Growing Lilies

The girl yawned as she pulled up to the farm in her Mom-mobile. Despite being spacious the car felt full. A dog was buckled into the passenger seat, and in the back seat there was a stuffed seal and four live chickens. It felt like she was driving a circus.

There were bags under her eyes, from not getting proper rest. Lily had tried, but the night in the pit followed by sleeping all day made it difficult to sleep through the night. She’d gotten a nap for a few hours, but was caught in the awkward limbo of not sleeping through the night and then needing to be up and moving during the day.

Otherwise the day was going well. A cautious look in the morning had revealed blood and feathers where the trail to the missing chicken led, so she had just loaded the rest into the car. Really, what had she been thinking, bringing chickens to live in her backyard? That’d been a big mistake.

But, she was looking forward to getting some work done on the farm this morning. Lily had some ideas, and the farm was the perfect place to get some practice. She also figured she better learn how to milk a cow, but that was for later today.

Star let out an excited woof, catching Lily off guard. She glanced over at him.

“Are you already bigger than last time we were here? It feels like it. Oh well, hold on. We’ll let you out of the car in a moment. Help me get the chickens into the pen okay?”

He barked again. She rolled her eyes. He was always so excited. But, he was helpful, and taking care of him had been a lot easier than she’d expected so far. Actually, she wondered if he was taking care of her sometimes. Well, they could take care of each other. They were partners.

She pulled right up to the house and got out of the car. Star hopped right out too, and she went to work collecting chickens. She was getting a lot more used to picking them up and holding them now. Especially with Star’s help grabbing them in the first place.

It only took a few minutes to gather them one by one and toss them back into the chicken pen. Thus ended a terrible plan. Letting out a big sigh of relief, Lily turned her attention to the rest of the farm. Star was already chasing the ducks around again, but something caught Lily’s attention. A big shape was coming around a corner and– wait, it was outside the fence!

A donkey trotted into view and was heading straight for Star. Lily immediately breathed a sigh of relief. She’d never seen a donkey in real life before. It was really cute! She’d always thought of them as horses but worse, so she wasn’t really sure what a donkey would be doing here. But it was fun to look at. Maybe the home owners kids rode it or something?

She was midway through that thought when she realized the donkey wasn’t stopping. It was charging at Star! She called out.

“Star! Danger!”

He immediately perked up and looked around. Spotting the donkey, Star whirled and put himself between the donkey and Lily. Meanwhile, the huge animal put itself between Star and the ducks. An uneasy standoff began. Star let out a low growl. His adversary stomped its hooves, and then started forward.

“Star, run!”

Lily didn’t want this to turn into a fight. The donkey was probably familiar with humans right? She didn’t know they were aggressive! Lily ran towards the house. Star zigged and zagged along the path behind her in case the donkey charged, but it didn’t. It circled back to the ducks when it realized they were retreating.

Fortunately, the door wasn’t locked. They entered the house and Lily shut the door behind them.

“Okay, well. That’s something we have to deal with. Maybe there’s something we can feed it to get on its good side in the fridge?”

Lily stood in a pretty nice entryway. It wasn’t a mansion on the same level as her beach home, but it was plenty spacious and seemed to have been well taken care of. There was a small area to take off shoes, and a coat rack with some warm looking jackets hung on it. From here she could see a rather nice kitchen. Granite counters, dark wood finish, a large fridge, electric oven, microwave, dishwasher and a huge sink.

“Huh, pretty nice. Let’s check around for donkey snacks. Help me look, will you?”

The fridge wasn’t working, so Lily didn’t bother checking there. Although, the fridge magnets were spelling out some poetry. “Bright afternoon sun evokes memories, enticing nocturnal thoughts." Lily wasn’t sure what that meant, so she started looking into the pantry instead.

Did donkey’s eat bread? The bread still looked okay. But she couldn’t remember anyone ever feeding that to a horse or anything on TV. Then a small basket of fruit on the counter caught her eye. Apples! There were three. She could try bribing the donkey with apples, right?

“Okay Star. Listen. I’m going to go make friends with the donkey. I need you to stay here.”

Instantly, Star let out a loud whine and ran to the front door. Well, goodie. He understood what she meant enough to be mad about it. 

“No no. No complaining. Look, if you go with me, it’s gonna be more skittish. Not only was it defending ducks from you, but you’ve got big sharp teeth and predator shape. Meanwhile, it’s probably used to humans being friendly. It’s safer for me. See? Understand?”

Star whined and scratched at the door. He did not understand. He wanted to go and protect her too. Lily put her hands on her hips.

“Listen here Mister. I’ll bring you with me when I’ve made friends with it. Then I can introduce you. But until then, I need to look as harmless as possible, okay?”

She pointed to herself, and mimed holding out the apple.

“Not Danger. See? Not danger!”

He stopped scratching at the door but gave her the most dejected dog look. Lily patted him on the head until his tail started wagging, and then carefully stepped outside.

To her relief, the Donkey wasn’t waiting right outside the door. She closed it behind her, and jumped when she heard a thump from inside. She glanced to her left and saw Star had found a window to watch from. 

That made her feel a little better. She was pretty sure he’d throw himself through the window bodily if things started to go too far south. Swallowing her anxiety, Lily started forward. The donkey wasn’t hard to spot at all. It was still standing guard near the ducks.

Noticing her, it circled the ducks protectively, and then placed itself in her path. Lily stopped, and tried to hold her body as non-aggressively as possible. She whispered to herself to calm down.

“Just pretend not to be scared and defensive. Easy, right?”

