You close the circular door, leaving your childhood home behind you for the last time. It would be a perfect day in the quiet halfling village of Gullykin, were it not for the weight of worry you carry with you as you make your way down the green grassy path to where your mother awaits. Warm sun graces your face and shoulders through the simple white linen dress you wear for today's ritual. Your steps slow to a stop when you reach the small apple orchard at the heart of your green grassy village. The trees are blossoming now, their sweet scent heavy on the air promising a bounty of bright red apples later this year. You stop a moment and rest your hand on the rough and sun warmed bark of your favorite apple tree and say goodbye to it with a touch of your forehead.
A dozen steps further down the mossy cobbled path leads you to a clearing between the villages three main hills. The sun dappled grass is somehow even more brilliant than you remembered it while playing here as a child and in each of the clearings hundreds of flowers are glowing with every shade of every color you have ever seen.
Standing in the midst of the flowers, greenery, and clad in simple brown robes is your mother. A wide brimmed bonnet protects her pale green eyes from the sun. She is armed with a basket that she has just begun to fill with choice pickings of the flowers. Her wide round face offers you a smile that shows just a little surprise.
"My daughter is returning to her daily prayers? Or did something go wrong with your friends?" She asks.
You lift your skirt with both hands and walk out of the shade of the apple trees and into the thick grass with a few more sullen steps. You were moving closer to join her and just about to share your thoughts with her when she speaks, cutting you off from answering her yourself.
"I heard it didn't go well, and then you took it out on poor Greenhill boy when he tried to console you"
Anger wells up as you listen to your mother take the wrong side again, always so quick to blame you and take another's side. Looking away in an attempt to focus on anything else, your gaze settles on a honey bee harvesting pollen from a bright yellow marigold. A deep slow breath allows you to cope and form a response.
"To hell with him, mom. He might have been your choice for me once, but I never liked him a bit. Hes just a mean old fuck-skunk"
"Opal!"
"Mom! He tried to force himself, it's against the Watchful Mother’s creed."
"What are you saying? You don't mean Rufus..."
"When he saw me crying I thought he was going to say something nice at first, but he wanted a kiss and it was clumsy and then he tried to force it when I said no"
This shut your mother up a moment so you oblige her with more, gaze still on the fuzzy little bee working over the brilliant yellow flower.
"I dont know if he would really rape me or anyone, mother. But he did try to force a kiss and steal my first kiss from me so I bit him hard and he lied and said I punched him. He has it covered up but I promise it's not a split lip it's a bite."
There is still silence from your mother, you pull your gaze away from the bee now burdened with pollen and out at the rolling hills of the horizon. There's a little spot of ruins way out there, a jagged blade of stone cutting the blue sky where once had stood a tower built by the magus Durlag.
"Listen mom, I didn't come to fight with you. You asked me to come pray more and I am here now but you can't defend him after that"
Don't ruin this mom, please! Don’t make me have to relive that night fighting with you.
"Alright sweetie. Let's picks some flowers for Sheela’s shrine and let the light of love make clear hearts that need clearing"
For the first time you can remember she relents and accepts what you have told her instead of what the village wives expected her to accept. She picks her basket back up and asks a new question to give some distraction from what she no doubt is ready to stop thinking about. She bends to pick the marigold you had just been staring at while you follow along.
"The priestess said to me that you mentioned Candlekeep to her. Does that mean your Calishite friends turned you down? She doesn't want any apprentices after all"
You lean down to the flowers yourself now, gently plucking a marigold before bringing it to your nose for a deep slow inhale of its subtle scent. The soft fluttering of its petals on the bottom of your nose somehow seems to enhance the smell. You can not help but think maybe the village knows you are saying goodbye and its being a little kinder because of it.
"No mother, I asked Hajjira if I could marry them. I went over to their house and told her how I felt and she said no. She said I was too young for her, her husband and wife. I never asked to be her apprentice, that's just what I said to you because I didn't want to admit I was falling in love"
"You love that genasi? He is barely tamed and certainly not domesticated. What kind of husband could he really be to a hinfolk besides those strange Calishite ones he's already got?"
He is a nice man, but it's his wife I love, who I will always love.
"They have a warm and loving home, that's what the goddess would want for anyone to have in a marriage right?" You ask as you take another prime blossom from the marigolds to add to the basket that mother carries as you slowly circle the meadow.
"I will agree with Hajjira on one thing, they are all too old for my young gem. You explained the bite and you explained the fight with your foreign friends but what about Candlekeep? Are you running away in a huff because the Calishites won't marry you? Or just a threat to make Hajjira change her mind?"
You find a green grasshopper on a tall weed and gently coax it onto your fingers while your mother makes the worst assumptions about what she has heard, as is her habit. Its giant domed eyes seem to smile and its prickly little feet tickle your skin as it crawls and forces you to roll your hand over and back to keep it from walking off your hand and jumping away.
