Floral.(Kevin Hughes) Sinja, and Marcy stood stock still. Frozen in place. Eyes matching any hackneyed saucer like description. All they could do was stare.

*****

“Did I just see what I thought I saw?”

“Yes.”

“There! Another one…or bunch…or bouquet. Well…whatever.”

Marcy laughed. She had no idea what to call a bunch of flowers running either. Some were running as individuals. Others as small groups or clusters. Brightly colored flowers on the run. It made her smile just to think about, to actually see them in action put a grin on her soul. Sinja felt the same way, she could see it reflected in his visor. She made a not so idle observation and comment:

“I think you hit it on the head Sinja…Bouquet! You can’t call flowers moseying along in a group …a herd. A Bouquet is perfect. But look!”

She turned and pointed to what looked like twelve foot tulips. They had all the colors that tulips back on Earth had…and some we did not. They towered over the brightly white and red Rose looking plants that were racing racing around them across the grass. Then she stopped and looked down. The Grass was moving too!

“Oh My!”

Sinja broke off his admiration of the “herds” of flowers transiting the plane in front of them when he heard her tone of voice. A tone that married “WTF” with “Awe" in a perfect match. He turned to her and started to talk. She cut him off gently and pointed down.

“OH!”

The grass under their feet, while slightly different richer shades of green than the grasses on Earth, was marching along in even paced strides. They had both thought it was the wind blowing in the grasses, especially the taller and yellower grasses that covered most of the planes. It wasn’t the wind. The individual blades of grass were marching in perfect match step with their squad mates. The Marine Corps Dress Marching Band couldn’t have been better synchronized…or organized.

Just imagine a verdant carpet creeping along with a metronome pace that moved with the ease of a powered walk way. The Flowers of all different kinds (and was that the equivalent of a Poppy that just sprinted by them?) moved either with purpose like the Rose like flowers, or with a sedate grandeur like the towering tulip like things, on the top of the steady flow of grass.

It was mind boggling. Until…

*****

“Pardon me, creature, but you are standing on my feet.”

Both Team Members spun in surprise.

Looking down at them was a Sunflower (at least that is what it looked like…if sunflowers had a face in the middle of their flower). It was waving a long leafy frond like a Human Dancer would wave an arm in Swan Lake. Graceful, powerful, extended. It pointed down where, sure enough, Sinja was standing on two or three long creeper like stems. The Sunflower’s equivalent of feet. Pinning the Sunflower in place.

Courtesy kicked in.

“Oh, I am so sorry.”

Sinja moved a few feet away. The sunflower bent and rubbed the three stems a bit, smiled at them both …and continued walking.

“Wait!”

The Sunflower stopped and turned to look back at the creatures. One wife of the slight breeze told the Sunflower being that those words came from the female of the outsiders.

“Yes?”

“You can talk?”

The sunflower wrapped fronds all around its body and bent almost double. You didn’t have to know sign language to know that was laughter so hard it hurts.

When the sunflower could breath again…it spoke:

“Well, of course. I mean you two have been keeping up a constant babble every since you landed on our planet.”

“We have?”

“Yes? I mean every time you think a defined thought, or speak, we hear it. By the way, what is this “Sunflower” you speak off. Can you picture one in your mind so I can see? Or is that rude?”

Marcy and Sinja both overcame their mental shock (they would deal with that later) and immediately thought of Sunflowers. There was a quiet moment where the Sunflower they had stepped on seemed to be admiring their mind portrait. It spoke again.

“Oh, I do see the similarity. That is pretty close, I shall release some pheromones so the Others can come see too!”

That’s all it took. Five minutes later and a Field of Sunflowers were racing towards them. You couldn’t call them a herd …maybe a Garden?

Fronds reached out and touched both Marcy and Sinja, the air was alive with the scents of flowers. Flowers of all kinds who had joined the Sunflowers to observe the new creatures. They had no word for “flesh” and no concept of meat, bone, or muscle. So they substituted fibers, leaves, and stems for the time being. All the while gently herding the two “Flesh and Blood” creatures along with them.