Lily took a few steps forward and held out the apple. The donkey was still at least twenty feet away, but she was hoping it would know what the apple was. It stood still and eyed her for a few seconds, before slowly starting forward towards her. It didn’t seem to be charging, so Lily held her ground. She tried speaking to it calmly.

“Here you go fella. Hey buddy. Um, Pal. Friend? Have an apple. On the house, huh? Hah– I’m not scared.”

The donkey didn’t seem to believe her. But it trotted up anyway and started sniffing at the apple.

“You do like apples right? I’m not, um, making an ass of myself?”

Lily giggled to herself, unable to help making a nervous pun. The donkey seemed to relax a little too when she laughed, and it started nibbling the apple. Moments later, it took it out of her hand and started chomping it down.

Lily reached out and cautiously patted it behind the ears. It didn’t immediately snap at her, so she continued.

“Aww, see? You’re a friendly um… Guy? Girl? Well, whatever. You were just protecting the farm right? Good donkey. But I own the farm now, so we’re going to have to get along okay?”

As a matter of fact, she wasn’t sure if she did own the farm now. But, she did insofar as she owned anything so it also wasn’t technically a lie. Next, the girl led the donkey back towards the house, leveraging her two remaining apples. Once they got right out front, she gave up the second snack.

“There you go. See? No big deal. We’ll give you the third one if you can be around Star. He’ll be on his best behaviour, okay? I promise.”

She opened the door cautiously. Star immediately tried to push out, until she calmed him down. As the donkey caught sight of the dog, it tensed up. Lily showed it the apple again and held it out, while trying to keep Star calm.

The beast relaxed warily, and began to eat the apple. Lily let Star come out of the house and give the pack animal a good sniff.

“There. Are we friends? Uneasy alliance at least?”

After finishing the fruit snack, the donkey sniffed around Star in return. It let out a whuf of a sigh and started ambling away. Lily looked down at Star and gave him a shrug.

“Okay. I guess we’re good. Don’t chase the ducks today though just in case yeah?”

She wasn’t sure Star understood, but his tail drooped slightly. The girl and the dog followed the donkey on its slow walk back towards the animal pens.

“Well, I guess if you’re gonna be here defending the animals I gotta give you a name. Maybe a knight name? Galahad? Arthur? Mmm. Maybe not. Did any knights have like, a famous horse or something?”

She could swear the donkey gave her a flat somewhat offended look.

“Okay okay, you’re not a horse, I get it. Fine. A different name then. Knights though. That feels right, the way you charged right in. Oh! Oh! I got it. No no, this is perfect. Donk-Quixote!”

Lily let out an excited squeal.

“That’s so perfect. I love it. Okay, Donk-Quixote. Donk for short. Although I’m pretty sure Don is like a title or something. Oh well. Quixote is much harder to shorten, and you can’t understand me so Donk is fine. Oh my god! I can even call the farm La Mancha. I’m way into this!”

The animals didn’t get it, but that was to be expected. Lily was suddenly feeling rejuvenated! It was time to get started on her work. So, first she headed back into the house. Lily wanted to find a particularly sharp knife, or something else she could make lasting marks with. She had spell casting to do and was not feeling rested enough to want to fuck with mana.

The novice mage made her way to the kitchen and started digging around in drawers for potential tools. There were a couple knives that might work in the knife block, but Lily decided to look through all the drawers for something better. Her chalk wouldn’t really work for what she wanted. She was really hoping to scratch a pattern into things if she could. As she looked through the drawers though, she was mostly disappointed. Then she got to the kitchen island. It had a drawer on it too, but it was stuck.

Lily grabbed it tightly with her good hand and pulled as hard as she could. Nothing. So she braced herself against the island and really put her weight into it. On the third pull, there was a sudden cracking sound, and she instantly lost balance and fell backwards, slamming into the fridge pretty hard. A rain of magnets fell around her, and she yelped more out of surprise than pain.

The handle had broken off! Lily shook her head to get the magnets out of her hair, and then reached for the drawer. Thankfully it came right open. 

“Hah! The junk drawer! Like I was saying, every good kitchen needs a junk drawer. Who doesn’t have a junk drawer?”

The somewhat dazed girl started going through her new treasure chest. Rubber bands, twine, several pairs of scissors, an old reader’s digest, nail clippers, thumb tacks, and– oh. An awl. Or an ice pick. She wasn’t totally sure what the difference was. Probably an ice pick because it was in the kitchen. That was perfect! Gathering up her prize, she turned to pick up the mess she had made and froze.

Most of the magnets had fallen off of the fridge. As a matter of fact, only eight remained. But they spelled a word clear as day. A word Lily had already been trying to write off as paranoia in the back of her head. Because a word can’t be following you, right? Even though it seemed to keep coming up.

“Okay, that’s spooky. Odds on that being a coincidence?”

The silence answered her. She could just ignore it. Pretend she hadn’t noticed. She’d already been trying to do that. Was it a warning? Was it telling her where to go, or stay away from? There were too many questions and Lily really, really didn’t want to think about it. So, instead she put the magnets down on the kitchen counter, took her prize and went outside.

Star was playing with Donk. They were taking turns cautiously chasing one another, like they were both a little scared the other would think it was for real. It was very cute, but Lily couldn’t focus on it.

The overwhelmed girl sat down on the stoop and took a deep breath.

“Well. That’s something to think about.”

In the kitchen, on the fridge sat a perfectly spelled out word. Where once had been poetry, now only an ominous message remained.

Basement.