"No mother, she believes I should go because I made my feelings known and she says I would learn better from another now. So, I asked her to write me a letter of recommendation, since there is no hope for what I want. There's nothing here in Gullykin for me, I thought maybe they were a reason to stay but that isn't to be so I will at least take the opportunity to study there since she can get me in with her letter."
There's another long pause while your little grasshopper visitor makes a few more treks across your hand and then jumps off beyond your sight into the apple trees. It takes your mother a while to speak and ask the question she is afraid to know the answer for.
"So you are really going? To Candlekeep? For how long?"
Unable to distract yourself further with bugs or flowers or the ruins on the horizon you turn to your mother's face and feel guilty to see them wet with the first traces of tears.
"Yes, mom, I am really going and I don't know how long. It isn't really far away so maybe not long"
Forever
Your mother wipes her eyes with the bottom end of her apron and picks her basket back up with a sigh.
"You always were busy looking for more, more than the village could give you. More than I could give you."
"You did just fine mother. You raised me to stand up for myself and to go for what I want. I might not have gotten it but I was honest and tried. Hajjira says I need to master the power in me rather than letting it be the master, and I agree. So it's Candlekeep, but not because of you, I promise."
By now the sun is past its high point, and shadows are just starting to stretch out from the apple trees on the far side of the meadow. You watch your mother in the golden orange sunlight and wait. She has always seemed so tall to you but now you realize you are looking her right in the eye. You see her little nod of acceptance, that her girl is grown enough to make this choice with or without her approval.
"If this is going to be your last prayer at the Golden Oak for a while, I will share some tidbits that are for young ladies leaving their childhood behind. Maybe I should have been having this talk with you sooner, but you are such a willful child I admit I feared fighting with you lately when I should have been trying to be a better mother."
"Stop, mother. It's fine. Just show me, please" The day is wearing on and you worry now she might be further heartbroken to know you were leaving this afternoon before sundown.
"Young unmarried maidens pray to our Sheela to guide them to the best possible husbands, as she is the goddess of romantic love. You no doubt know that already. By custom a young lady chooses her flowers for sacrifice while thinking of her wedding day and the ones she choses can foretell the kind of man she will attract"
For the first time today you laugh.
"That sounds a little superstitious"
"Perhaps. But maybe it's a silly old tradition with a tiny crumb of truth too?
"What I meant to say is it sounds a little superstitious but it also sounds a little fun. Please show me."
The warmth of your mother's soft hand wraps around yours and gives a gentle squeeze. She speaks as she leads you along walking again.
"Just pick the flowers you would make as a personal sacrifice today. To draw a man to you like these flowers draw in the bees. You pick three kinds flowers for the goddess and I will tell you what kind of bees they will attract"
Warmth colors your cheeks as you consider your husband lurking somewhere in your future. Maybe Hajjira was right to turn you down, maybe it is just as easy as picking the right flowers for the goddess of love and then going off to meet some young apprentice at Candlekeep?
Your first choice is a stem of lavender. Pinching the stem between finger and thumb you twist it free and lift it for a closer look. Looking deeply at the pale petals speckled with darking purple and all of them so inviting in color and with its welcoming scent, you decide this is the most beautiful of the flowers and pick several more sprigs. You go to add them to your mother's basket but she stops you with a raised hand.
"No my daughter, you pick them for the goddess and carry them to her too. You picked one and now I am curious about your other choices.”
Right away you know the other flowers you want to support your lavenders. Taking her by the hand it is you leading your mother now as you make your way through the high grass and between patches of wild flowers. It's closer to the shrine but you stop at a hillside with a carefully maintained garden. A little mischief creeps into your mother's voice.
"You know Miss Greenhill will have a fit if you are cutting things out of her garden without permission, but since this is for a holy cause you just go right ahead but be inconspicuous"
You do not quite share in the mischievousness of the moment, looking over the best maintained flowers in your beautiful village of beautiful flowers.
"Miss Greenhill’s grandson is a rude boy who I once thought was my only friend but instead steals what does not belong to him.. The Greenhill’s owe me, they can be glad the debt is settled with two flowers"
You feel bad for enjoying your mother's scandalised gasp at your words but she doesn't disagree this time. Carefully you use your thumbnail to scrape the thorns from the stem of a deep red rose. You stop to wipe away the buildup of green gunk under your thumbnail before going back to give the rose a twist and a tug to free it before you stuff your nose deep into its velvety petals and take a long huff of its overwhelming sweetness. It is such a moment of bliss you decide to do it again before adding it to your hand.
