin man crossed his hands neatly on the table. “Is there anything I could do to make you reconsider?”

“Let me think: Daniel, is there anything that would make you get dragged off to Gods-know-where by a couple of strangers who won’t explain themselves and caused everyone in the room to get defensive as soon as they appeared?”

Daniel blinked. “Um?”

“See? Even he understands. Good day.” All the table’s non-witch occupants frowned, for various reasons.

“I can see I’ve offended you,” Wreath said. “A shame. We’ll be going, then.” He and Briar rose from their chairs, moving eerily in unison, and then departed back out the front without delay. The door closing coincided with a palpable release of tension all over the room.

The whole thing seemed a little overblown to Daniel. That couple hadn’t exactly come in brandishing weapons— they hadn’t done anything more complicated than trying to have a chat. The witch was certainly free to pick her own jobs, and he had no intention of getting in the way of it, but her hostility seemed… a bit much. Maybe she’d been influenced by the rest of the room, but he didn’t understand that reaction, either. They’d given up pretty easily, too. What was it that he didn’t understand?

He tried to whisper to July. "Hey, who were those guys?” Unfortunately, he was a little agitated, and it came out loud enough for others to hear.

A bison man who’d been sitting alone writing in the corner answered him in a drawling local accent. “That bunch lives out in the woods near here. You saw how they looked, right? That got that way natural. No soul stuff. They only come into town to get supplies or to recruit. And the recruits? They don’t come back.”

July poked in the man’s direction with her staff, always kept ready leaning against her chair for gesture emergencies. “Don’t try to scare me— what do you actually know?”

“Nothing except for what you need to do: Don’t associate with those folks, and don’t tick them off, either.”

“Those seem to be… at odds,” Daniel said.

“Yep. Good luck.”

In fact, July was totally unconcerned. The plan had already been to hit the road right after coffee, and the only change she judged necessary was a detour— instead of going directly South, they went off the beaten path and through the woods. There was only one road going their way, but the number of paths through a forest was infinite. Not literally infinite, she made sure to explain, but it would be harder to lay an ambush. Daniel, as the ‘assistant,’ had to carry July’s big backpack, which made negotiating the uneven terrain a bigger ask. He was less than enthusiastic about taking the scenic route, but even more worried about what would happen if the plantkin came looking for them.

“What if they follow us, though? I mean, we have to stop and sleep at some point.”

July, who made a habit of tapping tree roots with her staff just for fun, only scoffed at him. “You worry too much. If they don’t follow us that far, you’re stressing yourself out for nothing. If they do, then I’ll find a way to discourage them. This isn’t the first group of maniacs I’ve dealt with.”

“Okay, but when you say ‘deal with,’ what exactly are you thinking?”

“Look, groups like that just want to have a witch for the prestige. I made it a pain in the ass for them, so they’ll give up. For them, this isn’t life-or-death.”

“But how can you be sure of that?”

“Easily. I— shit.”

She stopped. Daniel stopped. Wreath and Briar were stepping solemnly out from behind a tree right in the middle of their path. They’d known the exact place the two of them would end up— Even Daniel’s most pessimistic mental scenarios hadn’t been quite that embarrassing. And then, even more absurd, there was a third figure following them, one who stepped in between the first two plantkin, who moved to either side in a dramatic little parting that had to have been practiced ahead of time.

The newcomer was a few inches taller than July, making her quite intimidating. She was wrapped in a dress like an upside-down tulip, so vast it was hard to believe there were feet under there and not just fluffy petals. Her face was… chiseled. Serious and mature. Kind of like Daniel’s old boss. She cut a figure that was somehow both intimidating and nurturing. Without a doubt, this had to be the leader of the cult— or whatever they were. She just had that look about her.

“I must apologize for startling you,” she said softly. “When my children told me about you, I realized I owed you an in-person visit. A woman of your talents deserves to be shown proper respect.”

“How did you know we’d be coming this way?” Daniel asked. He might be lagging behind in what mattered, but he still wanted to know.

She looked at him with an easy smile, like he was a tiny puppy. “My family is one with the forest. Even if you thought you were traveling randomly, it’s easy to predict where you’ll end up.

