Entantress' Notes

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The notes of Lily Grayden / Entantress during her missions and interactions with the Big Team.

## Time Passes - Birthday Blues

Everything that had happened today had worn her right out: swimming
with possibly (probably) alien mermaids; watching a duel between her teammates
from between her fingers; stealing not one, but two things from the League of Heroes with Olivia. Maybe the travel
to and from space, though nearly instantaneous, made her jet-lagged. Uh…space-lagged?
Maybe grafting this new plant onto herself was draining her energy. Whatever it
was, Lily had had a very full, very fun birthday. She was finally 15, and the
last thing she thought as she dropped onto her bed was a hope that Jaime was
right, maybe it would only take one year for her birthday wish to come true.
Her dreams that night – evening really, she fell asleep as
soon as she got home, even before eating dinner – were more vivid than usual. Just
as fantastic as always though. Maybe she was influenced by Elle’s mention of
Avalon and dryads and the feywild, places of legend and lore, but Lily dreamt about
medieval times that night. Well, sort of medieval.
“Is this the Ren Fair(e?)?”
she thought to herself, taking stock of her surroundings. She could see pretty
much everyone she knew from the Big Team there: Gwen and Elle in shining armor
with their swords; NP was some kind of alchemist or potion maker, but all of
her arms were mechanical instead of light; Manaline was teleporting around
dressed as a wizard, pointy hat and all. She stopped to stare when she looked
down at her own hands. “Holy crap I’m
normal again!” Lily exclaimed in her head, feeling around at her hair – it was
hair again! – her face, she could see her hands with normal human skin! She had
to find someone to confirm it with, someone to ask to make sure she wasn’t
dreaming, until she remembered that this was a dream. The excitement instantly
faded, her face falling into a frown tinged with anger, confusion, sadness,
betrayal…
“Hey, are you alright? We’re kind of in the middle of this
thing so if you want to have like an emotional crisis, you can in like 2
minutes. Promise.” Rescue was leaned over and whispering to Lily. She looked up
at him to realize she was knelt in front of the royal thrones, King Frederick
and Queen Rescue presiding over their royal court and in the process of
knighting her. Embarrassed, Lily nodded and assumed a serious expression on her
face, giving Rescue a thumbs up that she was good to go.
“Sir Lily of Grayden,” Queen Rescue stood back up and said
authoritatively into his microphone, his voice ringing out to all who could hear,
“for your dedication to the plants of the Kingdom of Halcyon, we hereby knight
you with the title ‘Knight of Gardens’.”
King Frederick moved forward with his sword, tapping Lily
once on each shoulder and stepping back again then motioning for her to stand. He
was wearing the branch-looking armor Lily had made for him at the fair, except
now it looked like metal instead of wood and it was moving like the vines were alive.
Lily’s transfixion was broken by the king holding out one of his hands with a
small bag in it.
“For you! It’s a gift, or a prize, I’m not really sure what
you call it when a king gives you stuff, but that’s what this is. Take it!” Frederick
pushed his hand toward Lily, ushering for her to take the bag and whatever it
contained, then returned his attentions to the crowd behind her. “Big Court,
your new knight!” He exclaimed as Rescue struck a chord on an electric guitar,
the sound blasting out across the fair. Out of nowhere, or maybe they were
there the whole time, an entire band was behind Frederick, lead by Rescue, and
they were jamming as people in the crowd started to dance.
Lily made her way down from the throne platform which had
become a stage for the band, opening her gift to find… beans? Colourful ones,
too; they sparkled and shone in the light, giving them a sort of magical gleam.
"Oh, I guess I’m meant to plant these,
then climb up the beanstalk to the giant’s castle. This is definitely not how I
remember that story going, but I’ll chalk that up to creative license". Just
as she was about to pick a bean from the bag, she felt someone tap her on the
shoulder, but when she turned to look nothing was there but hands. Something
picked up the bag from her hand as she was distracted and when Lily turned back
around, Nonpareil was there in front of her looking through the bag of beans.
“Beans, huh? You're gonna cook these before you eat them, right?”
