Much time has passed. Life has been good, it has been calm.

Burch, having found a corner of the world where everything is peaceful has, too, found calmness. The quiet, the solitude, the sunshine - it gives her a chance to start healing. It is not the first time we have found such retreat from the horrors of the world, but this time feels more significant than the others.

The wind blows all around us, my softening stalk gently bends beneath the pressure of its presence. My thinning petals wave, dancing in the gale, as if they were the long strands of Burch’s curly hair which flows just next to me.

My worn roots hold firm in the soil of the beautiful meadow that we rest in, by the orchard, and they drink deeply of the nourished world. Behind us, some distance away, is a cliff and and beneath it is the ocean.

I lift my gaze towards the sun, letting it meet me in the middle of our love.

Hello, sun.

- [Sunflower] -

You bask in the light of the sun

+ 1 EXP

EXP: 259/1250

For how long have we been journeying together?

- For all of my life, I suppose. Ever since I was born. In that sense, the sun and Burch share the same connection with me.

They have not only been with me for all of my days, but the two of them are also responsible for my existence. Burch is the sun and the sun is Burch. They are both just as warm as the other.

A while has passed since we broke off from our trail, since we left the mountain and since the hobgoblin horde has passed us by, moving on to what they seek in the west.

I can only assume that they, too, seek paradise.

- The poor fools.

They do not know that we have already found the next best thing right here.

Burch works, tending to the soil and the land. She makes a shelter of some kind, out on the meadow. She intends to stay here for a while. I believe that she has simply grown out of the desire to walk forever. Perhaps she has seen the hobgoblin's fail to learn this lesson.

Life is good.

The sun is bright.

The air is warm.

The breeze is kind.

I bask, taking in the full bounty of life.

The truth is that paradise is here already. Right here. Right wherever one might find themselves. Paradise isn’t a place. Paradise is a feeling.

But it is only available to those who are willing to see life for what it really is.

Burch cries as she works, processing her many, many troubles as she toils. Her tears water the land, I am sure the grass is grateful for the moisture.

It is good.

I feel my leaves droop a little more.

Burch is away gathering fruit.

A buzzing fills the air. A few strong, beautiful bees fly my way.

Ah.

They hum and dance through the air, landing on my face and my stem.

It is a good thing that Burch is not here right now.

- I wouldn’t want her to see this.

I am a most adventurous sunflower, after all.

It will be our secret, bees.

Haha.

That tickles.

Another week has passed. Burch grows stronger by the day as she works on herself and on her home. It does not look very sturdy or competently made, but she seems proud of what it is and so, I too am proud of what it is.

When she does not toil, she sits next to me and we look at the sun, while she talks about her life.

Burch has never talked this much before.

However, now, she talks and she talks and she talks. And I, being the good friend that I am, listen and then, she returns to her work, after having let out what she needs to let out. Like trapped water, breaking free from a dam, simply talking has a way of releasing so much untold pressure.

LEVEL UP!

Congratulations Burch! You are now level {9}!

- [Burch] - Health-Points: 36/36↗ Soul-Points: 30/30↗ Level: 9↗ Experience: 0/1250 Class: Druid Sub-class: None Race: Human Obols: 000 - [Stats] - STR: 09 DEX: 14 WIS: 09 ↗↗ INT: 09 ↗↗ LUK: 10 LOV: 09 NEW - [Root Weaving]{Active} - Cost: {6} SOUL Allows you to weave the roots of trees and plants together, in order to create strong holds on objects and people. Roots hold the world together, spanning beneath every forest and meadow, there are far more roots beneath the soil than one would expect. Druids are well aware of this and know how to manipulate them to their advantage.

She will overtake me in power soon, simply by the virtue and grace of her growth as a creature.

Burch digs around at my roots, lovingly tending to my soil.

She has gathered several of my seeds, which have fallen loosely to the ground and she crawls around the dirt, planting them with generous spacing apart from myself and each other.

(Burch) used: [Growth] SOUL: 19/30

A glow leaves her hands, radiating out down over the padded heaps of soil, in which she has planted my seeds.

Little sprouts emerge from the dirt.

I look at them, curiously.

They are odd, small, but beautiful things of a shade most vibrant and verdant. All of them turn, moving their worm-length bodies to bend towards the light of the sun.

Hmm.

Does this mean that I am a mother-father now?

- Curious.

Given the true nature of my being, this development is something worth pondering. How very complicated, life can be.

Yet another week has passed. Burch reaches my level of strength.

LEVEL UP!

Congratulations Burch! You are now level {10}!

