It All Started With Magnets

.9.

I came out of the garden feeling utterly blow away and overloaded with information. Everything was so familiar but almost mesmerizingly different. The large flowers throughout the garden were all reminiscent of the flowers of Earth but that was pretty much where all similarities ended. They were all behind delicate looking cages or hidden behind glass to protect against projectiles or toxic venom. Once I got over the fact that flowers equaled utterly dangerous, I started to enjoy them, from a distance.

Some of them has these tiny spiderweb like threads that draped over everything and Loril-ee explained that they contained neurotoxins. They would paralyze you, if not out right kill you, but the threads were also slightly hooked along the edges so the plant could slowly drag your paralyzed body to the deep pitcher at the center and drop you into it so it could digest you. Which was terrifying but reminded me of jellyfish back on Earth.

Then others had moving roots that reminded me of tentacles that would grab you, roll you up, suffocate you much like a constrictor snake, and then drag you under ground so you could decompose and give the sunflower like plant nutrients. It was horrifying but oddly, it was supremely fascinating. There was also several that had teeth and would straight out try to eat you. One had made me laugh because it looked nearly identical to the piranha plant in Super Mario. Which nearly made me dissolve into giggles when Loril-ee explained it was an ambush predator that hid in holes in the ground.

I took as many pictures as I could and wrote notes in my phone about the facts that the antwyn told me because I knew herbologists back on Earth would go nuts once I showed them the pictures and I wanted to be able to tell them all I had learned about the predatory plants. I wouldn't be wanting to study them or get close but I knew some crazy people would damn near jump head first into studying the dangerous things. Probably someone from Australia, they were straight up okay with living with innocent looking deadly things.

Outside of the flowers, the trees from the k'gtar home world had been familiar to look at. Mostly green and brown, their shapes tree-like but they did differ. Some were made from up to forty different trees that had been twisted and braided together, others grew in these complex swirling patterns, and some grew in square lines, but not straight up and down, they grew in angles. There had been one that had caught my eye and I had stared at it in awe for a long time. It reminded me of a weeping willow but it had been blue. Its leaves had been varying shades of blue and they hung in strands to the ground and I felt like I could barely catch my breath at how beautiful it looked.

And then At'kat'vo had to make it worse because he had moved to stand beside me and reached out with those strange long fingers of his and move the strands and the tree glowed. He explained that the leaves were bioluminescent when they were moved and I had honestly gasped like the kids shown Wonka's chocolate factory because holy shit. I had spent a good long time running my fingers through the long sweeping branches of leaves just to watch them glow that blue.

It had taken me a long time to pull myself away from the tree and I think At'kat'vo had been getting worried because I kept asking him questions about it. Like how did it glow? Was it some sort of algae? Was the glow like a receptor to the tree? Was it a type of parasite? Did it function as a type of warning system? I hadn't been able to shut up and he tried, I could tell he did, but he started defaulting to saying he did not study herbology and couldn't answer because he didn't know, which seemed to distress him. So after taking a picture that honestly didn't show off the beauty of the tree, I had left it alone.

The hant and krent carvings had also been interesting to see. There were carvings made in stone, in wood, in metal, or various combinations of both. A lot of tree carvings, moon ones as well that I had to hold myself back from laughing at, and some really strange ones that I didn't know what they represented but they were certainly interesting to look at. Hint and Liress had explained to me the various carving techniques their peoples had and what famous carver had made what piece and I had enjoyed the rather personal tour of everything the gardens had to offer.