“But I’m still far too rude. My name is Laural. I am the Seedmother of our Family.”

Wreath and Briar, who had been reduced to something like statues on either side of her, both nodded. It didn’t add much except a sense of reverence for the woman.

July, however, was unimpressed. She hefted her staff up in both hands. “Uh huh. Fair warning, ‘mom,’ three of you still isn’t enough to take us both on.”

Both? Daniel shuffled uncomfortably. The bag felt heavier on his shoulders.

This Seedmother woman didn’t seem like she was looking for a fight, though. She was very relaxed about everything.

“Be at peace, Miss July. I heard what you said just now, and I have two corrections. Firstly, this is a matter of life and death for us. Second, we couldn’t accept your membership even if you wanted it. You’re incapable of serving a second god. Isn’t that right?”

"And which god is yours?”

“A god of these woods, naturally! A god that shelters the weak and throws down the wicked. A god that preserves balance and harmony! A god that comes from the soil and is nurtured by humanity! That is our god.”

“Yeah?” The witch paced casually for a moment, giving her next sentence an ironically casual air. “Well, you should go ask it for whatever it is you’re looking for. I’m not interested.”

“July…” Daniel didn’t quite have the courage to actually chastise her, but he did at least want to register his displeasure. Weird as this bunch was, he still couldn’t bring himself to judge them for it. After all, in this part of the world, he was even more out-of-place than these plantkin, even if he didn’t look like it. The injustice of it gnawed at him. He didn’t want to start a fight, at least.

“I understand,” said the Seedmother. “You live on the road, after all: you know the dangers. And then there’s this man,” She turned her head towards Daniel. “He’s your responsibility. You can’t let him come to harm. In a past life, I was also a wanderer. In this one, I have charges I must protect. I know how you must feel.”

“Shut it,” July spat. “That’s exactly why I’m not dealing with you.”

Laurel ignored that declaration. “All we need is for a single flower to bloom. We’ll pay you anything you ask.”

With a sudden burst of speed, July swung the butt of her staff at the Seedmother, stopping an inch from her face. Daniel physically jumped in surprise, and immediately regretted how it made his shoulders feel to land with a heavy pack on his back. Laurel didn’t even flinch, but Wreath did, and the thorns that covered Briar’s body flared. Both of them rushed to Laurel’s side, though they were much too late to have stopped the impact if July had actually been acting with intent. Still, they were probably better bodyguards for their boss than Daniel would be for the witch.

“You can’t afford what I’d ask.”

“Miss July,” said Wreath, still maintaining an even tone despite everything. “Our family was built around the Godflower. Our Mother only wants to see it bloom before she dies. Is there really no way to move your heart?” Laurel gave him a look, as if chastising him for asserting himself, or maybe just reassuring him. Either way, he fell back a bit, closer to his original post, though not quite as far.

“You don’t have anything that could interest my heart or my wallet.”

“Come on, July,” Daniel interjected, “Shouldn’t we at least ask about the watch?”

Laurel’s features moved just slightly. She spoke quickly, not allowing the witch a chance. “We get information from miles away at the compound. The vines speak if you have the ears to hear it. It’s very likely that we know something of use to you.”

A deep growl of frustration seeped from the chinchilla’s throat. “You’re just trying to get your foot in the door.”

That was true, naturally. This Seedmother lady was trying to convince the witch with an offer. And maybe she really didn’t know as much as she let on. But the watch wasn’t a secret, even if Daniel kept it close to his chest and under his jacket where it was safer from being snatched. They’d already asked around in town, and while nobody had given them any solid information, at least a few seemed to think it looked familiar.

“You gotta trust people a little or we’ll never figure this thing out,” he said as he started digging the watch out from his clothes.

“Daniel, stop!”

Laurel’s eyes lit up as she saw the little knick-knack dangling from its chain in his hands. “Ah. That symbol… could that be a gift from your future?”

Now that was promising. “See?” He looked at July, expecting at least some contrition. He got none.

“That was a cold read,” she said. “She doesn’t know anything.”

