The flowers of a pecha plant smelled like fresh rain and hard candy, a combination of earthy and sweet, making you feel as though you were in heaven, but they were deadly poisonous.
That’s how Gold would describe the lone man in the cell around the corner, in the furthest part of the prison. Silver eyes half-lidded but gleaming, shining. Red strands of hair draped over his shoulders, over the chains that restrained him, looking brand new despite it’s clear disarray.
Green stopped suddenly and Gold stumbled into his backside. Immediately, his elder spun around and pushed in his cheeks with nimble digits from a single hand. “One wrong step and I’ll slice your face open. Got it?” Gold nodded weakly and was promptly released as the other wandered a step closer to the bars.
Those eyes flicked over to Green’s form, locking on, but not rising to meet his face. Green crouched down. “This is Silver Rocketti. A prime example of what happens when you get too ambitious, too lustful for power. He’s been here for half a year now. He’ll be here for the rest of his life.”
Gold gulped.
“Being strong isn’t a bad thing.” Green rose, and with a flick of his wrist, a small ball of light fell above his palm. He looked ready to continue that thought, but switched course instead. “Bad things make bad people. Simple as that. The righteous aren’t meant to fall to mortal whims. Come, it’s getting dark.”
As Gold once again rounded the corner, Green leading the way out, he couldn’t help but think, well, pecha berries were actually good for you, right?
-
Gold was back the next day, unfortunately, deigned to sweeping the stone floors that hadn’t seen a broom in, well, ever. He decided it would be easier to push it all into cracks, but then remembered Green’s stern face and thought he’d better think of another plan.
He was distracted, to say the least, which was why he didn’t register anything as he passed a certain cell, the only occupied cell, leaving him prone for whatever the other decided.
He wasn’t expecting anything, which was his first mistake. A shadow crept under his feet, and in mere seconds it tangled around his calves, making him drop the broom in panic, and half-dragged half-flew him over to the cell’s bars, face squished up against the old metal. A pale hand came out of the darkness and gripped his chin, tightly. A moment more and he was gazing into a pair of silver eyes, wide and wild, from about two feet away.
Damn. He was wrong. Completely wrong. This guy was venomous. Definitely a pecha flower.
Neither spoke, and Gold really didn’t want to be the one to break the silence and have his neck snapped. So he waited out until the other screwed his lips into a frown, turning his face just a bit away. “You’re interesting,” he told him, voice not as raspy as he’d thought despite not talking for half a year.
“Um,” Gold squeaked. “Would you mind letting me go? I swear I won’t tell anyone what-well, what did you do?”
“Magic,” he said simply, releasing the boy.
There was a few moments of silence before Gold remembered his name was Silver, and then he was speaking again and he was slightly too petrified to do anything.
“What are you even doing down here? That task is useless, menial,” he said brashly, looking towards the broom.
“I guess it’s remedial?” Gold swallowed, thickly. “I’ve never gotten into this sort of trouble before, so I don’t exactly know. Has anyone else been down here?”
“What did you do?” Silver pried, entirely ignoring the question. This only slightly irked Gold.
“It was a wrong-place-wrong-time scenario,” he told him. “Except, y’know, with magic.”
Silver scoffed and released him, but Gold didn’t move back far, only enough so that his facial bones weren’t being rammed into the bars. Faintly, in the back of his mind, he found this unusual.
“You can leave. I’ll take care of the sweeping.” Slowly, he creeped back to the wall, his restraints laxing.
Gold stood, crouched down to grab the broom, then stood again. “Uhmm, how, exactly?” he asked meekly.
With a snap of his fingers, all the dust simply gathered up near the cell, then promptly splattered behind the bars. A cough, a swipe of the dirt off his face, and then he was looking up at Gold as if to say, ‘Like that’.
Instead, he went with a short explanation. “Magic.”
Because he was feeling brave, Gold dared to ask one more. “So they just chained you up down here . . with free reign of your magic?”
Silver laughed. It was a short, mirthless thing. “No. I’m pretty drained. I’d been saving up, for one burst, something that’d set me free.”
And then it clicked for Gold. “Why . . me? Why’d you use it for me?”
The lifetime prisoner shrugged his shoulders, a lost expression briefly gracing his features. “I don’t know.”
-
Two weeks later, an explosion happened in the basement of the prison. Gold was on the ground floor. It left his ears ringing.
No one was in his area, nor was it a place that led down below, so he was surprised to hear footsteps. When he turned, he was even more surprised to see a pale face framed by red strands, and silver eyes with a bit of a forlorn look to them. Silver’s face was the perfect picture of tired, worn, just like he had always known from his time around him.
“I thought you . . ?” He trailed off. Silver didn’t have enough magic, but he also had a drape over him, something Gold distinctly remembered not being there during his time in the cell. Someone had come for him.
“My sister came,” he said shortly. Gold mentally celebrated, yes, he’d gotten one right.
He quieted down for his next words, though.
“Don’t let them limit you, Gold.” Silver pursed his lips. “Don’t let them chain you, too.”
And then he was gone, in a whirlwind of, well, magic. And Gold thought that maybe, just maybe, Silver was the ripest pecha berry he’d ever laid eyes on, completely untouched of the fatal flowers surrounding it.
