Lure of the Flower

by Impossible Numbers


We Shall Not Sit Idly By

Roseluck paced up and down the bedroom, trying to do so without looking either at the bed or at the floor. They’d been still for ages. Apart from the slightest puffs of air whispering to her ear, she couldn’t even tell they were alive.

Nearby, Doc hunched over his suitcase. Occasionally, he’d tap a display or hum to himself, but he wasn’t fidgeting or chewing his lip or trying to quell the rising, restless instinct to run off and panic. She’d insisted he look away from the other two, though. Sure, she knew he was either interested in symptoms or checking the machinery, nothing more, but it always looked intrusive when his gaze focused on their sleeping faces.

And she was shaking. Anything to stop her getting jumpy was all right by her. Even she ought to walk out of the room and close the door gently, except… Well, who’d keep an eye on her friends then?

No. Best leave it to Doc. He knew what he was doing. At least he had an actual reason to be there.

Trying to stop herself from breathing desperately, she broke her pacing and hurried over to Daisy’s desk. Flowerpots and a few droopy…

She stopped and stared.

This was entirely the wrong climate to grow them in, and the pot was so watery it’d slosh over the brim if she knocked it. Clustered over the top of it were a mass of green tangles. Among the tangles…

Jaws. Green teeth. Gaping traps.

Roseluck shuddered. “Goodness,” she murmured. “You really were macabre, weren’t you, Daisy?”

Beneath the plant, a herbal guidebook was open. She nudged it aside and saw several more open books underneath. Either Daisy had been keeping tabs on several topics, or she was learning to read X-ray style.

Thankful for something to do, she picked the first one up and looked at the cover.

“Really, really macabre.” She grimaced and almost dropped it onto the ground in her haste.

The next book was blue and red. On the top were the words: Rare Plants of Didgeridoo. Another book beneath that was a travel guide to the same continent.

Roseluck stared. Not once had Daisy ever mentioned this. Not Didgeridoo. Not the… strange plants. Not even the travel.

“What were you planning?” said Roseluck.

Which under the circumstances was really, really, really stupid, and she knew as much the instant she asked. Typical, stupid Roseluck, she thought. Can’t even put two and two together.

Finally, she spun round. “Oh, Doc! Isn’t there anything we can do!?”

Frowning, Doc looked up from his suitcase. “But we are. We’re monitoring the situation and awaiting further developments.”

“You know what I mean!”

Doc cocked his head and pouted: the classic “I’m thinking very seriously about what you just said” look. It was a look that’d never pass through a lie detector unscathed.

“We should get a takeaway?” he tried. “While we wait?”

She slapped her forehead, since she could never quite bring herself to slap him. “No! Daisy needs our help! We can’t just sit here doing nothing.”

“My dear Roseluck, patience is a virtue in the sciences. It takes a lot of painstaking effort and a willingness to let Nature dictate the speed of –”

“Forget Nature! Daisy’s never done this before. Oh, don’t you understand? We’re losing her! I can put up with some of the time she spends on her own and our going off doing other things. Once in a while. But what if something’s got her? What if she doesn’t wake up? I don’t want to have to tell anyone I did nothing. I don’t!”

She hated the way he stared at her. As if it wasn’t enough she sounded like a petulant child complaining to mommy, he just had to lend the memory time to sink in. Already, the blush gripped her cheeks.

“Well,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I suppose it can’t hurt to speculate…”

And as though she hadn’t just exploded under the sheer burning and tightening of the pressure, he turned his back on her and looked at the bed and rubbed his chin as though contemplating calculus. She almost screamed; she certainly puffed her lips up and muffled it to a shrill groan.

“Very well,” he said. “Perhaps another metaphor would suffice for our purposes.” He stamped once. “I got it! Roseluck, imagine we are detectives.”

Her trembling efforts to scream and not scream cancelled each other out. “What?”

“Detectives.” Doc began pacing in her stead while she stared. “There has been a crime. Our friend Daisy has been struck down by some unknown and nefarious force –”

“Good gosh, no!”