"I’ve seen that symbol once before,” said the Seedmother. She met the witch’s eyes and smiled with confidence. “I’m afraid I have to play this card, Miss July. I’ll tell you everything, and pay you a fee besides, if you can just perform this one simple task for me.”

The witch unleashed a bevy of swears, but quietly. Finding the watch was of existential importance, so she couldn’t exactly pass up on the chance to learn something about it.

Daniel tried to be encouraging. “Really, what’s the worst that can happen? Even if they’re lying, we only lose a day, right? They’re just some guys who live in the woods.”

She looked at him wearily. “Are you really this soft?”

He considered it for a second. “Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll accept for now, but I am holding you to both parts of that payment.”

Laurel relaxed, and even her petals seemed to get a little more vibrant. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

Daniel felt pretty good about it. He’d had a hand in convincing Bella July to do a good deed. Well, she was going to be paid, but it was still alright. It would do her some good to be less prickly with others.

Briar glanced in his direction as if she’d heard that thought.

The witch steadfastly refused to be even one tiny bit joyful for the hike to the Twisted Rose compound, and both Wreath and Briar were as serious as ever. Only the Seedmother herself was at-ease enough to enliven anything, and considering the circumstances, Daniel considered it his duty to engage her in some kind of discussion— It was the only way that the whole bunch of them would have any chance of getting along. He then proceeded to spend ten minutes too intimidated to try, but worked up the nerve at around the time they were all stepping over a river using tiny rocks to avoid getting wet.

“So, when you say you’re ‘one with the forest’ and all that, what do you mean?” He managed to get over without completely embarrassing himself, at least. Laurel strode over the rocks so casually it was as if she hadn’t even noticed there was water, but not a single drop touched her petals.

“Exactly as I said. The God-Flower speaks to me, if only to help me care for it.”

“Okay, but… that’s kinda just the same thing again.”

The other plantkin simply plowed through the river, allowing themselves to become soaked, while July stopped the entire river’s flow by slicing the water with her staff. When it resumed, it moved double-time to make up for the delay.

Wreath offered more explanation. “The flowers’ roots are an extension of the Seedmother’s senses, in a way.”

“I’m only a caretaker,” she corrected him. “I was a wanderer from the North before I found the seed. I had nothing. No family and no purpose. Then I was given a vision by the god of these woods, and a mission: to see it born.” During a sweeping gesture, her eyes met Daniel’s. She was like him, then: someone who came from the cities. And unlike him, she’d had no guide.

“That must have been tough,” he said.

“Those tribulations led me to salvation,” she replied.

About forty-five minutes later, they crested a small hill and Daniel saw, for the first time since leaving home, something magical in a novel way. Something that, If you’d asked him the day before he’d met July, he’d have guessed was probably fake. She had forced him to embrace some new points of view, for sure, but even still, part of him was still expecting magic to be small and hidden. Sometimes, though, magic could be big and loud and insistent that you pay attention to it. This described the compound of the Twisted Rose, nestled in a gully below him.

It was just as the name implied: a walled enclosure of thorny vines, woven together like the finest satin and screwed tight with the sharpest thorns. The space enclosed was roughly the size of an entire city block. The wall was likely not impenetrable, but it was intimidating, and there was no telling what tricks it might be hiding. Inside were a few dozen massive rose tops of different heights and colors, curled closed. Even from a distance, Daniel got the impression that these were serving as homes and other buildings, given that there were no other shelters visible, and each rose top was probably big enough to fit a decent apartment. An entire miniature city, grown rather than built: it was awe-worthy. One of those ‘should have sent a poet’ moments.

“Holey moley,” Daniel said, because they’d sent him instead.

The plantkin led the way to a point in the vine weave where there were no roots jutting up and the tendrils had entwined each other in a way that formed a visible seam. Instinct told him that it was the front gate of the compound, and that it would mysteriously part at their approach to let them through. Sure enough, the edges of the seam curled inward like sardine can lids as soon as Laurel got close. Daniel noted this with some satisfaction. Once all of them were through the threshold, the vines curled back again, and Daniel coincidentally noticed that the insides of the walls were just as thorny as the outside. That made sense, of course. Why wouldn’t they be? It was true that it made the place harder to leave, but it’s not like anyone would climb the vines when they could just use the front gate. Even in a place like this, it was just sensible to do that. And nobody else was reacting to it— even July, who was very surly about the whole situation. It had to be fine. It would be really hard to get the thorns off, anyway, and who’d even be able to climb them? Not Daniel, who wasn’t nearly athletic enough.

