There’s a place somewhere on the earth that is a sea of sunflowers. Zoom out, bird’s eye, it’s nothing but yellow for miles. They roll over hills and skip over rivers. They loom tall and proud and face their big beady eyes at the sun and do their little dance from dawn to dusk. And within this immortal gold field is a town. Little, lost from time, but happy and thriving as the people grin their grins and scrunch their eyes at lovelies. This town is bordered by a wall of these ethereal flowers, and the people brush their fingers over the giant petals that bow down for attention. The sunflowers, the law of their nature dictates, provide. And the people gift in return.
A shrine sits at the center of the market. Once a boulder, but now a polished slab with incense and plates and motifs of flowers and leaves that curve around the base and creep up the edges. Food and art and pottery and soaps and letters are set upon the shrine and given to the sunflowers as a gift of thanks for prosperity. The livestock never grow sick, and new additions wander in from the fields munching on grass and chewing cud. Crops thrive during their seasons and people never go hungry. Hunters never have to travel far for game. All’s well in this solitary sunflower place.
Then the flowers began to bleed.
Crops wither. Farming dries up. Catching a rabbit is worth celebration. The ashes of offered gifts haunt the town as the sunflowers reject them in a blaze of fury. People panic. Their tiny little world is ending. People are advised to avoid the man-eating flowers who snatch those too concerned over their red-tinged weeping. It’s too dangerous, the flowers are too angry. Beware beware. Death is near.
**
Sunny lays out her frayed picnic blanket and painstakingly pins it down to the swaying grass with nicked knick-knacks and a stack of beaten books. Her backyard is supposed to be off limits, as the third part of her high wooden fence is replaced by the even higher wall of the sunflower barrier, but she doesn’t care about the warnings. She has never angered the flowers in all her thirty years of life. Her food may be sparse, and her clothes may weep at her less than admirable seamstress skills, but times can be messy when dealing with the supernatural and spiritual. They’re such finicky things, and don’t know how to communicate their non-human feelings to their very human companions. A mess is to be expected.
Once her blanket is sufficiently held by her assortment of items, Sunny straightens and walks over to the flowers. Their stalks shiver at her presence, leaves trembling as she reaches out, and the petals drip their thick bloody tears onto her thin wrist when she brushes a gentle touch over them.
“You’re so sad,” Sunny says. A shudder sheds even more tears, and they make a bracelet of red over her skin. “Why are you sad?” The flowers do not answer her question. They sway in a non-existent wind and tangle within one another. Sunny releases a sigh and backs away, back to her blanket. When she turns, though, there is a rustle from the field. Sunny glances over her shoulder and watches as the still flowers keep their secrets. Ultimately, she leaves them to their own devices and goes to her blanket to read. In the stillness of silence, she breaks through it and forces it to bend with bits of commentary and favorite passages. No voice chimes in, but she is content with speaking to the wind and flowers and believing that the rustle settles in for storytime.
**
“Thems flowers will eat ya, girl.”
Bo, an old neighbor of Sunny’s since she was a little girl, props himself up on a wobbly stool to peer over her fence at the sound of her lonely voice. Sunny peeks at him from the corner of her eye and offers a placating smile without lifting her head.
“Thank you for the concern, Bo, but I’ll be fine. Promise on my mama.”
His harumph is unhappy, though more from the dismissal of his wise wisdom than her lack of concern for herself. “The shrine is all scorched up, y’know. Ain’t no makin’ thems flowers happy now.”
“Thank you, Bo,” she repeats firmly and flips a page. The flowers rustle in front of her, and she finally looks up to pay attention to them instead of the nosy neighbor. Another harumph from the fence, then the rattle of the fence as Bo climbs down from his perch and goes about another’s business. Sunny holds out a hand and lets a drop of blood fall into her palm from one of the petals, then smears it around and watches it pool into hatch-marked creases.
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Another rustle in the field, and she swears she hears a groan. “Where were we?” she muses, then goes back to reading to the flowers. They cease in their swaying, and all is right once again.
**
People talk, especially in a town as small as theirs. Sunny can’t go shopping for food or beads or even string without vendors and customers nagging her about being in her backyard so close to the flowers. She hears whispers of her losing her mind, talking to the flowers like she does. Maybe she has. At some point, she had put away her book and spoken to the field as if it could converse back, and sometimes it did. The leaves and petals shake at points too random and precise to be accidental, and the rustle from within grows closer and closer with each passing day. Bloody tears once fell in sympathy as she spoke of her time alone, mama and papa dead, no desire for a husband. Their faces turn up at the happy stories. No words echo hers, but they speak. You just have to learn how to listen.
