Happy Fourth Of July, Everyone! :D

"How did you find me?" I slurred, the cold freezing me from the inside out.

"I followed the trail you left," he answered before he gestured somewhere behind him. "Come here," he groaned as he picked me up.

I clung to him like burs on bark animals and other people wear. He wasn't much warmer than the elements we were stranded in but he was an improvement.

"Did you know that you are bleeding?" my stranger asked me, taking me somewhere.

My mind was too fuzzy to completely understand what he was talking about.

"But you're not bleeding," I blended my words together, after I have him a quick once over as best as I could. Why would he ask if I knew he was bleeding?

"Well, hypothetically if I was a mage like you, I thought you would know how to slow the blood loss down?"

My upper canopy hurt. Why was he asking such difficult questions?

"You would need something to slow it down," I mumbled as I tried to clear my thoughts. "Before that, clean the wound."

He settled me down on a fallen log and then started rummaging through his bag. When he faced me again, he had some white strips and a dirt colored bottle.

"Try not to scream, okay?" He looked back up at me with his cyan colored eyes. His scar on the lower part of his face were sharply contrasting from the fire's light.

Wait. Why was there a fire? Where was the fire?

The sharp jolt that assaulted my left limb was enough to make me cry out in surprise. He didn't let up, if anything, he pressed harder. The cloth he was using was starting to turn green, the color of my sap, at the edges.

I stayed quiet like he asked but when he was done, he pulled a mat made out of pine branches, covered it with some furs, placed me on the mat, and then covered me with the remaining furs.

"Don't worry, I'll keep watch. You rest," he answered when he saw me looking at him.

The last thing I felt was my stranger running his branches through my hair before I fell asleep.

Author's Note- I have never experienced either but I am trying to write a character who is suffering from at least enough hypothermia for the mental fog but not bad enough for a doctor and blood loss. But then again it might be mild hypothermia and the added blood loss might create the mental fog.

Taking one look at him, something dawned on me. He was like me, looked like me in a sense. He had the dark, bark-like pattern that I have.

Only his was in a different shape.

I think it's so adorable that early humans took wild gourds - a tiny fruit that hollows out as it dries, making it float - and decided to make something out of it

they thought the tiny fruit was so good that they bred it for thousands of years, making it larger to form into bowls and cups, and different shapes to become bottles and spoons

and musical instruments

And then, people took the hollow gourds they farmed, and they turned them into houses for birds. We adapted them into the perfect houses for birds, and now there are specific breeds of birdhouse gourd just for making into birdhouses

And humans dedicated gardening space and time and thousands of years of breeding to make the gourds so absolutely perfect for birds, that there is a species of bird that lives almost exclusively in them

🟢 You are still a writer even when you haven't written in a while.

🟢 You are still a writer even when you feel like you aren't writing enough.

🟢 You are still a writer when you feel like your work isn't good.

🟢 You are still a writer when other people don't like your work.

🟢 You are still a writer when you aren't published.

🟢 You are still a writer when you only have works in progress.

🟢 You are still a writer if all you write is fanfiction.

"Alright," the stranger sighed, "what's with the orange peels?"

I was laying some fragments of orange peels out to dry for black gold and others near some potted carnivorous plants that needed to be fed.

"Black gold," I said as I pointed to the ones drying on the sunlit stone. "Plant food." I pointed to the other peels that were already attracting flies.

"I thought that those plants didn't like any nutrients in their soil," he remarked as he gracefully draped himself across a fallen log in the shadow of a large maple. "And I though that you hated potting plants."

"They don't. But they still need food, just not food like the others." I sat down not too far from him, in the shade too. "I don't like potting plants but a kid asked me for a plant that wasn't like any others."

"So, obviously, you chose..." he propped himself up, "what is that, anyway?"

"Dionaea. A fly trap." I cast my gaze back to the potted plant that just caught a decent size fly. "I had to do a lot of trading to get a hold of that plant."

"If it was such a hassle to get, why did you?"

"The kid was curious about the world outside our boarders." I looked him dead in the eyes and told him, "Tell me how I could have said 'no'." I settled in a position similar to his. "When I see the kid again, I plan on giving it to him as a gift."

After I said that, he settled back down on his log, lost in thought.

"Why are there so many sunflowers, especially by the boarders?" my stranger asked when we passed a field of some bowing sunflowers.

"There's some bad magic, I don't know what, that the king has tried to protect the kingdom from. But everything he tried didn't work. Ages ago, the mages who used the magic I use figured out that sunflowers were the best defense."

"Did they ever tell the king what they found out?"

I knew he was looking at me but I couldn't tell which he was more concerned for - me or if the king found out sunflowers were good protectors against magic in general.

I stopped to look over the elderly sunflower field. They should be getting ready to go to seed so the next generation could defend the kingdom. But that also means that I have to work in some black gold deep into the soil for them.

"No. They never told him and he never found out," I solemnly stated. It's just not how we were.

You gotta write for funsies sometimes. Everything doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. Like. Who cares if it’s a little silly it is made out of love

Great. I was on my way from the capital and one of those clockwork soldiers stopped me.

"Where are you going?" it asked as it stopped me from going any further.

I've been warned that there's still one functional at all times. I didn't know what time it was, so it might not be that one.

"What hour are you?" Every clockwork soldier works only during the hour it was named after. There are some that I think are either decoys or meant to scare people, since they never work.

"I am hour thirteen," it answered me, its empty eyes boring into mine.

This one, number thirteen, people have named the liar. No matter what it says, it is never true. I've met it once before and it said that it was going to snow in the middle of summer.

"I'm going home," I replied to the soldier. It's the law for citizens to answer human and clockwork soldiers.

There was a sound of clicking gears before it cocked its head off to the side and said, "Long live the King."

"Yeah," I muttered, walking by once he let me pass, "long live the King of the Day."

Its cold metal hand grabbed my wrist.

"Yes, long live the King of the Day. But I originally meant his brother."

The King's brother is a myth, a legend, something that never has and never will happen.

The clockwork soldier numbered thirteen let me go.

The flowers proudly displayed their colors. From the delicate daisy to the graceful Sakura.

I reached up to a flowering apple tree and with tender love murmured, "Absolutely beautiful, darling."

Tomorrow, I knew the apple tree would give more blossoms. After all, what living thing doesn't want to be praised?