Nonpareil asked, scrutinizing a bean between two fingers one of her many hands,
holding it up to the sunlight.
“Cook them? I thought I was supposed to plant them? That’s
how the story goes, right?” Lily wasn’t sure why she was asking. She’d must
have heard and read the story a thousand times as a kid; it was always one of
her favourites.
“Trust me, cook these, then eat them. Can’t go wrong.”
Nonpareil handed back the bag and many-arm-walked back to her lab.
"Where am I even
supposed to cook things here? Over a fire? In a cauldron?" Lily wondered to
herself, surveying the area for somewhere that might have a kitchen. There were
too many things to look at and Lily felt herself getting overwhelmed. In one
direction Seth was punching at Poppy-Rose, trying to no avail to make a dent in
her; elsewhere she thought she saw Jaime sneak behind a building as Olivia took giant stretchy steps trying to find them; the band’s
music was blasting even louder than before and adding to her headache. "Maybe if I just eat the beans, I can climb
the beanstalk and go somewhere quieter." she thought, squeezing her eyes
shut and throwing some of the beans into her mouth. She chewed and chewed –
were these jelly beans? – keeping her eyes closed in an attempt to make the
headache go away. It started to work as all the flavours started to meld
together, the music faded into the background almost like it was getting
further away, sounding more like… screams?
Lily opened her eyes to find that a beanstalk hadn’t grown
out of the ground. She had. She must have been twenty feet tall and still
growing, her body turning into plants again. On the ground her friends,
teammates, everyone was running for cover and she could hear Nonpareil shouting
up to her, “I TOLD YOU TO COOK THEM FIRST!” before someone dragged her to safety. Why didn't she just listen to NP?
Lily tried to respond, to apologize, ask for help, but all that came out of her
mouth were unintelligible noises. She didn’t even have words anymore – what was
she supposed to do but keep growing and find out where the hell this would
take her?
Her head finally hit the clouds and crashed up through rock
or stone or something very hard that shattered as she punched up through it. It
was then that she stopped growing, so that just her head was stuck in what
appeared to be another throne room, but this one was much bigger than the one
at the faire below. The ceiling in here was high and ornately carved with heroic images and scenes, with walls made of shining
white stone gilded with gold. Windows around the room showed the serene black
of space outside. In front of Lily stood a group of people, at the head of
which were Godspeed, Cyclone, and Sledge, who towered over her.
“Just like the data showed, she’s too weird for the League
of Heroes! We cannot let this threat go unchecked!” Godspeed’s voice boomed
out, rattling the windows.
“She broke our castle? No one just gets to break our castle!
Where the hell is my hammer?!” Sledge yelled back to the crowd, an arm extended
and waiting for her weapon.
Cyclone knelt by Lily’s head with a smile, and for a moment
she felt relief and hope that he’d help her, that he would understand this was
all an accident, but his face shifted to a look of disappointment as he began
to speak.
“I know all these changes are new for you, but it looks like
you just can’t handle it right now. Don’t worry Lily; we’ll make sure you never
hurt anyone.” Cyclone’s tone was calm and comforting, but they still struck
fear into Lily’s heart. She was still shouting nonsense, unable to defend or
explain herself aloud but the thoughts still ran through her mind.
"Wait! Help me! I didn’t
mean to break anything! I just want to help I promise! I’ll be less weird, I
don’t know how but I’ll do it! I just need help! Please don’t be mad at me I
didn’t mean to hurt anyone!"
Lily could feel herself start to cry and her vision got
blurry, obscured by the tears in her eyes, but it looked like the League of
Heroes all crowded around her were crying too. She saw people wiping at their
faces, faces that were twisted into horrible expressions of pain and grief
probably just like her own. Cyclone just let the tears roll down his face
before raising an arm to summon the dreadful guard dragon, Search, who sailed in
overhead and dove at Lily with fire bursting from her mouth. Lily cringed and
tried to shrink away from the heat but couldn’t move, paralyzed by the castle
floor and fear, wishing dearly that she could change things somehow…
And then Lily woke up. On the floor. That would explain the
headache.
