Violet Essence's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Violet Essence had died with a bundle of lavender in her arms. Now she was the lavender, or something close to it. She drifted through the forest as a shape of pale purple light, searching for the person the flowers were meant for. She did not know their face. She only knew she had to find them before the last bloom of the season died and took her with it. The trouble was her drifting killed the very thing she needed. Wherever she paused, the blooms below her curled and browned. A patch of lavender wilted in seconds when she hovered too long. She was spending herself to move, and every stop cost the flowers that kept her alive. She stopped counting the wilting stems. There were too many. Her light had thinned since morning. She could see the grass through her own hands now. If she kept searching this way, she would fade before she reached anyone. She needed to slow down. She needed to rest without touching a living plant. But she could not hold anything, and everything green she neared began to die. Then she saw a boy sitting against a lavender stone castle. Roses climbed its walls in a dozen colors. The boy had green skin and dark hair. Sores marked his arms. His red eyes lifted when her light crossed him. Most things fled from her. He did not move. "You're killing the flowers," he said. Flat. Not a warning. A fact. "I can't stop," Violet said. "If I land, they die. If I drift, I fade. I have to find someone." Basil Greenleaf looked at the browning patch behind her. Then at the roses on the wall. "Those don't die," he said. "I've sat here three nights. They never wilt." Violet stared at the roses. They were not lavender. They were not the blooms her form was tied to. Nothing living should have survived her nearness. "Try it," Basil said. "You look like you're almost gone." She had nothing left to lose. She sank toward a cluster of roses beside the boy and held still. Her light flickered. She braced for the petals to brown. They did not. The roses stayed open and red. For the first time since she became a spirit, she rested near a living thing that did not die for it. Her fading slowed. Her hands grew a little brighter. "They're not part of my season," she said. "That's why." Basil nodded once. "So stay near them." But she could not stay. The person she sought was somewhere out in the forest, among the lavender that would wither at her touch. The roses could hold her here, alive and safe and going nowhere. Violet looked at Basil. He had been alone three nights. No one had asked him to stay either. "I have to find someone," she said. "Will you carry the roses with me?"