"We need to be respectful." Her senior spoke as they watched their team pull on their bio-containment suits. "This is a planet that has refused to submit to outsiders. You all are to show care and respect. If you don't, well, maybe you'll end up being useful as fertilizer."

"You may have set me loose from the vines holding me down, but unfortunately my punishment won't go away so easily."

"What do you mean?"

He pulled up his sleeve to reveal tattoo-like markings etched into his skin. His muscles were pressed in along the lines like he was actively being squeezed.

"Do you wish to know how they do it?" She jumped and looked away from the gardeners bespelling the flowers into bloom.

"It looks like they're just talking to the plants."

"Yes. Nature listens to no commands, but she can be gently convinced."

It must have taken quite a long time for him to come back this time. Slugs and mushrooms and maggots fell from his clothes as he sat up, obviously full from their feast of flesh.

He peered down to the unblemished skin of his hands and sighed.

Time to live once again.

He wasn't entirely sure how long he had traveled through the forest but he was pretty sure he'd wandered somewhere he shouldn't have. The shattered limbs of pertrified wood littered the ground and the trees had become imposing stone pillars.

"What are they trading with?" They whispered to their guide, eyeing the bartering happening between the mechanics. "It doesn't look like gold..."

"Why would they pay for something that valuable with gold?" He scoffed. "Nah, bigwigs like that trade with the really rare shit."

"Like what?"

"Amber, pearls, bone. All of that uncommon organic stuff."

The snow had piled in a fine layer over the garden, green poking through the blinding white.

She brushed through the cold, ice already melting in the spring sun, to stroke the lax fronds.

"Come on, pretties. Time to wake up!" She whispered and smiled when the snow was shaken off by leaves stretching up to greet her.

The trees stretched to the sky, taller than anything he'd ever seen. The eerie feeling of walking through perfectly spaced rows of tree trunks, unable to tell just how far he'd wandered, had him hunching his shoulders and tensing his legs.

He felt something watching him. Not to hunt. Just to watch.

"Watch out. These trap flowers will eat you whole when your back is turned."

"Only when your back is turned? What are they, like, shy or something?"

"You know, I was thinking-"

"Unlikely, but ok."

"Shut up. So anyways, I was thinking if I die-"

"If?"

"Shut up! If I die I want to come back as one of those flowers that bloom only once a year and smell like death."

"... Why?"

"It would be funny."

"They took everything from you."

"Yes."

"And yet you still offer them your little potions and cures? Why?"

"... You know, the biggest difference between poison and medicine is the dosage." They smirked. "Whose to say that all of my 'little potions' are for their betterment?"

There was silence across the field, something that hung heavy over their shoulders.

She stared out, away from the battlefield, to the forests that had been laid to waste by cannonfire and iron rounds.

The winds greeted him as he stepped over the threshold and back out into the wilds. It curled around him almost possessively, whistling at his friend as they made their way over.

"You wish for me to make you a cure?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why should I help you? Why should I make it for you? That plant is rare and precious. You should be trying to convince me that it is not a waste to use it on you."

"Touch him and you will not live past the hour." She felt her neck prickle and took the risk of looking away from the creature in front of her to find the voice. Her archers readied their arrows, following her gaze to the woman above them.

The woman, beautiful and most certainly dangerous, sneered at them. "You come into my domain and hunt my guests. That is grounds for swift punishment."

The floating gardens were sacred. An altar of harvest for all those who find it to eat until full. Of course an attempt to take more than you can consume would lead to immediate reimbursement. If you dug even an inch beneath the surface the bright white of bone would smile up to greet you.

“You know. I get the feeling we shouldn’t be here.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Every single one of these houses have been blown outward by some eldritch horror of a tree and the flower heads are following us like eyes.”