She had a moment’s panic when she saw the greenery all
around her – she thought she may have gone back to… wherever she went the night
she changed – but then recognized the posters on her bedroom walls, and the
view out of the window. She forgot she had a tendency to unravel in her sleep,
that staying person-shaped took conscious effort. As she began to wind herself
back up, Lily noticed that it was taking longer than usual. A lot longer. It
had been several minutes and she’d only got through her upper body, but she was
already almost as tall as the ceiling of her room.
By the time she’d finished reforming herself, Lily had
noticed some things. New things. For starters, she was much taller than before;
she couldn’t stand up straight in her room but estimated that she must be about
10 feet tall. Maybe more. Secondly, she heard the constant chatter of Sera in
her head, always saying “I’m hungry! I want nutrients! I love the sun; I eat it
up!” over and over again. When she went to remove Sera, to put them in their
own pot, the thoughts remained, but now Lily heard them in her own voice. "Oh no, is this a growth spurt?" She
worried internally, afraid that Sera may somehow have changed her biology, but
the warm light from the sun seemed to fuel
that endless loop in her head. At least she wasn’t hungry now.
The last thing, just as Lily was finished putting herself
back together, was a knock at her door. It was mom, it had to be; she was the only person who
bothered talking to Lily anymore.
“Lily, are you- are you alright?” Lily could hear her mother
sniffle, holding back tears, even though she was muffled through the door.
“I’m ok mom,” she was lying, “Are you? You sound sad.” Lily
crept up against the door, half so she could better hear her mom, half so she
could stop her from getting in. Lily didn’t want anyone seeing her like this.
“I’m… I don’t know Lily. I was fine and then I suddenly wasn’t.
Everyone just started crying, so I thought I should make sure… figured I should
check on you. Are you crying, too?”
“No.” Lily was crying. “I’m fine.” Her voice was soft and trembled,
but she hoped her mom would just leave her be.
“Ok then. There’s breakfast in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”
Marie patted the door once and walked away, and only started crying again when
she thought she was out of earshot. She wasn’t.
Lily sat curled up against her bedroom door and cried. What
else could she do? Somehow, she’d gotten weirder again and she hadn’t
even been awake this time. She wondered if her birthday wish had been cursed,
or perhaps if birthday wishes didn’t work for plants. She wondered if it was
some kind of punishment for stealing from the League of Heroes, for poking her
nose where it didn’t belong; things always seemed to go poorly when she did
that. She wondered if this was just what puberty was like for plants. The whole
time she was crying and thinking and wallowing in sadness, the sweet smell of
lilies filled her room, and she didn’t know it at the time but that smell
filled the rest of the house too, causing Dennis, Marie, and Mitchell Grayden
to cry more as well.
It was an hour, maybe two, before Lily started to feel
better. Not entirely better, but she’d cried enough or so it felt. She stood up
to take account of herself, only to find that her head didn’t hit the ceiling. Not
just that, but she wasn’t even as tall as she’d been when she went to sleep –
according to the measuring stick on her wall, she was 5’11”. She’d shrunk! What
she was missing in height, she more than made up for in lilies – the floor of
her room was covered in them, some even still attached to her body. The smell
was sickeningly sweet, almost overpowering, and threatened to make her cry
again.
"No, crying doesn’t get
me anywhere," she thought defiantly and wiping at the sap on her face, "I have to go see Dr. Russell. Maybe she’ll
know what happened here. And have a place for all these flowers."
Lily scooped up the flowers on the floor, unwinding a few
vines to help carry them all, and started for the door before hesitating. She didn’t
want to explain what was going on. She couldn’t explain it. She worried that
more weirdness with no answers would only make her family grow more distant, so
she spun around and went for her window instead, sprouting extra arms to open
it and climb down the exterior wall of the house. She’d just go find out what
was happening, and then she’d come back. She’d be able to tell her parents, and
Mitchell if he cared to listen, what was going on and that they had nothing new
to worry about. Oh how she wished that would be the case. Maybe they could even
all sit down and eat together – it had been a while since they’d done that, and
it was still kind of her birthday. God, food sounded so good right now.
“Hey,” Lily mused to herself, “I’m hungry again.”