Basil never returned to the grange that night or the morning after.

Clover anxiously paced around in a hexagon, linearly ricocheting through the same six points marked by sprigs of nameless greens.

The wind blew a flurry of desiccated foliage into her face. Clover didn’t even close her eyes—trusting the storm of dust and debris to carry on as though she weren’t there.

Heather watched from the entrance of the henge as the trampled grass remained simperingly low, choosing not to spring back up until after Clover walked the nerves off.

She slowly approached Clover—somehow going unnoticed even as she stepped into the centre of the druid’s polygon.

“He’s just lost somewhere,” Heather said reassuringly.

Clover jumped slightly when she became aware of Heather’s presence. She looked at her in a mix of surprise and incredulity. For a second her movements stalled – then they resumed.

“He should have been practising in the same place…” Clover countered quietly, “…but Aspen said there was nobody there…”

“He must have gotten frustrated and went out looking for another place to practice,” Heather breathed sympathetically. “It happened before,” she added more softly.

“Wouldn’t he come to the grange to tell somebody – or leave a message by the ponds at least? Tell a shrub?”

“Maybe he thought, ‘Tonight is the night,’ and then it wasn’t,” Heather proposed, reaching out and stopping Clover in her tracks with a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Come inside.”
“Aspen’s looking for him right now – not to mention a dozen other capable druids.”

Clover was still as a statue while she weighed the easy comfort of perusing the buffet and chatting with Heather against the unyielding need to help search for her friend.

By the time she met Heather’s gaze, her expression had softened considerably. “Thanks…”

The other druid smiled and brought Clover back inside the henge.

Compared to the luminous sun outside, the bioluminescent ambiance inside the henge was a welcome change.

“Druids don’t typically process food as such, so I can’t offer you anything stronger than juice to drink,” Heather apologised to an unbothered shake of the head from Clover.

“I don’t really drink,” Clover assured her easily.

The senior druid replied with an understanding nod. “Then maybe I can get you some mushrooms?”

If Clover’s inner alchemist wasn’t relegated to her consciousness’ proverbial time-out bench, she might have jumped at the chance to acquire any psychoactive substance not conned directly from the plague-seekers. However presently, she felt in the mood neither for science nor for a psychedelic crisis.

As the two women sat around an empty table, a copper-haired elf – also dressed in druid garb – approached them.

“Looks like you got the day off while your instructor’s out looking for his sulking pupil, huh?” the elf asked with a sly smirk and – very appropriately – cock to his head.

Clover’s brows shot up her forehead in a spring-loaded burst of kinetic force that nearly lifted her off her seat.

The elf quietly recoiled at her unexpected reaction.

“I didn’t mean to imply that he’s skipping class on purpose…!” the elf backpedalled clumsily. “I just meant he’d probably be upset – ergo sulking – after having wasted everybody’s time…!” He gesticulated frantically alongside his pathetic attempt at an ingratiating smile.

Clover stood up – leaving ten crescent-shaped marks in the wood of their table. “I’m going for a walk,” she huffed sharply and turned away.

As Clover stormed off in dumb fury, the elf turned to Heather with a look of confusion. “Do you think she heard what I said?” he asked under his breath.

 

***

 

The beaten grass outside the henge immediately dipped upon seeing Clover leave the place angrier than she entered.

She beelined directly into the surrounding bushes and through them without batting an eye.

Once Clover left the razor volume of prohibitive foliage unscathed, she emerged into a vast web of clearings and wooded filaments. Everywhere she stomped, Clover was at least waist-deep in fallen leaves.

The woods before her were a dry, rustling sea of reds and browns – and Clover felt very much adrift – but not exactly lost.

A bird flew overhead – Clover wondered if it was a real bird or a druid on the lookout for Basil.

The wind picked up and remoulded the dunes of withered foliage, shaping them into hills and valleys independent of the terrain Clover was subject to.

By the time the sepia storm dulled to naught but the occasional stir of a passing gale, Clover found herself recognising her surroundings not by sight but by scent.

“Isoamyl acetate…” she observed under her breath. Looking around, Clover realised exactly where she was – and that was atop the trench where they found the pool of discarded chemicals.

She peered down from her bush-fortified ledge and into the small amount of muck still wheezing out the last of its fruity essence.

Just as Clover was about to make the steep descent to the strange comfort of the chemical miasma, she noticed a trampled patch of moss on the side.

Part of its avascular body was smeared in what appeared to be a prior scuffle.
As Clover leaned down to gently scoop the moss up, she carefully inspected the lingering impression of a druid’s sandal – faithfully etched onto the scene of the crime.

Grasping around her druidic toolbox, Clover decided to ask the moss.
Her face scrunched in growing frustration as she fought to conceive of a valuable piece of information encoded in the moss.

“Hello… When were you stepped on?”

Just like that, Clover suddenly knew what she conceivably could. It happened sometime last night. Inside, its repairs have only just started in earnest – having spent most of the night combatting the immediate damage with respiration alone.

Clover regarded the cruel brown smear.
“How many people stepped on you?”

Once again, Clover simply came into possession of the intuition that the tracks seemed consistent with two humanoid individuals engaged in a scuffle. And that the sandal-shaped dent fit her foot perfectly.

Her face lit up – victory, then panic, then anger, then finally panic for the second time.

She pocketed the moss. “You’re coming with me, buddy…” As she set off, Clover took a short, fast breath before slipping into a tachypnic step.