“What a strange, lovely little clearing,” Lyra thought.

She continued unpacking her sack, stopping once or twice to close her eyes and take a deep sniff of the air. It smelled like normal forest air, but she felt like she was really taking it in when she intentionally stopped and breathed like that. With her lunch set out, she sat on her blanket for a moment and listened to the splashes and tinkling of the creek she’d just crossed. Had it not been for a tree that had fallen across the creek right to this spot, she would never have found it. She felt grateful to the tree and smiled. Just at the edge of her blanket, she noticed a fairly large, plump mushroom she hadn’t seen while setting her things out, and was glad she hadn’t sat on it by accident. She poked the mushroom. It was cool to the touch, and wobbled absurdly. Surprised by how animated it was, Lyra chuckled softly to herself. She gave the mushroom three thumpy pats on its head, which produced a very satisfying and surprisingly loud thunking noise, and returned to her lunch.

Though this particular spot was new, she loved to visit this part of the forest. It wasn’t far from home, and it was always so nice to just enjoy some time alone in the forest with some good food and nothing to do but listen to the birds singing, and streams trickling, and the wind swimming through the golden leaves. It was such a beautiful day that, after snacking a little she laid down. She wasn’t trying to take a nap, just relaxing- which naturally put her straight to sleep.

As the sun continued to rise in the sky, the forest went on about its business. A soon-to-be mother dragonfly buzzed by, searching the stream for somewhere to lay her eggs, taking no notice of the elf girl asleep on her blanket. As she slept, Lyra found herself midst of a strange dream. She dreamt she had climbed into and was laying in a deep hole in the ground. She was warm and comfortable, but as she lay, a storm began to approach. From within the whole she watched, as ominous clouds slowly crept across the darkening sky, growing thicker and deeper until they completely blotted out the sun. Lyra could see flashes of lightning, and hear thunder rolling far across the sky. Rain began to fall. Fear started to close in on Lyra, and she noticed that the hole she was in was being filled with rain. As it filled, Lyra realized that in spite of the darkness brought by the storm, the rain itself was glowing. The light of the rain held back the darkness, and as it filled the hole she was laying in, the pool of water started to grow more and more brightly. The brightness began to be almost uncomfortable, especially the eye that was nearest the pooling rain. The pool continued to rise and was about to reach the level of her eye, the light growing to a blinding brilliance, when suddenly she sat up on her blanket and was awake. Lyra rubbed her eyes as her pulse returned gradually to normal.

“Ah,” she thought, reflecting on how intensely bright the light had felt in her right eye, “the sun must have come out from behind my tree.”

But as she sat, eyes closed, trying to remember the dream, she had the strange realization that the eye which the bright pool had been shining into was the eye that in reality she’d had toward the ground. How could the sun have shone into her downward right eye and not her left which was facing the sky? She opened her eyes and found to her bewilderment that she was in fact completely enveloped in the shade of the forest trees and could hardly see the sun at all.

“It was so bright…” she thought, “was it really just the dream?”

Lyra looked about her as she pondered the strangeness of the situation, then suddenly froze. She was staring at something just beneath the edge of her blanket. She thought for a moment, still drowsy, that it might have been the mushroom from before, but she could still see the mushroom, and the object under her blanket was clearly something else, because… this thing was glowing. Something was glowing from under her blanket so brightly that its radiant golden light was visible through the blanket itself. A tiny gnat flew past the gap where the mysterious object was lifting the blanket just off the grass, and as it passed through the light the gnat briefly gave Lyra the impression of something like a shooting star blazing across the night sky.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Lyra reached up her right hand and touched the side of her face. Whatever this was, it certainly hadn’t been there when she fell asleep- it would’ve been easier to overlook a hob goblin riding a hedgehog. This object must have appeared while she was sleeping, right next to her face, and had begun glowing so intensely that it made its way into her dream and woke her up. She tried to make sense of it, but this was alarmingly bizarre- even the strangest and most exotic plants she’d ever read about wouldn’t have been capable of growing THIS quickly, and while she’d heard of some plants and fungi which emit a “faint glow”, the word “faint” would be a silly descriptor for this glow by any herbalist or phytological standard. Could it be an animal? An insect? Lyra had lived here her whole life and never seen one like this. As far as she knew, the really bright animals were usually magical, most often arcanalian, but most arcanalia were only found in strange and exotic places. Plus, again, this thing didn’t seem to be moving. Though, to be clear, she hadn’t observed it for very long. Lyra had the ability, typical among her race, to be cast briefly into what is called “burst thought” when she was genuinely surprised or alarmed, wherein an elf is able to think very quickly for just a moment. But as her bout of burst thought wore off and the world caught up to her (which is always how she described it) she was ready to investigate.

As strange and alarming as the whole circumstance was, it didn’t come with a sense of danger at all, and her intense native curiosity egged her on. Lyra slowly reached toward the end of her blanket. Her fingers curled around the edge, and she found that the light had a gentle sort of warmth to it. Warmth may not have been the right word. But she noticed a quality of the light which had been affecting her but which she hadn’t been aware of until this moment- the light almost felt inviting, or comfortable somehow. As she pulled the blanket back, the light fell upon her skin and a sense of calm gently washed over her. Finally able to see the source of this glow, she took a breath, and smiled in a tangle of wonder and amusement, as well as relief. This was not because she understood anything about the situation any better, but simply because the source of the glow wasn’t anything strange or alien at all, but simply a beautiful, delicate flower. She recognized the genus immediately, it was clearly an orchid, but that was the only thing she understood. Orchids could, on rare occasion, be found in this forest, but this one looked like some strange variation of the species she was used to.

Lyra watched this phenomenal orchid for what must have been only a minute or two, but by again being utterly surprised by the mix of the foreign and the familiar, she was back in burst thought and the time elapsed felt closer to twenty five or thirty minutes. She had started with simple awe, and moved through thoughts of enjoyment, then curiosity, and was now in the depths of a very deep searching through anything and everything she could remember having ever read that might possibly bring her any answers about what she was actually observing. Suddenly something truly alarming caught her attention and brought her back. The light of the little orchid was fading. Lyra scrambled to her hands and knees and got very close to the orchid, trying frantically to see if she could discern anything about the process as it was unfolding. She was now better able to distinguish some features about the orchid that hadn’t been as clear from her initial angle, the most conspicuous being the shape of the flower itself. From where she stooped now, she could see that one of the chief morphological differences that had made this flower looks so different from the native orchid species was the addition of what appeared to be a large bulb of some sort between the petals and the stem. As Lyra watched, this bulb began to bulge, ever so slightly, and the light faded more slowly from this region than the rest, until it was the only region of the flower left glowing. After a few more minutes there was no longer a discernible light from any part of the flower, and Lyra sat back down into a more comfortable position on her blanket.

“What did I just see” Lyra asked herself as she sat, with that feeling of half waiting for the flower to ‘do something else’.

When it did not do anything else, Lyra finally looked up to check the time, finding that she’d better be on her way soon.

“I have to take it with me,” she thought, “I hate to pick it, but this has to be something new, something completely unknown. It’s the only way to find out. And actually, come to think of it, if it is related to any of the species around here, the flower won’t last more than a day or two, anyway.”

Her mind made up, Lyra gently loosened the roots of the flower from the soil and carefully wrapped the whole thing up. Once it was safely secured in her pack, she headed back to the village.