So, Sunny won’t argue that she speaks to them, because she does. Sometimes, when the nagging gets more than a little irritating, she bares her teeth at them and tells them that, yes, she does talk to them. What of it? Should they throw her to the flowers and watch them spit her back out? They never know what to say to that, or maybe it’s the way her sweet face almost morphs into something feral when she smiles that way. It’s a good way to be left alone and looked over.
She buys some beads and string and little snacks for the next few meetings, slipping her hand into open purses and around unwatched fruits, and wanders the market a moment more. Listens to the rumors not about her. Another idiot got snatched by the sunflowers, had strayed too close in either a stroke of arrogance or stupidity. Sometimes… sometimes Sunny wonders if she asked, would the flowers snatch an annoyance of hers, too? If she offered a token in exchange, would they target another and leave her hands empty of blame?
The talk of insanity isn’t all that unfounded. She goes home before her unsavory lingering is noted. The rest of the dark house is ignored and bypassed in favor of reaching her back porch, her bag of goods in hand.
Like usual, the yard is empty. The sunflowers aren’t yellow anymore—the petals had soaked up all the blood and now tint the world a haunting red hue—but Sunny is not deterred. It had become a bit of a ritual, if she is to be honest. Maybe she’s imagining these things and the flowers really don’t care about her stories or conversation, but it’s become a comfort to her. She swears there’s a looming presence within the field, more crushing than that of the sunflowers. Her curiosity holds fast to her heart, blocking the logic from her mind; she wants to know what watches her from beyond the flowers. She wants to know if it’s curiosity that draws it nearer to her, or perhaps the companionship she offers with the otherwise lonely sessions on the picnic blanket. She wants to know if it’s lonely too.
Sunny makes her way over to the wall of flowers after setting down her shopping haul—the blanket is still pinned to the grass, safe from the rain that hasn’t fallen since the first drop of blood—and reaches up to stroke one of the petals. The flower almost seems to bow its head down for her to give it attention, and she grins up at it even when her fingers stain red. “Ready for our story time?” she asks. Sunny expects the usual bit of rustling from behind the wall, perhaps a rolling rock to usher her into movement, but none of those things happen. She peers past the flower with a confused furrow to her brow. “What’s wrong?”
In answer, the sunflowers shiver and quake. A heaving breath comes from behind the stalks and shoos them out of its way. Sunny backs away from the sunflowers, one slow step at a time, and looks up, up, up, at the shadow that brings itself toward and over her. It’s all teeth in a snarling snout big enough to cover her and then some, and too many multicolored eyes staring down at her, matted fur and rippling scales and a set of dark and twisted horns that should bow its large head but don’t under the strength of its muscle-corded neck. She catches a glimpse of a short, stubby tail flicking this way and that, and despite herself she wants to laugh at how it reminds her terribly of a happy goat kid. The creature looms above her, draws itself to its full height on back legs and arches forelegs at her as if ready to scoop her up and take her into oblivion. Its head is bowed down and it very well could snap those jaws around her body within a second. Nose to nose, breath sweeping over breath.
Sunny smiles, bright and squinted, and lays a hand on its snout so that she can pull its face down and plant a kiss to what she thinks is its forehead, right between the main pair of eyes. The snarls end in an instant, and it comes back down on all fours. She kisses again, right atop that fuzzy snout. “Come, friend,” she says. Two bright yellow eyes narrow in on her, softer than she’s ever seen a human’s. “I have some beads to make a necklace for you, and a new book to read.”
The creature’s answering rumble trembles the ground, but Sunny smiles again and goes to her blanket to sit. Her creature, the sunflower guardian, her friend, curls its massive body around her so that she can lean against its side and it can rest its head next to her leg. Sunny talks and talks, strokes fingers down its face, makes matching necklaces, and it talks back. No words still, but she’s learned its language, and she can finally see the kindness and emotion in its eyes. As she falls asleep nestled in the cocoon of its warm body, it nudges a nose against her cheek in a warm “Thank you.”
**
In the morning, people wake to their beloved wall of flowers bright and yellow once more, and fresh goods on their doorsteps. Even monsters get lonely sometimes.