- [Burch] - Health-Points: 38/38↗ Soul-Points: 32/32↗ Level: 10↗ Experience: 0/1500 Class: Druid Sub-class: None Race: Human Obols: 000 - [Stats] - STR: 09 DEX: 14 WIS: 11↗↗ INT: 11 ↗↗ LUK: 10 LOV: 09 NEW - [Hardiness]{Passive} -

You are resistant to strong shifts in temperature and weather.

+8 to all resistances

Spending their entire lives outside, druids are hardened against the elements of the natural world.

My best friend has built a strong shelter, made up out of felled trees, stacked on top of each other.

It is a house; small, but strong. I sit just outside of it and every day, she speaks to me of her past and of the future. Each day her voice becomes stronger and clearer, as do her wishes and the lights of her eyes.

The dead wood of her home is held together by roots and vines of plants that she has fostered with her magic.

My leaves grow darker. My stem grows softer. I am old.

It seems that I am coming to the end of my journey.

- And what a journey it has been.

I have seen the big rocks and I have wandered beneath tall trees. I have become soaked in the torrential rains and I have bathed in the magnificent light of a hundred and then some sunsets, each more beautiful than the last. I have had an abductor, and I have had a ward, and I have had a best friend. I have seen and done and experienced things both terrible and fantastic - things that no other being can ever claim to have known.

All of this, and I am still but a sunflower.

I look at Burch, watching her work on the land, on herself. She has found something akin to peace, finally. The culmination of our adventure has led her to nothing more grand and exciting than this plain, humble feeling. It is a mixture of many good things, having come together as one whole.

Calmness.

Self-acceptance.

Self-love.

I wonder, what things has she experienced during our journey, that I will never know of? What things will she continue to experience that I will never know of?

This is the great sadness of life, if any.

There is too much for one creature to ever know.

We can only hope that the things that we spend our days doing, that the goals we spend our days pursuing, are true things that will enrich us with sensations of warmth and love and that the things that we flee from do not drive us into the brink of darkness, but rather, that they will push us towards a place where we can be who and what we truly yearn for; paradise, if such a thing is to be believed in.

Perhaps it isn’t really real?

Perhaps this was just a metaphor all along?

It would be most fitting, after all.

Burch sits at my side and we stare up towards the sunset, coming to bring an end to the best day of my life.

- The trick to being able to say this, is to have every day be the best day of your life.

One might wonder, what was the point of this whole thing?

If not for 'paradise', if not for the hobgoblins, if not for anything else, then what was the point of this strange adventure?

Look up.

Look towards the sun.

Look towards the face of a thing that you love.

- I turn towards Burch and she turns towards me.

That is the point. Nothing more, nothing less.

There is something that you need to understand, Burch.

But I know that you already understand this, as you have already understood since the day we passed through the crystal-cave, before we arrived in the city. Since that day, when you saw your reflection back in the glossy surface of the reflective, yellow stone for the first time and saw that it was alone - all by itself.

I am a sunflower.

You are Burch.

The difference is that, I, the entity that I am, do not exist.

I am not real.

I am a metaphorical sunflower, in quite a literal sense.

I exist solely in the confines of Burch’s head, having been born of the soil of a terrible thing, a memory, a trauma, despair, in order to give her spirit a context of something brighter and hopeful. I am a coping mechanism.

- As even the physical body itself yearns for something to hope for, the mind too yearns for something to hope for and in this, the two of them will come together to create something that is real enough, if you are in a place so desperate and dark and terrible.

But Burch has grown out of her anguish and fear and she has become a thing that is not a sunflower, or a mushroom, or a worm, or a butterfly, or a snake, or a bird, or even a monster.

She is just a woman, just a person. Good. Whole. Calm. Beautiful, in any way that matters.

That is all.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

And isn’t that just the most wonderful thing?

Ah.

I long for more.

I long to see and to feel and to know so many, many more things.

But the time has come for us to say goodbye.

I am an old sunflower.

Burch lifts her shaking hand, pressing it against my wilting petals, having reached the end of their natural lifespan.

I am glad that I got to exist for a while, Burch.

I am glad that we got to become friends.

I am glad that I got to know the joy of life, if only briefly.

Even if I am not real, even if nobody else can see me except for you and the constructs of your own imagination, even if I am as much a part of you as are your bones and your skin and your eyes, know that I love you as much as I love the sun itself.

Burch uses her druidic ability to identify plants on me. A window appears.

- [Sunflower] -

This is an imaginary sunflower.

It isn’t real.

“Thank you,” says Burch.

You are very welcome, Burch. This was fun. Let us do it again sometime.

Goodbye.

I stop existing, leaving my best friend, Burch, to thrive all on her own. But I know that she can do it now without me.

I was a sunflower.