Now that they were in the compound proper, it was possible to look inside the rose-houses. While the petals were thick, each had a front door of sorts where they folded just right to leave a gap that a person could walk through, like the unzipped opening of a tent. Daniel could see inside a few of them, and caught a glimpse of an ordinary countertop and table that must have been brought in from outside. Very rustic. Probably cold during the winter. For the higher ‘buildings,’ a system of stairs formed from leaves and roots had been constructed— or grown. He wasn’t sure.

“Do you control how these grow?” He asked.

“To an extent,” Laurel answered. “I’ll show you a good example in a moment.”

July was a little more pointed. “Where are your people?”

That was a good question. Even though the compound was full of life in the strict sense, it was desolate when it came to sapient life. There were all these homes and paths and scattered personal items, but none of it came with a single actual human or human-related being.

“I left the service to fetch you, but worship proceeds without me,” noted Laurel. “We let out at noon.”

“About ten minutes,” the witch responded. In reality, she was usually able to tell the time down to the second, which meant she was holding back in this conversation. She never did that with him. “I’d like to see the flower as soon as possible, if you don’t mind. Seems like you have quite a few.”

“These are all offshoots,” Wreath said. “The true Godflower has yet to show itself aboveground.”

“Is it that one over there?” The witch pointed at a small sprout towards the Eastern wall, which was still young and barely developed, but a large wooden scaffolding about two stories tall had been constructed around it, anticipating the size of the flower to come.

“That is nothing more than a future home,” Laurel explained. “This is what I promised to show you: see our guide? It will grow as we guide it.” The scaffolding— maybe you could call it a trellis— was up a little higher than the vine-walls, constructed with ordinary wood.

Meaning you could easily climb up and jump over the side to escape. That little burst of paranoia he’d had was just an unreasonable little impulse. There wasn’t anything to worry about.

“In any event,” Laurel continued, “The Godflower is currently underneath us. We’ll be heading through the worship hall to reach it.” She pointed one of particular rose, the largest of them all, which sat in the back of the compound. It was open, but Daniel didn’t see anything interesting inside from where he stood.

“Let’s go, then.” July moved towards the worship ‘building’ with purpose, forcing everyone else to go along with her.

Laurel didn’t mind, though. “So we shall,” she said, chuckling softly to herself.

Daniel had to press the petals aside to get inside the flower. He thought at first that they were remarkably soft, and then that they were only really as soft as rose petals tended to be— It was the size and thickness of them that stood out. The floor was also petals, flush and soft underneath in a way that was probably nice to relax on. In this case, though, Daniel felt self-conscious that his shoes were still one. Once inside, the nature of the space became more clear: while the flower itself was larger than the others, it didn’t have enough space to be anything like a church or meeting hall. Instead, there was another fold in the petals at the far end to reveal a large hole dug into the earth itself. The soft, pink sunlight filtering in through the roof didn’t give much to see by, but there were artificial lights of some kind inside the tunnel, along with the muffled sounds of human speech and movement.

“Before you enter, I should explain what you’ll be seeing,” Laurel whispered. Even her whispering was soft and pleasant, with no harshness. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, our family members have a very different appearance from most ordinary humans. We reject the modification of the soul. Instead, we wish to become closer to the earth. We’re much like the sorcerers in that way, though they lack our lack our purpose.”

“What’s your point?” July asked without trying to lower her voice.

“We eat the seeds of the Godflower. That is the cause of our changes. They can be somewhat intense at times, as our sister Briar can attest. I thank you both for the wisdom you show in accepting our appearances; not everyone is so welcoming.” Daniel hadn’t really taken the time to consider what Wreath had meant when he said Briar’s tongue was temporarily unusable, but it seemed like these seeds were the cause. It had to be undergoing some kind of transformation, which might be typical or specific to herself. Now wasn’t the time to ask.

