When a Widowed Scientist and a Mysterious Horticulturist Cultivate More Than Rare Lotuses — A Lesson in Heat, Hunger, and the Forbidden Pollen of Surrender
Heat shimmers above the sacred lotus pool like liquid temptation. Dr. Eleanor Voss adjusts her lab coat—starched white, yet clinging to damp skin—as the Victorian glasshouse seals their fate. The air reeks of decomposition and divinity: rotting vegetation mingling with Nelumbo nucifera‘s narcotic perfume. He stands waist-deep in black water, shirtless, fingertips trailing the pads of floating leaves. “You catalogued 37 species here,” his voice licks up her spine, “but missed the 38th.” A lotus stem snaps in his teeth, sap dripping gold. “Homo sapiens… fervens.” Suddenly, the PhD she earned at Cambridge feels laughably inadequate. Some experiments aren’t found in textbooks. Some roots only bloom when you burn.
Chapter 1: The Veil of Ivy
The forest breathed.
Eleanor felt it first—a humid sigh against her neck as she knelt to inspect a cluster of liverwort. Thirty years of fieldwork had honed her senses: the loamy tang of decaying oak, the whisper of hornbeams shedding pollen like confetti. But this… this was different. A vibration hummed beneath her hiking boots, resonant as a cello’s lowest C.
“Ladies,” she called, brushing soil from her slacks, “we’re not alone here.”
Serena paused mid-stride, her Valentino Rockstuds sinking into moss. “If this is another lecture on mycorrhizal networks, Ellie, I’ll revoke your whiskey privileges.” The CEO’s laugh was a blade sheathed in velvet. She’d traded boardrooms for this “wellness retreat,” though her diamond tennis bracelet still glinted like a challenge.
Lila crouched behind them, mortar and pestle already in hand. “Nettle grows thicker here,” she murmured, crushing leaves with monastic focus. The herbalist’s braid swung forward, hiding the scar that puckered her throat—a relic from the husband who’d mistaken her silence for consent.
“Oh, fuck vintage filters!” Clarissa’s voice ricocheted through the trees. The influencer straddled a fallen yew, iPhone aimed at her thighs. Her latex leggings gleamed like oil on water. “This moss is literally screaming cottagecore-meets-dominatrix. Ten million views if it goes viral before—shit!”
The log shifted. Clarissa tumbled into ferns, her shriek scattering jackdaws.
Margot chuckled, sketching the chaos with a charcoal stub. “Vanity, meet gravity,” the artist drawled, her Croatian accent roughened by decades of Gauloises smoke. At sixty-eight, her eyes remained voracious—devouring light, flesh, the way Clarissa’s ankle now bloomed violet. “Come, djevojko. Let me paint that bruise before it fades.”
Eleanor helped Clarissa up, fingers probing the swelling. “No fracture. Lila?”
The herbalist was already uncorking a vial. “Comfrey poultice. It’ll sting.”
“Sting?” Clarissa sniffed. “This leg’s insured for two mil, herbalista. I’m not smearing peasant goo on—”
“Enough.” Serena’s voice cleared the air. She plucked the vial from Lila’s hand. “You’ll apply it, or I’ll tweet a screenshot of your OnlyFans earnings. Naked.”
Clarissa paled. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
As Serena daubed the poultice on—Lila’s hands fluttering like nervous sparrows—Eleanor noticed the ivy.
It shouldn’t thrive here. Hedera helix preferred limestone, not this granite-heavy soil. Yet the vines swarmed a sandstone outcrop, leaves so glossy they seemed varnished. Their stems twisted in a pattern that prickled her scalp… almost scriptural.
“Margot,” she said slowly, “do you see—”
“The Fibonacci spiral? Yes. Also, the thorns are wrong.” The artist edged closer. “Look how they curve inward. Like fishhooks.”
Serena joined them, wiping comfrey residue on her Isabel Marant blazer. “Let me guess—poisonous?”
“Not poison.” Eleanor snapped a leaf, revealing sap as clear as a lover’s promise. “Hedera helix. Fidelity. Eternal life. The Greeks draped it on wedding beds.” She offered the stem to Lila. “Sap’s antiseptic. Useful for… certain wounds.”
Lila’s breath hitched. The unspoken I know hung between them.
Clarissa hobbled over, pouting. “If we’re doing plant porn, can we please find the Airbnb? My Louboutins are—”
The ivy moved.
A tendril slid around her wrist—gentle as a suitor’s first touch. Then tighter.
“What the fuck!” She yanked backward, but the vine held. Others snaked toward the group, caressing Serena’s diamond bracelet, looping Margot’s sketchbook, brushing Lila’s scar.
Eleanor froze as a stem coiled her forearm. The sap seeped into her pores, warm as brandy.
“Don’t struggle,” Margot rasped. “It’s… it’s asking.”
The outcrop shuddered. Granite became gossamer as the ivy curtain parted, revealing a path dappled with foxglove and witchlight. The air thickened, sweetened—honeysuckle and something muskier.
Clarissa whimpered. “Is that… jasmine?”
“No.” Lila tilted her head, braid grazing the vines. “It’s us. Our sweat. Our…” She blushed.
Serena inhaled sharply. “Christ. It’s pheromones.”
The path beckoned.
Margot stepped first. “At my age, mystery is foreplay.”
One by one, they followed. The ivy released their wrists, leaving faint marks that pulsed in time with the forest’s heartbeat.
The Lesson
“Wait.” Eleanor crouched, magnifier glinting. “These spores… they’re Hedera helix, but altered. See the striations?”
