the Language of Bouquets

Belphegor was gobsmacked in a way he'd never been. This quaint princess of the market town was offering him flowers and she curtsied at his knees. Her small hands were dyed by the stem and petals of the blue flowers she clutched. She wore the porcelain berries of bead lily in her hair and her ankle length white dress had picked up a hemful of burs that weighed it down into the plant covered mantle of the woods.

“Leave me be,” he growled, taking on the form of a three-toad creature, hugging a tree limb. Perhaps this was not the year to be mingling with the folk above ground. After all, he was only up looking to replenish his acorn collection. Pluto was mad for them and had been raiding Belphegor's display cases again. “Ah,” he dropped from the limb and slowly cozied up to the suffocating cap of a black oak's seed. The girl knelt down and petted his mossy hide.

“Ugh,” she said. “You could use a hot bath, come with me.” She dropped her handful of plumbago blooms then scooped up the animal and hugged its slight frame. The gangly creature mewled weakly and reached to the leaf covered dirt, but its gangly claws missed their chance to recover the acorn. She skipped down the woodland path, trailing a lacy dress behind her through splashes of mud, while humming a pretty tune that crept up and down the scale in a sing song fashion. All the way the little animal moaned and lamented the passing of acorns, for it was fall and the forest floor was covered with the multicolored nuts. They were strewn about like hard candy drops, some wearing a little hat, others naked on the loam. His head bopped up and down against her chest where she held him tightly and the stitching there tickled his nose. Belphegor sneezed.

“The gods bless you,” said the girl. Up ahead the trees thinned and the forest broke upon a grassy clearing which broke again upon a fence line dominated by upright posts lashed and supported by heavy lean-to trunks. The creature could see nothing of this while his face was scrunched into the chafing fabric. “Here we are,” she said still walking. He could hear the sounds of ax and saw now and the far away echoes of men calling out. There was the heavy thud of a tree being felled somewhere off in the distance.

She passed through a break in the tall fence, like a beetle flitting through a cracked window, amid cheers of Amaryllis and Trillium. She answered to any name just so it was one of a flower. The girl lifted her head and flipped her hair, not being able to wave with her arms full of smelly animal. “Lily, oh my sweet Lily, what bedraggled woeful dregs have you carted from the forest this waning season?” The questioner was a portly old woman in pale rags that cascaded over her round body in layers. “I've never seen its like. My, it has a face like a sour cherry, or like a wraith with a disagreeable stomach. You must take it back whence it came.”

“Aye, that's a boondoggle if'n I never seen one,” said a skinny man carrying sticks in from the edge of the woods.

“Poo, you scat.” The old woman flipped her skirt at the stick man and he shuffled off muttering. She recanted, “well, it seems mostly like a heart attack, so's I don't imagine it is any harm.” The woman tilted up the creature's head and peered into his mournful eyes. “Take it to the cauldron, the water's just warm now and we can get new for the eve. Shoo now, have at it.”

She skipped now, Lily for a moment, and came to the fire pit where a blackened pot hung from a pole, and scrunching up the critter into the crook of one arm, she leaned over the cauldron and dipped in an elbow. The spent water was overly warm, but not hot, so she hoisted the furbag and dunked it in from furry rump to the hair atop its brow. The thing's gangly arms shot up over its head in surprise. It was the fastest Lily had seen it move. She commenced to thoroughly sousing the animal then pulled it out by its dripping hide and threw him into a pile of straw that flew up over its head until the dust swirled up and tickled his nose.

“Ketchoo!” sneezed the sloth and out of the grip of his captor, Belphegor momentarily reappeared, if only for an instant, then shrank back down to the size of an inconspicuous critter once again. “Oops,” he proclaimed in transit, which came out sounding more like a purr. For he was now a tomcat, having forgotten the form he'd taken originally.

“Kitty,” squealed Lily, but the cat was now fleet of foot, and leaped out of the straw and away from the stone pit. The cat flew from the gate, tripping up the feet of men hauling logs from the woods, and stopped only for a second at the fringe to pluck an acorn from the tall grass.

“Mine,” Belphegor said, pocketing the nut, then strode into the forest on his long fiery legs.