Your mother nods her approval in your peripheral vision, but your focus is on this lovely manicured garden before you then you spy it, your third harvest. A plant that is so special it's kept in a pot all by itself. The same lovely shade as your lavenders and always the envy of every other gardener who got to cast a jealous glance over it. You approach with building glee at the idea you might actually get even for her grandson's attempt to steal from you with this gesture.
"Oh not her exotic orchids! Those-"
Mother closes her mouth, either knowing it's fair or simply accepting you will now do as you please and there's no more mothering you to be done.
The stem is not the problem the rose was, more a hard stick you crack and give a twist to tear the filament inside and you become the proud owner of a rare and beautiful flower from across the ocean where they grow wild in the new world discovered by Amn. Its scent is faint when you bring it in for a sniff but the smell is almost as satisfying as the rose before it. Adding all three in your bundle you rejoin your now smiling mother to walk hand in hand to the top of the nearest of the three hills.
Atop this hill is the greatest monument your modest village can boast. The great golden oak several centuries old looms all over the trail up the hill it calls home. In a cave-like nook between the giant exposed roots of the glorious old tree was built a small shrine. A gray granite statue of a halfling woman playing a harp, surrounded by old dried flowers and many candles that your mother sets about lighting and clearing out the old flowers to make way for her marigolds. The cool wet muddy ground at the base of the tree seeps through your dress where your knees press into the ground as you kneel and lower your head to pray after adding your flowers to the shrine as your mother had. You try to shake the feeling that leaving your village, leaving your shrine, and leaving your mother is not the same as you leaving your goddess and you form a quiet prayer for Sheela.
Forgive Hajjira for breaking my heart, and help me find my way to having a family as happy as hers
Just as your mother is finishing her whispered prayer and stands, you hear the gentle creaking of a cart and the thud of hooves in the grass to know the ox cart from Nashkel has arrived to pick you up for the ride there before darkness claims the countryside
You take your mother's hand and your frown is full of the guilt you feel. She dispels this, surprising you again with how suddenly understanding she seems.
"I already knew you were going tonight, you haven't come to pray with me in months. We haven't been as close as a mother and daughter should have been, but I know a dramatic goodbye done at the last minute."
You are about to hug her but she speaks again.
"We aren't done with the ritual, there's another part. Pick a honeysuckle from the shrine and taste it, just like when you were little"
Obeying your mother you move to the thick green vines with their white flowers framing the shine in between the roots of the golden oak. Yet again you pick another flower today, plucking one of the many white honeysuckles.
Is this what mother did as a young girl to find the father I never knew? I know better than to ask for an answer I will never get, instead I will find out about my future
"Are you going to tell me what the flowers mean?"
"Yes, my impatient little shortcake. Eat your honeysuckle but don't tell me anything about it, that's your message from the goddess'
Just like the rest of today, it somehow seems more bright and in focus. So perfect you feel again like Gullykin itself is giving a loving goodbye to you. The stem of the honeysuckle comes out with no real tug needed at all and it's so full of sap that the heavy drop on the end of the stem seems about to drip right off.
Acting quickly to avoid that, you lift the honeysuckle stem and touch it to your tongue for a moment of simmering in a sweet bliss. It occurs to you that you had been walking and talking a few hours without lemonade or water and you had built up a thirst but it seemed that the little taste dispelled it and you had only realized you were thirsty once that thirst was gone
Your mother can't help but smile at your smile, but there are clearly mixed emotions as she starts to explain while you walk hand in hand down the hill once more.
"Lavender means a man with some complexities, mysteries or secrets. That might not be too hard to find at Candlekeep"
Mother hesitates. You slow down to do your best to dust off dirt from your white dress but there's still a dark wet spot where your knee had pressed in the ground that was more mud than grass.
"Go on mother, did I pick something bad?"
"Roses are romantic, you probably knew it when you picked it. You picked it without pricking yourself, so you will get a romance that won't burn you if you trust it with the careful attention you gave to picking the thorn off before picking the flower. That means you have it in you to be patient and have a real commitment instead of just getting hurt grabbing for romance.
"That sounds like a blessing, I was worried for a moment"
"Well the last flower was one from a far off land that means you will have to wait a long time, or you will have to travel far before finding the love you asked for. Possibly you will marry a foreigner and end up like that orchid growing in soil you did not sprout from"
You decide a lie will make your mother feel better, so as you near the cart that's already loaded with your bags your turn and give her a hug.
"I will miss you mom"
Mother gives you a long tight hug and the scents of all today's flowers fill your nose. You both wipe tears from your eyes as you part.
"No you won't, Opal. You will get out there and shine so bright that you will find it hard to miss any of us back in sleepy quiet Gullykin. I don't need you to miss me, just when you do think of me try to be glad I did my best even if it wasn't always the right thing"
It's a lot easier to say the truth on the second try, you wave to your goodbye after climbing into the cart and taking a seat facing her
"Alright, I can do that"
One Last Goodbye to Gullykin