Serena peered over her shoulder. “Like DNA helices.”
“Exactly. This ivy’s been hybridized. Engineered to…” She trailed off as Lila gasped.
The herbalist pressed a leaf to Clarissa’s bruise. Violet faded to opal. “It’s accelerating cellular repair. How?”
“Symbiosis.” Margot sketched furiously. “The vines respond to intent. Clarissa’s vanity. Your guilt, Lila. Our CEO’s… appetites.”
Serena arched a brow. “Careful, Picasso.”
“She’s right.” Eleanor stood, brushing moss from her knees. “The sap contains dendritic cells. They’re learning us. Adapting.” She hesitated. “It wants to help.”
Clarissa rotated her healed ankle. “Okay, fine. Magic ivy. Can we leave now?”
A low chuckle rippled through the glade.
Male.
Rich.
Everywhere.
The women stilled.
“Show yourself,” Serena demanded.
Leaves shivered. The voice came again—closer now, vibrating in their sternums.
“You first.”
The Bond
Dusk fell like a dropped veil.
They’d wandered for hours, drunk on air that tasted of crushed mint and want. The garden unfolded in vignettes: a black pool edged with golden Ranunculus, a marble bench steaming as if freshly vacated, a pear tree heavy with fruit that glowed like embers.
Clarissa plucked one. “Insta-bait.” She bit, juice streaking her chin. “Oh. Oh.”
Serena grabbed her wrist. “Spit it out!”
“No, it’s—” The influencer moaned, back arching. Her latex stretched taut. “Like… like licking a battery. But good.”
Margot snorted. “Typical. You’d climax from a Tesla.”
Lila touched the tree. “Eleanor? The bark…”
“Ulmus glabra,” the botanist whispered. “But these veins…” She traced a pulsing amber rivulet. “They’re circulating nutrients. Like blood.”
The voice returned, wrapping around them like smoke.
“Closer.”
This time, they obeyed.
The heart of the garden was a rotunda of living ivy, stems braided into columns. At its center stood a sundial, its gnomon casting a shadow that defied the dying light.
“Midnight sun,” Margot breathed. “Impossible.”
“Not here.” Serena touched the dial. Bronze warmed beneath her fingers. “It’s him. The gardener.”
Lila trembled. “We shouldn’t—”
The ivy struck.
Vines lashed their wrists, yanking them into a circle. Sap surged—up arms, across collarbones, into mouths parted by shock.
Eleanor’s glasses fogged. “Symbiotic transfer! It’s inoculating us with—”
Clarissa screamed. Or tried to. The sound melted into a gasp as the sap hit her bloodstream. Her Louboutins dissolved, replaced by ivy tendrils that coiled up her calves. “Fuck, it’s inside me!”
“Yes.” Margot’s sketchbook bloomed with ink-black roses. “And you’re radiant.”
Serena staggered, clutching her chest. Her blazer split as vines embroidered her skin with living filigree. “Oh God… it’s choosing…”
Lila fell to her knees. Sap dripped from her lips as the vines caressed her scar. “Please,” she begged—to whom, she couldn’t say.
Eleanor alone resisted. “Release us!”
The garden laughed.
A vine slid beneath her blouse, sap pooling in her navel. Her nipples pebbled. “No… I’m a widow… I don’t…”
The voice purred against her mind.
“Lie to them. Not to me.”
She came violently, silently, roots erupting from her fingertips as the sundial blazed.
When consciousness returned, they lay entwined—a pentagram of flushed skin and shattered couture. The ivy had receded, leaving wristmarks that pulsed like second hearts.
Margot examined her charcoal hand. “He marked us.”
Serena buttoned her ravaged blazer with shaking hands. “He claimed us.”
Above, the stars wheeled in unfamiliar constellations. Somewhere, a pear thudded to the ground, its glow undimmed.
Clarissa sat up. “So… when do we meet him?”
Chapter 2: Echoes of the Path
The garden’s soil remembered.
It cradled their footprints like love letters, each step a confession. Dawn stained the sky the color of a freshly bitten plum as the women wandered paths that shifted when unobserved—a conspiracy of petals and shadow. The ivy had grown bolder overnight, its vines now adorned with buds that throbbed like carotid arteries.
“It’s mapping us,” Eleanor muttered, adjusting her glasses. She’d slept little, her skin still humming from the sundial’s violation. “See the nodes? They’re replicating our biometrics.”
Serena snapped a bud. Thick nectar oozed over her Rolex. “If this is a fucking Fitbit, I want the data erased.”
The vine recoiled, then lashed out, coiling her wrist.
“Careful,” Margot purred. “You might be its type.”
A shudder ran through the CEO. Her pupils dilated as the ivy’s sap seeped into her veins. “Oh… Christ…”
Lila reached for her. “Serena, what’s—”
“Don’t!” Eleanor yanked her back. “It’s triggering episodic memory. Look at her bracelet.”
The diamonds flickered—not with light, but scenes.
Serena’s Echo: The Boardroom
Two years earlier. Midnight. A corner office high above Fifth Avenue.
“You missed the Q3 projections.” Her intern—a Princeton grad with collarbones like suspension bridges—leaned over the mahogany desk. His tie was silk. His smile was theft. “Again.”
Serena didn’t blink. “Fire yourself on the way out.”
He laughed, low and dangerous. “You first.” His fingers walked the spreadsheet, knuckles grazing her thigh. “But let’s… audit the overhead.”
Her Louboutin hooked his calf. “Try.”
The crash of monitors. The tang of espresso and adrenaline. His teeth on her stiletto strap. “You’re overleveraged, Ms. Voss.”
