Sentiments blossom… she’d said. “She wouldn’t,” I blurted, staring down at the spot her little green piggy should be, right before her foot stumped out.
As if the shit brigade had been summoned, the ‘help’ began to arrive.
“Did you calleveryone, Seg?” I demanded, scowling at the beings starting to pile out from their vehicles.
“Your little Marsh woman was in need, was she not?” the Troll called out. His mate was not with him, more than likely at home, safe and sound, with their daughter and son, about to pop with number three. The Troll was extremely protective of his Queen.
My gaze slid to that missing toe again. I couldn’t help it, I had to know. “Nobody touch her!” I called, as my feet took me towards the house and a sinking feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. “She’s shifting! She’ll need room!” Rarely shifting in front of others myself, some simply did not understand just how large a full Marsh in full shift could be. Aster had more Marsh in her than me with my mother’s Wood Nymph roots added into the mix. I expected her to be taller and wider in full shift.
“Plant man?” Segrid called as I numbly shot up the steps and scrambled for the sunroom.
Something inside of me wilted to see the strange blossom I’d quietly obsessed over, enamored with its effervescence and the glorious spread it had made of the metal rack it had claimed, had lost some of its sheen. Swallowing hard, I lifted the pot, shocked when the vines extending from it snapped, like the most delicate, barely hanging on twigs. With an inward cry, I shoved my fingers into the soil, ignoring the way it greeted me like a long lost lover as vines tried to curl about my fingers, and jerked the whole thing clean from the pot.
My mouth dropped open and a shocked sound left me, bubbling up my throat to curdle out. “Gods’ green vines, she’s mutilated herself!” I burst out. Painted a pumpkin orange, her toe nail was still visible. Shoving the shocking discovery back into the pot, I knew the truth of it. “A sentiments blossom is a love blossom!” My face felt numb. Pushing the pot back onto the rack like it might sprout a mouth and bite me, I curled away from it.
“What is the problem, quivering plant boy?” Segrid boomed out, his face pinching with concern.
“She- She-” My hand lifted, still crusted with soil, toe flower pot soil, “it’s barbaric, is what it is! She’s disfigured herself and- I can’t- There is a toe in that pot!” My voice was a strangled, hoarse shout.
“Oh.” The Troll grunted. “That is all?”
“What do you mean? That is all? She cut off her damned toe and gave it to me! She’s not even my mate!” My voice boomed out, the power of the Marsh behind it.
If I’d been in a better state, I might have thought things through, behaved differently, given myself a moment to collect myself or even have walked away.
A horrible noise sounded from the front yard. Ben barked something, Alfie let out a howl of a shout of surprise. It was all alarming, sending Segrid and I rushing for the front door, but it was the pained wail of a howl of my own kind that rattled the windows, and then William, shouting for Aster to please come back, his hooves clomping loudly with her heavy stomps as he tried to chase after her, that finally pierced the thick fog in my brain.
“She heard every word,” Ben hissed, glaring at me from his spot in the front yard, picking up the scraps of Aster’s clothes to stuff them into a small reusable plastic bag.
“Kinda harsh, Marsh,” Alfie muttered, grimacing, scrubbing at the back of his neck.
“Did you not hear what I said?” I burst out, feeling defensive, but my eyes never left the spot along the edge of the woods her retreating form had disappeared into.
Winded, William came stumbling back to us. Once he reached the front lawn, he collapsed. “Damn. For a being of that size, that Marsh woman is fast!” The Satyr’s hand went to his heart as his chest heaved for breath.
“You injured her heart,” Segrid accused, though he sounded sad by the fact more than angry.
“Isn’t the toe thing like a tradition or something?” Alfie asked, staring off over where my eyes had felt stuck.
“We don’t do that anymore,” I insisted, starting to fidget.
Ignoring the sizzling strip he’d made in my front yard, his eye back to brown rimmed in red, the Cyclops glanced up at me, showing a side I’d rarely seen with the male outside of his female and cubs with Aster—he cared for her, cared about her. That large, shrewdly staring brown eye squinted. “You sure about that?”
“I- Yes.”
“Maybe she’s traditional,” William said into the quiet that followed.
“But she’s not my mate!” I bellowed. Spinning around, I stomped into the house. Nobody was listening to me! She wasn’t my- I caught one look at the blossom in my sunroom, nearly crumbled to dust but for the main blossom and a single petal struggling to hold on. It’s luscious scent had rotted, leaving behind a stench that instantly made me feel sick. My blossom! Panic unlike anything I’d ever known hit me. My blossom!!! A scream left me, a very unmanly scream. It kept going, curling out of me like a banshee’s shriek, unending, terrifying, nothing I wanted to cop to or ever talk about again.
Pushing past the Troll, who stood in the doorway, blinking and staring at me like I’d lost my mind, the Cyclops got one look at the blossom, then me and the horror stricken look on my face, stormed up to me, grabbing me by my shirt, fisting it in a meaty paw to jerk me, and clocked me one right in the puss.
He didn’t hold back, sending me reeling, shirt tearing, to slam into a small metal rack filled with succulents. “You deserved that.” He gave a sniff. “And you’re welcome,” he grunted out, before turning his back on me to stomp from the house. I was dimly aware of others calling for him, and him shouting, “Call me when that asshole’s got his head out of his ass and fixes this shit. You all act like I’m a bastard?” His truck door slammed, engine revved. I could smell the exhaust fumes from his truck as he flew out of here.
When I finally came to, stumbling to my feet, my gaze flew to the pot and my mouth opened again, to then find something unceremoniously shoved into my mouth. Alfie grinned down at me, his foot bare, sock lines running down the pale skin, boot discarded next to him.
A sock. A very dirty sock, was in my mouth.
“I’ll add duct tape,” the wolf warned, then stood back.