And then…they were gone. It was nighttime on the planet. And it got cold. Real cold. Their suites heated up. Off in the twilight, they saw the last of the Flowers racing to stay in the sunlight.

“What just happened?”

Marcy replied with carefully thought out words.

“Sinja, I don’t think this world has animals. I think everything living on it is a plant. Somehow they have to keep moving to always be in the sunlight. The Planet revolves every seven hours and thirty three minutes…we saw that when we were in orbit. So the Plants have evolved to keep moving. Imagine that.”

“You figured that out already?”

“No, I am not sure. It is just a guess, but it is the only thing that makes sense. Look how cold it gets when the sun drops down, everything would freeze to death. Heck, we would be popsicles if it wasn’t for our suits.”

“But they can talk!”

“I don’t think so, I think they read both pheromones, and can hear “synaptic streams” like our thoughts. “

“So they can read our minds?”

Shaking her head in the Universal sign of deep thought,

“No…only full formed concrete thoughts. Like when it had us pictures sunflowers. “

As they trudged back to the ship in what was turning out to be a bitterly cold night, with a howling wind, they bent themselves to walk into that wind. It was rapidly approaching hurricane force. Later, Sinja figured out that the temperature change explained why the “Flowers” never stopped moving. If they did, they froze, or were blown to pieces by the convective nature of the airflow. Cold that cold, chasing warm, that warm, led to significant weather. Wind that ripped the very soil from the land.

Sinja explained to Marcy why the grass had to move along too. Anything left on the dark side of the twilight would be blown away.

“What a remarkable planet!”

“Agreed.”

Two “days” later, when the Sun light brought the first racing plants (which looked for all the world like Violets) towards their ship, Sinja and Marcy went out to greet as many species as they could. It turns out the grass wasn’t all that bright. That verdant carpet had an IQ somewhere between an empty Pepsi can and a rock. Just enough awareness to keep moving. Tough stuff though. That grass bore the weight of entire Biome (En masse and on the move) without any apparent effort or pain. It lived a simple existence and left thoughts of any higher level to what it called: “The Fast Movers.”

On the third day, the Roses (what else would you call them…see the pictures we sent along with our report) introduced themselves. Turns out that the Roses were the Engineers of the Speeding Flowers. The Sunflowers, well, they were the Philosophers. The Tulip things were equivalent to our ordinary people doing ordinary jobs.

All three species spent time walking (or sometimes sprinting) with the new Creatures and their weird Metal Box. It took weeks and two generations of Sunflowers to explain the concept of “meat” to the Plants. It disgusted them. On the other hand, Sinja and Marcy loved the lessons in scent. A rose is not just a rose…it turns out.

After a few hundred sunrises and sunsets, it was agreed. A sunflower, a rose, two violets, and a Tulip would return with Sinji and Marcy to Earth. They wanted to see their rooted in one place relatives. The Roses helped with changing the cargo hold into a simulated environment that could sustain their lives as they made the long trip to Earth. Sinja managed to make the outer ring rotate at the same speed as the planet the Flowers lived on…and got light and dark to follow the interior on the same time schedule as their home planet. It worked.

Marcy hummed a lot on the way back to earth. Sinja asked why the big smile.

“Because the whole ship smells like a bouquet for seven hours a day. Its marvelous. “


“Bouquet! That’s it! We shall name their planet: Bouquet.”

They told the Flowers that night. The flowers asked for a picture. Sinja and Marcy complied with mind shots of beautiful floral decorations.

The flowers let out pheromones of delight. They had never thought of a bouquet. Most Flower species didn’t mingle for long…so the mind snapshots from the “meat creatures” was a new form of possibility for the Flower Beings. A possibility caught somewhere between a cultural revolution and Art.

They weren’t shy about it either. So it came as little surprise when they told Sinja and Marcy that they liked the name “Floral” for their planet better than they did Bouquet. Although they cherished both mind shots of either.

“Floral it is!”

Declared Sinja and Marcy in unison. The smell of jasmine and lavender was almost overwhelming - as that is how the Flower people spelled or smelled:

“Floral.”

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