“Says the boy who can’t balance my books.”
“Let me show you compound interest.”
Her Armani shredded like IPO prospects. Later, she’d find his cufflink in her Birkin. A trophy. A taunt.
Serena gasped, collapsing against a willow. The ivy released her, sated.
Clarissa crouched, filming the CEO’s heaving chest. “Okay, plant. Do me next.”
The garden obliged.
Clarissa’s Echo: The Runway
Six months ago. Milan Fashion Week. A dressing room reeking of hairspray and ambition.
“They said ‘avant-garde,’” the designer hissed, yanking the corset tighter. “Not ‘vagrant-garde.’ Take it off.”
Clarissa stared at her reflection—a mosaic of insecurities in a $10,000 mirror. Then she laughed. “Make me.”
She’d strutted naked. Oil-slick body, stilettos like scalpels. The crowd’s gasp was her cocaine. Backstage, a woman in a tailored tuxedo waited. No words. Just a gloved hand and a whispered, “You’ll do.”
The glove tasted like wealth and spite. The afterparty lasted days.
Clarissa’s phone slipped into the undergrowth. “That… wasn’t public,” she whispered.
Margot smirked. “Nothing stays buried here, slatka. Not even your taxes.”
The ivy quivered, hungry for more.
Lila’s Echo: The Greenhouse
Three a.m. Rain tattooing glass. Nineteen years old, knees raw from terracotta pots.
“You’ll smother them,” her husband warned, yanking her hair. “Like you smother me.”
Monstera leaves trembled as he pushed her into the potting bench. She focused on the Dionaea muscipula—venus flytraps snapping at shadows. “Please. The seedlings need—”
His belt buckle clicked. The plants drank her tears.
After, she’d grafted roses onto blackthorn. Beauty from pain. Thorns with purpose.
Lila screamed. The ivy recoiled, buds blackening.
Eleanor caught her. “It’s not him. It’s an echo.”
“But it felt—”
“Shhh. Look.”
The corrupted vine sloughed away, replaced by new growth—ivy threaded with lavender. It brushed Lila’s scar, gentle as a first kiss.
The voice rumbled through the soil: “Never again.”
Margot’s Echo: The Atelier
Paris, 1987. A loft stinking of turpentine and absinthe. Her mentor—a woman with wolfish eyes and a cigarette holder—critiqued her canvas.
“Too safe. Too small.” A lacquered nail split the paint. “You fuck like this? All technique, no teeth?”
Margot lunged. Brushes clattered. They wrestled amidst half-formed nudes, the older woman’s laughter a whetstone. “Better! Now ruin me.”
She did. Teeth on canvas. Fingers in linseed oil. A masterpiece of claw marks and teeth.
The review in Le Monde called it “a triumph of repressed fury.” They never spoke again.
Margot grinned, stroking the ivy. “You’re a voyeur, dragi.”
The vine curled around her throat. She moaned.
Eleanor cleared her throat. “We should—”
“We should indulge,” Serena countered. Her blazer was gone, shirt unbuttoned to reveal ivy sigils. “This is due diligence. Risk assessment.”
Clarissa nodded, pupils blown. “It’s like… free therapy. But slutty.”
Lila touched the lavender ivy. “What if it wants to help us… recontextualize things?”
The path ahead darkened.
Eleanor’s Echo: The Honeymoon
Yosemite, 1998. A tent too thin for secrets. Her new husband’s hands, earnest but clumsy.
“I read that arousal peaks at 3,000 feet,” he joked, fumbling with her hiking shorts.
She faked it. For the view. For the silence afterward. For the way he’d identify constellations instead of asking what she needed.
Years later, cancer stole him. Guilt lingered.
The ivy pierced Eleanor’s palm.
“No!” Lila cried.
But the botanist laughed—a broken, beautiful sound. Sap surged, rewriting memory:
Same tent. Different hands. Invisible. Expert. A voice growling, “There. That’s your peak.”
She shattered, clawing at sleeping bags. Above, the stars rearranged into Hedera helix.
The Convergence
They found the keeper at dusk.
Or rather, he found them—a silhouette against a bonfire of white roses, his features blurred as if viewed through antique glass.
Clarissa stepped forward. “Are we dead? Is this hell?”
“Worse,” the voice laughed. “You’re awake.”
Serena bared her ivy-scribed chest. “What’s your endgame? Shares? A buyout?”
“Harvest.”
The fire roared. Roses became women—dozens of them, carved from thorns and memory. Some wore flapper beads, others power suits. All bore the keeper’s mark.
Margot exhaled. “Your muses.”
“Legacy.” He gestured, and the thorn-women knelt. “They chose abundance over atrophy. What will you choose?”
Lila trembled. “I want… I want to bloom.”
“Then feed.”
The ivy struck as one.
The Feast
Clarissa went first. Vines slithered beneath her latex, dissolving it into liquid onyx that pooled in her collarbones. “Fuck! It’s changing me!”
“Let it,” Serena commanded. Her own ivy sigils glowed as she embraced a thorn-woman—their kiss sparking like merger negotiations.
Margot laughed as vines pinned her wrists. “Yes! Ravage the mediocrity!”
Lila hesitated. The keeper’s voice softened.
“You’ve starved long enough, little healer.”
The lavender ivy lifted her, cradling her above the fire. Below, Eleanor watched her own vines intertwine with the thorn-women’s—a pollination of past and present.
When release came, it was symphonic.
