Shuffling among sundews the size of sycamores, Daisy wondered if she should try another answer. Outwardly, she shrank away from her friend as though worried about infecting her. Inwardly, she strained against the bars of her own ribcage.
She even opened her mouth to speak…
No. The florist’s couldn’t be saved by a bunch of heartfelt speechifying. In real life, things like that were solved with advertising or reputation-building or expanding or stuff like that. Cold, hard measures. Realistically, a florist’s had about as much chance of getting supermarket levels of attention as… as Daisy had of saving Equestria.
That saving Equestria wasn’t her job was just icing on a foul-smelling cake. And she’d probably panic and run away and muck it up even if it was tailor-made for her, because in real life, realistically, however much she pretended she was the sane one, she was no better than Lily and Rose.
All the same… Lily came here to help.
Perhaps she shouldn’t push them away. Perhaps Lily was right, and shutting herself out of the world wasn’t going to help the shop or herself at all. Perhaps…
Roseluck and Lily Valley had staked their futures on the florist’s too; neither wanted to see it fail, or could afford to do so. That meant they might have found ways of solving it, simply because they needed to rise to the occasion too. Daisy didn’t have to do everything on her own. She wasn’t teacher keeping an eye on kindergarten students.
The sundews rose like alien plants all around her; big paddle-shaped growths covered in stalks tipped with dewdrops. “Alien” seemed about right; those dewdrops looked like shiny alien eyes staring with a bizarre intelligence at the world all around.
But then she relaxed.
What was the point, after all? It was only a dream. Nothing bad had happened. Not really. Anyway, if something bad did happen, then so what? For once, couldn’t she enjoy not being twitchy and feeling her heart was on the verge of exploding?
So she stopped looking.
By contrast, Lily beside her was as twitchy as a sparrow in hawk country. Her gaze jumped from dewdrop to dewdrop completely at random. Why couldn’t she relax for once?
“You ever have dreams like this, Lily?” Daisy said, hoping to gently guide her down off her high-jumping fears.
“About plants? Yeah, sure.” Twitchy gaze jumped about all over again.
Daisy sighed. “I meant nice, quiet ones you enjoy.”
Irritatingly, Lily didn’t respond.
“Are you listening?”
“Still here. Uh… no, I can’t think of any dreams like that.”
“So what do you dream about?” After another round of non-response, Daisy added, “You must dream of something.”
“Is this really the time to be talking about that kind of thing?”
“Oh, stop looking all over. Just enjoy a few moments’ peace.”
“Oho! It’s peaceful now, sure, but give it a few moments, and then we’ll see how much peace is left alive.”
Were she not still walking, Daisy would have hit herself over the forehead. “Lily! This is a dream! We’ve had countless moments for something bad to happen, and even if it did happen Lily stop looking around and look me in the eye – even if it did happen, we’re not really here. We’ll… just wake up, or something.”
“Yeah?” snapped Lily. “Is that why those green toothy things tried to kill me earlier? I don't remember you being so complacent then!”
“Well you know. It looked so real. At the time. I must have just panicked.”
“Aha!”
“But I'm not panicking now! Panicking isn't going to help either of us.”
“Pfft. It's not panicking. It's cautiousness. If it wasn't for us and our cautiousness, we'd all have been goners long ago. That's what ponies do! They pay attention to danger! And if this is a dream anymore, then tell me this: When did you plan on waking up? Waiting to give another few lectures on what a paranoid idiot I am first?”
“Oh, don’t start that,” said Daisy, turning her gaze away. “You know what I mean.”
“I want to go home, Daisy. Home. Where the other ponies are around us, where I can hear pony voices and touch pony hooves and see pony faces nearby! You know, where we’re safe. In a herd. Because that’s what we do.”
Daisy reminded herself over and over: Good friends did not get angry, good friends did not get angry. “We’re not raw animals, you know. We can have time to ourselves.”
“Oh yeah?” Lily’s voice drilled into Daisy’s shell. “And you know what I want those other ponies to think? I want them to think, ‘Those flower ponies, they’re all right, a bit twitchy but good souls really’. That won’t happen if we’re shut in a box all the time! Like we're scared of other ponies too!”
Daisy still refused to meet her eye; she could feel the words battering away at her mind, any moment about to hit something soft and sensitive. “Well, maybe if you didn’t go on about the end of the world –”
“And lie!? I don’t think so. The end of the world is kinda important. If it happens today, next year, or dozens of eons into the future, I wanna know! If anything, you and everyone else should be more careful!”
“Yeah, but those books you’re reading are hardly top-class material.”