Laurel probably sensed that July would interrupt again if given the chance, so she plowed ahead on her own without establishing any agreement. Everyone else was now forced to follow the Mother’s lead down the stone steps that doubled back towards the center of the compound. This immediate passage led to a spacious underground room, wide and long enough to be a real church, though not tall enough to have the kind of grand ambiance that old-god style cathedrals had back home.

It was a cave dug into the soil, like an ant tunnel, kept from falling apart by fibrous flower-roots that snaked through the ceiling along with maybe just a bit of sheer belief. The main decorative impulse was found in the artificial lights, just a bit on the blue side of white, mounted on big wooden lamps throughout the room and not visibly connected to any wires or circuits. They were more like ethereal glowing orbs than lamps, really. It was not especially good lighting, keeping the kind of subterranean feel that was probably warranted. A fairly large pulpit for speaking was on the far end, but in lieu of furniture, most of the room was occupied by a very wide bowl in the center, maybe several meters in diameter but only about a tenth of a meter deep. At least, Daniel was pretty sure it was a bowl— it wasn’t easy to tell when the thing was surrounded by worshipers.

There were dozens, maybe around 50 people packed shoulder-to-shoulder around the bowl’s rim, from small people who were probably children to frail-looking people who might be old, and each and every one was plantkin. That wasn’t surprising, really, but there was quite the variety: some still looked mainly human but with some floral flare, while others were grown over with leaves and vines. There were petals of all imaginable colors and skin of bark and fiber and even rubber. All of them were scooping handfuls of large seeds from the bowl, which was full of them. Daniel didn’t know anything about gardening, but they were a lot bigger than the size he assumed rose seeds to be. Of course, the roses themselves were much larger, so it followed. The seeds were ovoid and shiny and bright white, and the family members would tilt their heads back and let a few at a time fall into their mouths.

He’d been warned after all. They ate seeds here. It was unusual, but not unheard of. Sunflower seeds were perfectly edible, right? Though, you couldn’t turn yourself into a plant no matter how many of those you ate. They were chewing, though. He could hear it from their mouths. Surely a seed couldn’t grow after being chewed up. Ah, but magic always complicated things.

Laurel went right for the pulpit, the place she was accustomed to as the spiritual leader here. “Children! I see you’ve all been completing your duties in my absence: well done! Take a break, now, and greet our guests. This is Miss July, a prophet sent by a god of time, and her assistant, Mister Wells. Please, show them that our family is ever-welcoming!”

“Fuck’s sake,” July said under her breath. Hopefully nobody else heard it, because the two were soon politely mobbed by all the plantkin around the bowl, who even formed an orderly line to greet them. He was soon kneeling down, shaking hands with a smiling little boy, maybe eight years old or something like that. He had a mess of twigs growing out of his head, but he certainly didn’t show any bother about it.

“It’s so wonderful to know that there are good people out there,” said one woman with a vine that she’d wound around her body, maybe as some kind of fashion statement. “People with outsider magic who aren’t here to try and get rid of us.”

“Why would they want to do that?” July asked in a way that was meant to sound rhetorical in a nice way when it was actually rhetorical in a grim way.

“People are just afraid of what they don’t understand,” he offered. It didn’t really seem true. Certainly, he was clueless and not at all afraid of these people. When it came to existential threats, he’d learned in his old job that you only really needed to be afraid when it looked normal. The odd stuff had only ever been benign.

The minutes passed until the greetings became tiresome for all parties, and Laurel made some noise that got everyone moving forward towards the front to listen to her. July got in close to fix his shirt, which had become twisted in all the excitement. As she did, she leaned over and whispered into his ear. This was a rough whisper, not at all a pleasant one like what the Mother had.

“She said your last name. We never told her your last name.”

He wasn’t sure that was true. Either he or she had said it at some point, surely. He could admit that he’d had his fears, but this wasn’t an unhappy place. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. It wasn’t at all his lifestyle, but so what?

He was sure he’d said his last name at some point.