The Aftermath
They awoke at the sundial, skin gleaming with nectar. Clarissa’s hair had shifted to ivy-black, her lips stained pomegranate. Serena’s sigils pulsed with stolen boardroom ambitions. Lila’s scar now resembled a vine in full bloom.
Margot stretched, admiring her new tattoos. “So… we’re his now?”
Eleanor adjusted her glasses. “We’re ours. He’s just… the catalyst.”
The path ahead forked, one branch lined with silk tents, the other with boardrooms.
Clarissa grinned. “Why choose?”
As they walked, the keeper’s laughter followed—a rumble of thunder promising rain.
Chapter 3: The Keeper’s First Whisper
The fog arrived at noon—thick, opalescent, and hungry. It swallowed the garden’s edges, leaving only the women’s breath as a compass. Eleanor charted their path by lichen patterns, Serena by the weight of unseen eyes, Lila by the tremor in her hands. Clarissa, predictably, followed the scent of scandal.
“This way,” she insisted, nostrils flaring. “Smells like… melted amber and tax evasion.”
Margot snorted. “That’s your perfume, dušo.”
A low chuckle rippled through the mist.
“Closer.”
The voice draped itself over them—smoke aged in oak barrels, velvet dragged across stone.
Serena froze. “Show yourself. Now.”
“Make me.”
The challenge hung between them, taut as a spider’s thread.
Lila touched a crumbling trellis. “It’s… coming from here.”
Rotten wood groaned. Vines slithered like aroused serpents.
“Rebuild it,” the voice commanded. “Use what you’ve ignored.”
Eleanor knelt, brushing aside decay. “Clematis vitalba stems. Flexible but strong. We can weave them—”
“We’re not your landscapers,” Serena snapped at the fog.
“Aren’t you?”
The mist parted. Golden light illuminated a pile of fresh-cut stems, their sap glistening like apology tears.
The First Lesson
“Hold this.” Margot thrust a clematis wand into Clarissa’s hands. “Tighter. Feel it.”
The influencer rolled her eyes. “I don’t do manual labor. I influence manual labor.”
“Then influence the vine to bend,” the voice purred. “Unless you prefer… submission.”
Clarissa’s grip tightened. The stem quivered, arching toward her Louboutins. “Why’s it twitching? Is this poison ivy? Am I gonna die?”
“Worse,” Eleanor muttered, braiding stems with military precision. “It’s responsive. Likely carnivorous.”
Serena paused mid-knot. “Explain.”
“The trellis isn’t structural. It’s sensory.” The botanist nodded to pulsing nodes at each junction. “They’re transmitting data. Probably to—”
“Me.”
The trellis shuddered, thorns erupting in fractal patterns. Clarissa yelped as her stem coiled up her thigh.
“Stop squirming,” Margot chided. “It’s sketching your aura.”
“My aura’s Gucci Ghost, not fucking picante!”
Lila reached to help. A thorn pierced her fingertip.
Blood bloomed—a single ruby droplet.
“Suck it clean.”
The command left no room for debate. Serena stepped forward. “You’re not serious.”
“Do you kiss with those lips, CEO? Or just count coins?”
Silence.
Then—
Serena took Lila’s hand.
The Second Lesson
The CEO’s mouth was warmer than expected.
Lila trembled as Serena’s tongue swirled the wound—a counterclockwise motion that unraveled years of prayer. The garden held its breath.
“Deeper.”
Serena obeyed, sucking until Lila’s knees buckled. Above them, Rosa damascena burst into bloom, petals dripping honeyed resin.
Margot sketched furiously. “The thorns are growing barbs. Fascinating.”
Clarissa fanned herself. “Is it getting hot or—”
“Quiet.”
The voice didn’t raise. It expanded, pressing against their sternums.
Serena pulled back, lips glistening. “Satisfied?”
“You taste of unspent dividends,” the voice mused. “She tastes of… chamomile and shame. Feed her again.”
Lila moaned. The rose’s perfume thickened—spiced, narcotic, insistent.
Eleanor adjusted her glasses. “The volatiles are inducing vasodilation. Increased heart rate. This is dangerous—”
“Doctor.” The voice sliced through her lecture. “Have you ever been devoured?”
The trellis lunged.
Vines pinned Eleanor against fragrant wood, stems probing her lab coat’s buttons.
“Stop!” Lila cried.
“She wants this.” The voice softened. “She wants to be proven wrong.”
Eleanor’s glasses fogged. “I… I don’t…”
“Lie again and I’ll make you water orchids with your tears.”
Her buttons popped.
The Third Lesson
Clarissa found the moths at twilight.
They clustered in a moonlit grove—Argema mittrei, wingspan wider than her ambitions, silk glands glistening like liquid platinum.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “These are extinct.”
“Merely selective,” the voice corrected. “They weave only for worthy throats.”
She reached. A moth alighted on her wrist, proboscis trailing iridescent thread.
“It’s… singing.”
“Your pulse is in D minor. They prefer B-flat.”
The thread coiled around her fingers—cool, then feverish. Other moths joined, spinning her into a cocoon of living lace.
“Don’t move,” the voice warned as silk climbed her thighs. “Unless you enjoy third-degree burns.”
Clarissa stood statue-still, breath shallow. “This better go viral.”
By dawn, the cocoon hardened.
“Break free,” the voice urged. “Or are you always passive?”
She thrashed. Silk shattered, revealing a gown that clung like liquid vanity—translucent where it shouldn’t be, opaque where it dared.
“Well?”
Clarissa turned. Fabric rippled from cerulean to onyx with each exhalation. “It’s… me.”
“Finally.”
The Revelation
They regrouped at the sundial, transformed.
