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She was a little scuffed from the sand and vines that’d dragged her across the desert but she was otherwise okay.
“What happened to you?” Agatha said, peeling her hands off me and the thick goo coming with it. “And why are you covered in goop?”
“It’s the creature’s stomach fluids.”
Agatha’s face screwed up in disgust.
“Stomach fluids?” she said, peering at the stuff on her hands and chest from where she’d hugged me.
“I convinced the creature I was her child who needed to be birthed and… well, here I am.”
She just stared at me like she didn’t understand a word of what I’d just said.
“Your mom?”
“Well, not exactly like a mom—”
Her eyes bulged and she stabbed a finger toward my leg.
“Look out! The vine! It’s trying to grab you!”
“No, it’s not. It’s the Desert Flower. She’s cleaning me off, the way she would with one of her newborns.”
“Oh.”
She wore a frown. I doubted she would ever fully understand what I was trying to tell her.
The vine stretched out and reached for Agatha’s leg.
“So, I guess it’s no danger to us anymore?” she said.
The vine snapped around her ankle and set to dragging her along the sand again.
“It’s no longer a danger to me,” I said. “But it is to you.”
I smothered the vine in the goo and once more, it let go.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Agatha said. “I don’t want this thing to be my mom.”
I was about to explain to her that couldn’t happen unless she went through the same birthing process I had but she didn’t much look like she was interested in learning that.
I took her by the hand and led her away.
I glanced back at the vine.
It rose and swayed side to side. I could almost have mistaken it for a wave of goodbye.
Or was it a wave of hello?
We returned to our camp and packed up.
Agatha moved faster than I had ever seen her.
She kept glancing at the floor and hopped when she thought she felt something slithering around her feet.
Her skin crawled and she didn’t stop checking over her shoulders until I told her the Desert Flower’s tendrils couldn’t reach the distance we’d traveled.
I didn’t tell her that we would almost certainly be within the territory of another Desert Flower by now.
