Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was half past midnight when Elza left the cottage with a blanket folded over her arm and a small basket hanging off the other. Not even a sliver of the moon glowed in the night sky. The town below was dark as only a few lights were on this late in the night. The main source of light came from the night sky, where billions of stars shone brightly, illuminating the townspeople gathered on the hillside. Tonight, was a special night. The scholars in the capital had predicted that a cosmic event would occur. Something so miraculous, it was only seen once every one-hundred and fifteen years.

“Has it started yet?” A middle-aged woman with brown hair tied in a bun stepped out of the cottage. She held a small lantern.

“Not yet, mother.” Elza responded. She turned and watched her grandmother’s silhouette step through the door and hold onto her mother’s arm. “But soon. It’s too bad father isn’t here.”

Both the mother and grandmother slowly approached Elza, who was setting a tea set and some miniature sandwiches on a small table near the edge of the garden. As both women sat down, she placed the blanket over her grandmother’s lap and set a cup of tea before each woman. She then sat down and sipped from a cup of her own.

“Yes, it’s unfortunate, but you know your father’s a busy man.” Her mother spoke, after sipping some tea. “I’m sure he’s out near the ocean, watching tonight’s event with some colleagues…”

“With booze in hand. That man does love his whiskey.” Elza’s grandmother commented.

“Memaw.”

“Can’t deny the truth, Elizabeth. At least my son-in-law can hold his booze and he’s not rowdy or abusive when drunk. I had to get him liquored up to find out what type of man he was before I let him marry you, Rosalynn.”

“MOTHER!” Elza’s mother exclaimed. She acted as if this was the first time she had heard this bit of news.

The elderly lady reached forward and plucked a sandwich from the large dish and gingerly bit into it. “Oh! Cucumber! And look at that. No skins!”

Elza giggled.

Slowly, the night sky lit up brighter than before. All three women looked up. The stars were falling. A couple here and there at first, but then ten here and then hundreds of stars began to streak across the sky. After a while, the night sky looked like it was spinning, like the stars were moving and the constellations were changing shape. It was mesmerizing to watch.

Elza thought to herself if other worlds enjoyed such astounding sites as this. She looked over to her grandmother and noticed a few tears falling down her face. “Memaw? Are you okay?”

Rosalynn looked over as well and placed a hand on her mother’s arm.

“I’ve heard stories from my own grandmother. But I never thought it would be this beautiful.” Elza handed her a handkerchief and watched her grandmother dab the tears away.

All three turned their eyes back to the sky and watched for another hour before they grew too tired to stay awake.

A faint breeze wound its way through the forest and rustled the lavender and pink flowers growing out of a cracked boulder. Their root system was shallow making it uncommon for these plants to exist.

Elza carefully climbed over the giant roots and loose stones covering the forest floor until her eye caught the flower’s faint movement. Her little forest adventures usually took hours as she would explore or examine anything that caught her attention. This was quite a discovery, as she had only seen these flowers in books or dried in city marketplaces. They were essential for high levelled healing potions; therefore, they were expensive.

The redhead spotted a decent sized rock and rolled it over to the boulder. This gave her a nice place to sit. Upon doing so, she reached into her satchel and pulled out a leather-bound book and a small bag. Pulling on a ribbon, Elza opened the book to two facing pages covered in ink writings, with a few sketches and paintings of plants and flowers. She flipped the page to two blank, textured pages. A quill, an ink jar, a cleaning cloth, a small palate, a small paintbrush, and a few basic paints were removed from the small bag.

After spending an hour sketching, painting, and writing, filling up both blank pages, Elza kept the book open to dry as she left her belongings to explore the immediate area, hoping to find more of these special plants. Thankfully, she spotted a single plant, nestled in the nook of a tree and its trunk. With some luck, she’d be able to transplant it back at the cottage and successfully grow the plant to have a supply of the flower whenever she needed them. If it wasn’t successful, the plants she studied in the forest gave her a temporary, secondary source for a short while.

Returning to her belongings, Elza noted the pages were dry. She flipped the page and moved the ribbon to mark the following two blank pages. These would be dedicated to the transplanting and growing processes.