Serena’s blazer now bore living lapels—orchid petals that purred when stroked. Margot’s skin shimmered with pollen tattoos. Lila’s hair cascaded in vines threaded with jasmine.
And Clarissa…
“Put some clothes on,” Serena snapped.
“These are clothes,” the influencer laughed, arching so the gown plunged dangerously. “It’s called fashion, grandma. Look it up.”
“She’s correct.”
The sundial’s shadow split. A man stepped forth—or the idea of one. Broad-shouldered, features blurred as if viewed through antique glass, scent oscillating between bergamot and blasphemy.
Margot whistled. “Took you long enough.”
“You weren’t ready.” His gaze—where it should’ve been—settled on Lila. “You are now.”
Eleanor stepped forward. “What are you?”
“Your editor.” He flicked a wrist. The trellis groaned, reconstructing itself into lewd arches. “Pruning deadwood. Cultivating… potential.”
Clarissa twirled. “Love the vibe. Cult leader chic.”
“Cultivator,” he corrected. “You’ll find my dividends… physical.”
Serena bared her teeth. “Try a hostile takeover.”
“Gladly.”
The garden sighed as he vanished.
The Fourth Lesson
That night, the voice returned to each.
To Serena: “Your boardroom is a nursery. I’ll teach you war.”
To Clarissa: “A million eyes, yet none see. Let me blind them properly.”
To Lila: “Thorns protect roses. Let me show you how to grow teeth.”
To Margot: “You’ve painted lies. Now taste truth.”
To Eleanor: “Your husband’s ghost tends begonias in hell. Forget him.”
When dawn came, their education began in earnest.
Chapter 4: Nectar of the Unbound
Midnight pooled like spilled ink beneath the magnolia trees. The air hummed with the garden’s heartbeat, a rhythm that pulsed in time with the women’s quickened breaths. The Keeper’s voice had summoned them to a clearing where the earth sloped into a natural amphitheater, its center occupied by a spring bubbling with iridescent liquid.
“Undress,” he commanded, tone brooking no dissent.
Clarissa’s luminescent gown melted first, the silk dissolving into vapor that clung to her skin like gilded sweat. “Finally,” she smirked, arching into the moonlight.
Serena hesitated, fingers lingering on her orchid lapels. “This is extortion.”
“No,” the voice corrected. “This is trust.”
One by one, they shed their remnants of the ordinary world. The spring’s nectar rose to meet them, its surface shimmering with the promise of metamorphosis.
Eleanor’s Awakening: The Vine’s Embrace
The botanist stepped in first. Nectar coiled around her ankles, viscous and alive.
“It’s pH-neutral,” she breathed, her analytical mind scrambling for control. “No detectable toxins, but the surface tension suggests—”
“Silence,” the Keeper interrupted. “Your skin has a lexicon your tongue ignores.”
A tendril of liquid climbed her thigh, forking at her hip—one rivulet spiraling her navel, the other slipping between. Her gasp echoed through the clearing.
“It’s… mapping me,” she stammered.
“Correct.” The Keeper materialized at the spring’s edge, a shadow with citrine eyes. “Your husband cataloged ferns but never your freckles. Let me.”
The nectar surged. Eleanor’s knees buckled as it filled her—not invasively, but intimately, like sunlight through stained glass. Vines erupted from the pool, cradling her in a lattice of desire.
“I—I can’t—”
“You can.” His hand (or was it the water?) cupped her jaw. “A woman who names galaxies in lichen shouldn’t fear her own Big Bang.”
When release came, it was taxonomic—genus, species, scream.
Serena’s Surrender: The Dividend of Release
The CEO waded in next, chin high. “If this is a liquidity event, I expect—”
Nectar slapped her mouth shut.
“No prospectus here,” the Keeper growled. “Only profit.”
Vines lashed her wrists, yanking her underwater. Serena thrashed, bubbles bursting with boardroom expletives.
“Breathe,” he ordered.
She inhaled liquid fire.
Resurfacing, she was altered—skin gilded, hair woven with coin-shaped leaves. The vines dragged her to the shallows, pinning her beneath a waterfall that pulsed like a lover’s tongue.
“I don’t… negotiate… under duress,” she spat.
“You will.” The Keeper’s shadow loomed. “Your spreadsheets never showed this ROI.”
The waterfall found her clenched thighs.
“Fuck your metrics—”
“No. Fuck mine.”
Her scream minted new currency.
Lila’s Liberation: The Scar’s Bloom
The herbalist trembled at the water’s edge. “I’m not… I can’t…”
“Your husband’s ghost drowns here,” the Keeper murmured. “Dare you float?”
The nectar reached for her scar, tendril-light.
“It’s inside me,” she whispered.
“So was he. Let me evict him.”
The liquid slipped past her lips, sweet as absinthe. Lila’s scar ruptured—not blood, but jasmine blossoms spilling from the wound.
“Sing,” the Keeper urged.
Her voice, unused for years, emerged as a vine. It coiled around Margot’s wrist, tugging her into the pool.
“Clever girl,” the artist purred.
Margot’s Masterpiece: The Living Canvas
Chaos was Margot’s medium.
She plunged into the spring, nectar sluicing decades from her skin. “Djevojko!” she called to Lila. “Paint me!”
The herbalist hesitated, then pressed jasmine-stained fingers to Margot’s spine. Where she touched, tattoos erupted—not ink, but life: ivy that writhed, moths that drank sweat, roses that moaned when stroked.
“More,” the Keeper demanded.
Lila’s courage crescendoed. She painted Margot’s hips with wisteria, her throat with nightshade.