“Now now now, don’t worry, don’t worry!” He flapped his hoof to placate her. “I don’t mean a real force! It’s just personification!”

Roseluck blinked at him, frozen in a half-rear.

“Pretending it’s an actual crime,” he explained, “committed by an actual criminal. I just meant something caused Daisy to enter her long sleep.”

By now, whatever had geared her up went ping. Roseluck sagged.

“Now,” Doc continued, giving her a smile, “what are the facts as we know them?”

Ah, now this she could answer. Roseluck walked past him – floorboards tapping gently under each hoof – and draped her forehooves over the foot of the bed. On the floor, Lily was dribbling out of the corner of her mouth.

“Um…” she said.

“Rule one of detective work,” said Doc sharply: “never disturb the scene of the crime.”

“Oh.” Roseluck got down at once. “Sorry.”

“Rule two: gather the preliminary facts of the victim from their nearest and dearest, i.e. those who knew them well.”

“But Lily’s out like a light! And I don’t even know any of Daisy’s relatives. Except maybe her sister, but she’s –”

She even heard him drag his hoof over his face. “I meant you.”

“I knew that,” she said quickly, but she refused to turn around; her face felt hot enough as it was. “I don’t know what I can say. She was mopey and sad and she kept turning down invitations and not talking to us like she used to.”

“How long for?”

Daisy’s mouth hung open, but only slightly. Small, like a child’s. Roseluck longed to close it. Sure, Daisy had turned her back on them the last few –

“I don’t know. Weeks? Months? It was a very long time. I don’t even remember when we all hung out together. All three of us.”

“Anything correlate with the observed phenomenon?”

“I’m sorry?” And her torso really was quite small… and the nasogastric tube was a tiny thread too easily snapped… Daisy should look more dignified instead of looking like she was dropped onto the bed…

“Was anything else happening at the time?” said Doc patiently.

“Yeah. The business wasn’t doing well. But we have times like that. I don’t see why it should mean anything this particular –”

“Does she have a history of depression?”

Roseluck spun round. “Depression? Come on, Doc. That’s going a bit far.”

“You just said she was ‘mopey’.” Doc stroked his chin. “‘Mopey’? What an odd word. Do you think it’s foreign?”

“She was a bit sad, maybe, but depression’s a whole different basket of roses.”

“Maybe it’s French? Derived from ‘moper’, perhaps? Or ‘mopé’?”

“Look, so she’s not… as excitable as Lily –”

Or me, she added in her head, though “excitable” is not the same as saying “easily scared”, right?

“– but that doesn’t mean she’s… I dunno, a depressive or something. That’s like saying you’ve got split personality because you sometimes talk to yourself.”

“Of course, then we’d have to find out what ‘mopé’ means. I’m sorry, Roseluck? Drifted off there, somewhat. What were you saying about your talking to yourself?”

“I was just making the point –” Roseluck’s ears cut off her mouth for a moment. “Hey! I do not talk to myself!”

Beaming triumphantly, Doc added, “No need to be ashamed. Lots of ponies talk to themselves. While they work, for example.”

Now she felt her ears burning red. “That’s different.”

“How, exactly?”

After a brief struggle, she said, “I… was talking to my flowers.”

“No need to be ashamed,” said Doc happily.

“It’s only per-sychological. It’s not like I think they can talk back.” Not since the age of seven, at any rate.

“Never said any different. I myself often conduct long and frighteningly eloquent conversations with my toolkit.”

“Erm… I don’t think it counts if you say things like ‘Turn the blasted screw, you confounded piece of junk.’”

“One of the mysteries of the pony psyche,” said Doc while he ferreted around in his suitcase, “is why we instinctively speak to inanimate objects, knowing full well it’s fruitless. I myself suspect it’s because we have an extremely hard time not believing the world is out to get us. Sabotage was at the forefront of my mind in many cases, I noticed, such as the time when I believed that the screwdriver was deliberately trying to wind me up.”

And the conversation died there. Really, she had no answer to a comment like that. Not one Roseluck liked, anyway.