“I just wanna be sure. That doesn’t make me mad. It doesn’t!”
Once more, Daisy groaned. No wonder other ponies backed away from Lily half the time. She had the unerring ability to suggest frothing at the mouth even while keeping her real mouth meticulously clean.
Then again…
Surely someone so upset over doom and gloom could understand?
“Maybe you’re right,” Daisy said.
Suspicious silence flowed from Lily’s side of the conversation. The back of Daisy’s head – even through the curls – was washed by the soundlessness.
Of its own accord, her walking body inched her further away from Lily. Who was Daisy? Who was she, really, with her excessive curls and plain name? To avoid her own angry question, she slumped, head lowering, tail dragging, shoulders and hips trying to meet as she scrunched up. Her lips trembled. Those words could not be said.
On the other hoof…
What had she got to lose?
“You’re right,” Daisy said.
Lily grunted in surprise.
“Why fight it, in the end?” Daisy continued, her voice dead of hope. “I – We all spent years holding it off, but it beat us. To tell you the truth, it’s kind of a relief.”
Surprisingly soft, Lily’s voice said, “Hold on a second. You can’t give up just yet.”
“I’m not giving up. I’m being sensible. You and Rose should get out while you still can. Since it’s my business, I ought to take responsibility for it.”
“It’s our business. Daisy, you don’t have to – I only meant that –”
“Look, I had my chance, I showed the world what I could do, and I blew it. That says it all really. Doesn't it? I'm not going anywhere. You can get out, but I'm going down with the ship. It's my responsibility. I'm the one who failed you. No one else.”
To her shock, Lily’s hoof held her by the shoulder. They both stopped, the sloshing died away, and still Daisy didn’t dare look.
“The truth is,” Daisy said, trying not to crack as she stared at her own reflection, “you've never needed me. I've always needed you. I kept taking all that paperwork and business stuff from you, but Roseluck's the pony for numbers and you've always enjoyed running the shop more than I ever have. I'm the third wheel. I'm nothing without you two. And now you're suffering for my mistakes, because I couldn't admit that before. Well, I'm admitting it now. I'm done. It's over. It shouldn't have lasted this long. To tell you the truth, if it wasn't for you and Roseluck, I'd, I'd, I'd be nowhere right now. I wouldn't have lasted this long.”
She closed her eyes tightly.
Then Lily made a slow, subdued, but scarily stressful sound, like a gasp too terrified to be heard but too terrified to stay and hold its nerve in her chest.
Daisy opened her eyes. She did not look up, seeing the reflections instead.
She did focus, however.
The sundews were gone. What she’d lazily assumed were more sundews were in fact vast trumpets of green.
Her dazed stare followed them up to yellowing peaks, where plant mouths gaped. Sarracenia flava, her botanist mind said. The trumpet pitcher plant.
And there were others. Part of her insisted they hadn't been there before now.
“Daisy,” said Lily in a slow, thoughtful voice that twanged like the last string of a harp. “Do you notice anything… odd about these plants?”
“They’re bigger than us?” said Daisy, staring up at those mouths. “Or we’re as small as mice?”
“Not that. You notice any kind of… theme about them?”
Equally slowly, equally thoughtfully, Daisy replied, “They’re Equestrian?”
“YYYYYYes, but, uh, more specific than that?”
Without any kind of signal, the two of them drew together. Daisy’s elbow bumped her friend’s.
“They’re… swamp plants…?”
“YYYYYYes, but keep going.” Lily swallowed. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Er… is that the thinking about how dreams can be symbolic, or the thinking we might be in a bit of trouble?”
“Right now? Both?”
Daisy had been here longer. She’d seen the yellow flower heads of the reedy Utricularia, the greasy leaves of Pinguiculia, and umpteen different varieties of pitcher plant before Lily had stumbled across her little island. To a non-specialist – or a specialist with too much on her mind – the names would mean nothing, but now she focused on them…
Daisy gulped. “They’re all –”
“Don’t say it. I’m very, very happy trying not to think what it means.”
“I thought you said it was important?”
“Yes, but when it’s actually happening…”
Both of them drew close enough to wrap forelimbs around each other without ever taking their eyes off the trumpets.
Daisy gulped again, because her fear hadn’t gone down the first time. “They’re all… carnivorous plants. All of them. They’re traps.”
“Oh!” moaned Lily. “Why did you have to say it!?”
Around them, the unbreachable wall of plants, without seeming to move in any way, drew that little bit closer to the huddling pair.
Only then did Daisy realize that they were both completely walled in.