“Yes!” Margot arched, her body a gallery of gasp and bloom. “Let them see!”
Clarissa, ever the opportunist, began filming.
Clarissa’s Climax: The Viral Verdict
The influencer’s gown regenerated underwater—sheer as sin, responsive as lust.
“Smile, followers!” She angled her phone, capturing Serena’s gilded contortions, Eleanor’s vine-bound ecstasy. “Hashtag GardenGripes! Hashtag CEODoesCthulhu!”
“Vanity,” the Keeper chided, “is prayer without poetry.”
Her phone dissolved. “What the f—”
“Create this.”
Nectar flooded her mouth, sweet and punitive. Clarissa’s vision shattered, reforming as the garden saw her: not a face, but a nexus of hunger and light.
“Oh,” she breathed. “I’m… magnificent.”
“Now show them.”
Her gown blazed ultraviolet. Somewhere, a million phones buzzed with phantom notifications.
The Keeper’s Reward
At dawn, they lay entwined on moss—a tapestry of spent glory.
The Keeper surveyed his work: Eleanor’s freckles now bioluminescent, Serena’s hair a nest of living tenders, Lila’s scar a trellis for passionfruit vines.
“What now?” Margot asked, her voice smoke and satisfaction.
“Now,” he said, fading into the magnolias, “you tend yourselves. And each other.”
Clarissa stretched, her gown shifting to morning gold. “So… no cult robes?”
“Wear nothing,” came the reply, “and everything.”
The spring stilled. Somewhere, a new bud cracked open, its petals the color of surrender.
Chapter 5: The Ritual of Pollination
The moon hung low, a lustrous pearl nestled in the velvet throat of night. The women stood in a crescent around the orchid bed, their shadows merging into a single silhouette—a many-armed goddess of want and will. The Keeper materialized as the clock struck midnight, his arrival marked by the shudder of Ophrys apifera blooms tilting toward him like devotees.
“Late as always,” Margot drawled, though her charcoal stub trembled.
“Fashionably,” the Keeper corrected. His suit—lichen woven with threads of starlight—clung to him like a second epidermis, bioluminescent spores drifting from the seams. “Shall we conjugate, ladies?”
Serena’s laugh was a blade unsheathed. “If you mean pollinate, use the right terms.”
“Language limits,” he purred, plucking a phantom orchid from the air. “Biology… liberates.”
The flower in his palm pulsed, its petals mimicking the plush curve of a female bee’s abdomen. Lila gasped.
“It’s alive,” she whispered.
“As are you,” the Keeper said. “Finally.”
The First Stroke
He handed Margot a brush tipped with golden pollen. “Watch the deception. The orchid wears a lover’s face to seduce.”
The artist scoffed. “I’ve done that since the 80s.”
“But never with intent.” His hand closed over hers, guiding the bristles toward the flower’s false stigma. “Press here—where the bee would mount.”
Margot’s breath hitched. The pollen clung to her brush like molten desire. “It’s… vibrating.”
“As it should.” His thumb traced her pulse. “The best lies feel like epiphanies.”
The orchid quivered, secreting nectar that glistened like a sinner’s sweat.
Clarissa leaned in, her moth-silk gown rippling. “So it’s catfishing bees? Savage.”
“Says the woman who filters reality,” the Keeper retorted. “This is survival. Note the labellum’s curve—how it invites violation.”
Eleanor adjusted her glasses. “Mimicry ensures pollination without reward. Brutal efficiency.”
“Efficiency?” The Keeper’s laugh was a rumble of distant thunder. “This is art. The bee thinks it’s mating. The orchid thinks it’s conquering. Who are we to judge?”
Serena plucked a bloom, its petals bruising under her grip. “And the profit?”
“Ah.” He plucked the flower from her hand. It healed instantly. “Margot?”
The artist’s brush hovered. “Yes?”
“Paint what you feel.”
The Second Stroke
Margot’s canvas was the night itself.
She mixed pollen with nectar, crafting pigments that glowed like trapped fireflies. The Keeper’s hands never left her—guiding, correcting, igniting.
“Less wrist,” he murmured. “The orchid doesn’t beg. It commands.”
She snarled, slashing a streak of violet across the dark. “I don’t take orders.”
“You will.” His lips grazed her earlobe. “When you see the price tag.”
The painting shifted. Petals became parted thighs, pollen trails became sweat, the labellum a glistening cleft.
“Christ,” Serena breathed. “It’s… obscene.”
“It’s commerce,” the Keeper countered.
He was right. By dawn, collectors from Dubai to Monaco bid millions for “Ophrys No. 1.” Margot’s laugh funded irrigation systems, solar panels, and a velvet-draped studio where she’d later paint Clarissa writhing in moth silk.
The Cooperative
“We’ll structure as an LLC,” Serena declared, spreadsheets blooming across her laptop. “Margot’s art funds restoration. Lila’s tinctures monetize wellness. Clarissa?”
The influencer twirled in a new gown—black orchid petals edged with venomous green. “Hashtag ConsciousCorruption. Hashtag SinnerSustainability.”
Lila bottled a tincture of Rosa damascena and desire. “This… this could help others. Women like me.”
“It will,” the Keeper said, materializing beside her. “But first, taste it.”
She hesitated.
“Trust,” he urged.
The droplet on her tongue exploded—honey, blood, and the metallic tang of agency.
“More,” she demanded.
He smiled.
The Scholarship
Eleanor drafted the criteria by lamplight:
1. Courage to question.
2. Hands that hunger.
3. A scar that sings.
“Too vague,” Serena criticized.