She turned back to the bed, forcing herself to watch a spectacle that was as exciting as… well, as watching someone sleep while wearing a funny helmet. She glanced down at Lily, whose folded forelimbs were slowly sliding off her chest and down her midriff.

Roseluck wanted to believe there was something outside all this. Some external force, like Doc said, being nefarious at them. She wanted it so badly that her limbs turned white where they squeezed the bedstead. Because the idea that this was Daisy, all Daisy, and Daisy’s choice, slowly killed her like a poisoned clover, bleaching her of all colour and feeling.

Perhaps Lily was right, and there was some depression-eating monster.

Trouble was that the phrase “Lily was right” didn’t feature much in her experience. And she was desperate if she was taking Lily’s ramblings and holding on to them.

Daisy looked so tired. Even in a restful sleep, she suggested that every cell in her body was sighing and sinking further into the bed. Out of sympathy, Roseluck’s own eyelids drooped.

“Bogged down,” she murmured under her breath.

“Sorry?” Doc’s bag muffled his voice.

“Daisy told me once she was feeling bogged down.” Meanwhile, Daisy’s chest rose and fell so gently Roseluck had to concentrate to notice the pulse. “Mired in her work, she said.”

“Mired?”

“I think she was just being poetic.” Roseluck rested her chin on her hooves. “Look at how she sleeps. It’s like she’s in a coma.”

“That’s it!”

Doc’s voice rose so fast she yelped and bounced off the bedstead.

“What?” She glanced round. “What?”

Hooves seized her by the cheeks, and Doc’s manic grin filled her mind, doing absolutely nothing for her nerves.

“We have a potential test case!” He hurried through his speech. “Once we have precedent, we can trace as well as we can the exact progression of the disease, or crime if you will! We have a lead! We have our first task as detectives!”

“Wh’d t’sk?” said Roseluck between smushed cheeks.

“To talk to the pony who went to sleep for longer and longer: just like Daisy!

And with that fell comment, his idea smashed into the roots of her thought and watched it groan and topple with a crash. Leaves of smaller ideas hissed and shook. Her entire mind echoed with the shockwaves.

She pulled back and popped out of his grip. “No way!”

“Yes way! It’s the perfect parallel!” Doc sniffed, slightly miffed.

“You’re not talking about Mister Greenhooves!”

“Who else would I be talking about? Rainbow Dash of the Wonderbolts?” He stroked his chin again. “Although now you mention it…”

Roseluck stamped her hoof. She’d put up with a lot around him, up to and including his bad habit of forgetting space boundaries and grabbing something in excitement, but They Did Not Talk About Mister Greenhooves.

“This case is nothing like his!” she said with a conviction that half-startled herself. “His was weird and a fluke and no one knew what happened and Daisy is not going to end up in a coma!”

She was breathing heavily. Doc looked like a child who’d lost his newly won carnival toy.

“Roseluck?” he said.

“What?” Then she drew back. “I mean… Sorry. What is it?”

Sighing with relief, he continued, “It’s the closest lead we’ve got, and there are uncanny parallels between the two. For Daisy’s sake, shouldn’t we at least give it a fair shot?”

“But… But we can’t talk to him.” Roseluck raised the point like a shield.

Effortlessly, Doc’s smile reached out and guided the shield back onto the ground. “Then we can try the next best thing, and if nothing comes of it, we come back here and stand around looking hopeful. Sound like a good bargain?”

Roseluck did not immediately look at Daisy and Lily, not even when Lily gave a lone snore. She made a point of not looking.

“Nothing will come of it,” she said, but she knew she shouldn’t talk like this. Her insides twisted and tangled themselves up. It was not smart to talk like this. Not sciency.

Doc snapped his suitcase shut. “Never give up hope, my dear Roseluck. Now… do you want to be the Sherluck, or do you want to be the Trotson?”

More pressing issues weighed down her thoughts, but a smaller one slipped out of the scrum. “What on earth are they supposed to be?”

“Don’t ask me: just a couple of names related to detective work. Probably foreign. Shall we make a move?”