“Too true,” the Keeper countered.
The first recipient arrived weeks later—a girl from Jakarta with dirt under her nails and fire in her throat. She’d grafted mangosteen onto cactus, creating fruit that bled opiates.
“Teach me,” she begged Eleanor.
The botanist handed her a vial of Ophrys pollen. “Seduce the world.”
The Third Stroke
The ritual climaxed at moon zenith.
The Keeper lined the women before the orchid bed, each armed with brushes. “Now—pollinate.”
Clarissa giggled, dabbing pollen like lipstick. “Do we swipe left or right?”
“Follow instinct,” he growled.
Lila’s brush trembled. “What if I hurt it?”
“You won’t.” His hand steadied hers. “Thorns protect, remember?”
Serena worked with surgical precision. “Efficiency yields control.”
“Control is an illusion,” the Keeper murmured. “Ask the bee.”
Margot painted instead, capturing the scene: five women and a shadow, their brushes dripping gold.
When the Ophrys burst into seed, the garden sighed.
The Aftermath
They reconvened at dawn, the cooperative’s ledger glowing on Serena’s tablet.
“We’ve funded three scholarships,” she reported. “And the Guardian wants a profile.”
Clarissa scrolled through her feed. “#EcoErotica is trending. Our DMs are flooded.”
Lila cradled a vial of tears—her first student’s. “She called me maestra.”
Eleanor said nothing. Her glasses, fogged with nectar, hid trembling eyes.
Margot lit a Gauloise. “What now, hortikulturni?”
The Keeper inhaled her smoke. “Now you root.”
He vanished, leaving lichen confetti in his wake.
Somewhere, an orchid laughed.
Chapter 6: The Glasshouse Tryst
The Victorian glasshouse rose like a cathedral of sin, its iron ribs glistening under a feverish moon. Eleanor paused at the threshold, her lab coat clinging to damp skin. Inside, Nelumbo nucifera leaves sprawled across murky water, their saucer-sized blooms exhaling pheromones that curled her resolve into smoke.
“Late,” the Keeper’s voice purred from the shadows. “But redeemable.”
She stepped inside. Heat draped itself over her shoulders, thick as a lover’s arm.
“I’m here to document the lotus,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “Not play your games.”
“Games?” A ripple cut through the pool. He emerged waist-deep, water sluicing down a torso sculpted from defiance of physics. Lichen clung to his hips like a fig leaf carved by pagan hands. “This is science, Doctor. Observe.”
He snapped a lotus stem. Milky sap oozed, its scent vanilla laced with menace.
The First Taste
“Suck,” he commanded, extending the stem.
Eleanor recoiled. “I’m not your test subject.”
“Aren’t you?” His laugh stirred the humid air. “You’ve measured every leaf in this garden except the one beating in your chest.”
The lotus sap glistened, a liquid dare. She leaned in, lips parting—
Click.
Her glasses fogged. The world softened.
“Deeper,” he growled.
The sap hit her tongue—cold, then feverish. Notes of salted caramel, bergamot, and something alive unspooled down her throat. Her knees buckled.
“God—”
“Closer.”
He caught her wrist, yanking her into the pool. Water soaked her slacks, her clipboard bobbing away like a chastity belt discarded.
The Second Lesson
“The sacred lotus thrives in decay,” he murmured, a hand splayed at the small of her back. “Rooted in muck, blooming toward light. Sound familiar?”
She struggled, but his grip was taxonomy incarnate—order imposed on chaos. “Let me go.”
“Make me.”
His free hand skimmed her collarbone, igniting nerve endings she’d buried under herbarium sheets. Above them, the glass roof fogged, droplets racing like voyeurs to the edges.
“Your—your pheromone manipulation is pedestrian,” she hissed. “Any first-year could—”
“Lie again,” he whispered, teeth grazing her earlobe, “and I’ll have you begging for a pop quiz.”
The lotus sighed. Her clipboard sank.
The Third Stroke
He pressed her against a pillar, moss cushioning her spine. “You’ve dissected a thousand flowers. Ever let one dissect you?”
“This is unethical.”
“Says the woman funding scholarships with Margot’s porn.” His thumb found her pulse. “Ethics are for organisms that photosynthesize.”
The lotus pheromones swirled—heady, coercive. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, nails meeting lichen that hissed and bloomed.
“There,” he approved. “Anger is passion with better posture.”
When he kissed her, it was conquest and confession. The glasshouse steamed.
The Climax Unseen
Sound became their only witness:
The slap of water against stone.
A gasp sharp as a scalpel.
The creak of iron ribs as the Keeper pinned her wrists overhead.
“Still cataloging?” he taunted.
“Y-yes,” she lied.
“Liar.” He moved.
Her moan cracked the glass.
The Aftermath
Dawn found her on the pool’s edge, reassembled. Her hair bore streaks of gold as if gilded by Midas mid-thrust. The Keeper floated on his back, a water lily cocked behind one ear.
“This changes nothing,” she said, buttoning a blouse stiff with dried nectar.
“Everything changes,” he corrected. “You’ll publish a paper tomorrow.”
She froze. “On what?”
“Me.”
He vanished.
The Transformation
The Journal of Botanical Anomalies accepted her manuscript in hours:
“Symbiotic Erotics: The Unseen Pollinator in Closed Ecosystems.”
Peer reviews called it “revolutionary,” “obscene,” and “fundable.”
At the launch party, Clarissa filmed her sipping champagne in a gown of living lotus silk.
“Who’s the dedicatee?” a reporter asked.
Eleanor touched her gilded streak. “An unnamed cultivator.”
“Liar,” the Keeper’s voice whispered through her veins.
She smiled.
Chapter 7: A Crown of Mycelium
The gala began at moonrise, the garden throbbing with bioluminescence. Clarissa’s fungal gowns clung to the women like second skins, their seams alive with pulsating Mycena chlorophos. Guests arrived to find their reflections in black lotus pools, their gasps feeding the night’s electricity.
“Told you we’d make decay chic,” Clarissa purred, adjusting a strap of glowing mycelium that snaked around her thigh.
Serena sipped a champagne flute of Lila’s Crataegus elixir, the hawthorn’s bite sharpening her smirk. “Save the gloating. The Times critic arrives in ten.”
Margot snorted, her own gown sprouting inkcap mushrooms that dripped indigo onto the grass. “Let him come. My last piece sold for six million. I’ll buy his newspaper and fire him.”
Eleanor hovered near the restored glasshouse, now a cathedral of scholarship. A young botanist from Nairobi whispered, “Your paper on symbiotic erotics… it freed me,” before pressing a vial of baobab pollen into her hand.
Lila floated past, her scar now a living vine, offering elixirs that promised courage. “It’s not magic,” she demurred to a trembling heiress. “Just… remembered strength.”
Then—
The air stiffened. The garden held its breath.
He arrived without fanfare, the Keeper’s suit woven from midnight and Armillaria rhizomorphs.
“Late,” he said, though time bent around him.
The Coronation
They knelt in the mycelium circle, their fungal gowns whispering against dew-kissed grass. The Keeper circled them, a shadow with citrine eyes.
“Serena,” he began, hand hovering above her crown. “You turned boardrooms into boudoirs. Let this root you deeper.”
Mycelium threads erupted from the soil, coiling her platinum bob into a lattice of power. She shuddered, a gasp escaping like a traded secret.
Clarissa craned her neck. “Do mine next! I want drama.”
“Child,” he sighed, pressing a glowing spore to her lips. “You were born dramatic.”
The mycelium climbed her throat, fusing with her fungal gown until she gleamed like a nebula pinned to flesh.
Lila trembled as his shadow fell over her. “Little healer,” he murmured, mycelium caressing her scar. “Your thorns now shelter thousands.”
The threads braided her hair into a living diadem, each strand humming with Crataegus resolve.
Margot bared her teeth. “If you compare me to a mushroom, I’ll—”
“You’re all fungi,” he interrupted. “Devourers of rot. Architects of rebirth.”
Her crown erupted—a grotesque, glorious tangle of Phallus impudicus, its veiled stinkhorn tip brushing her brow. “Perfect,” she breathed.
Eleanor knelt last.
“Doctor,” he said, softer. “You measured my heart. What did you find?”
“A hypocrite,” she said, voice steady. “Preaching connection while remaining rootless.”
His laughter shook petals loose. “Ah, but what is a spore if not a promise to wander?”
The mycelium crowned her gently, gold threads weaving through her gilded streak.
The Feast of Light
They dined on tables of living Fomes fomentarius, the fungal plates secreting nectar that pooled in clavaria crystal goblets.
“Try the Cordyceps tartare,” Clarissa urged a Michelin-starred chef. “It colonizes your tongue. Divine.”
Lila’s elixirs flowed, lowering inhibitions and lace gloves. A tech mogul wept into his Crataegus cocktail. “I’ve never… felt this much.”
“Cash helps,” Serena quipped, signing a check for the next scholarship cohort.
Margot held court atop a Ganoderma throne, sketching guests onto vellum made of Trametes versicolor. “You,” she told a blushing baroness, “are Phallus hadriani in human form. Let me capture your… essence.”
Eleanor lectured by the lotus pool, students scribbling notes on mycelium paper. “Symbiosis isn’t harmony,” she declared. “It’s negotiated exploitation. Now, who’s read my latest paper on Erotic Endophytes?”
The Farewell
Dawn approached, staining the sky the color of a lover’s spent blush. The Keeper stood at the garden’s heart, a Prototaxites seedling glowing in his palm.
“Time to compost,” he said.
Clarissa pouted. “You can’t leave. I haven’t gotten your Insta.”
“Child,” he sighed, “I am the algorithm.”
Serena stepped forward, crown glinting. “Your shares?”
“Vested.” He pressed the seedling into her palm. “Water it with conquest.”
Lila touched his lichen sleeve. “Will you… return?”
“I never left.” His form began to fray, spores lifting into the light. “A single root sustains many blooms. Tend yours.”
Margot saluted with her stinkhorn crown. “Idi u pičku materinu.”
“Charming,” he laughed, dissolving.
The Epilogue
The seedling became a nursery.
Five years later, new women wander the garden’s ever-expanding borders:
A Somali engineer trailing Cuscuta vines.
A Tokyo chef whose Wasabia burns with truth.
A widow from Montevideo, her skin etched in Clavaria script.
They kneel where the mycelium circle once throbbed, now a throne of Armillaria and ambition.
Serena’s voice carries from the glasshouse, sharper, richer: “Negotiate harder.”
Clarissa’s laugh, viral and venomous: “Hashtag CultivateThis.”
Lila’s whisper, sweet as Crataegus: “Your scars are seeds.”
Margot’s snarl: “Ruin is a canvas.”
Eleanor’s pen scratches, eternal.
Above them all, the Keeper’s voice lingers in the rustle of Nelumbo leaves, the sigh of Ophrys petals, the mycelium’s endless, hungry weave.
“Bloom,” the garden whispers.
“Bloom.”
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