The two sat in the same spot almost as if one’s mere existence was to mock the other. They listened to the same words but with different people and at different times. The story intrigued the girl, unlike the boy. It brought her close to the flowers told upon so greatly in their stories. She wanted to hear their voice, she wanted to hear them sing as they once did when the field had life.

As for the boy, when he heard the words of the forgotten flower field he had listened more intently than the girl and those around him had. Everyone saw the story as beautiful, for they wished to bring life to the flowers that never seemed to die. They wanted to hear them sing. He saw them as evil, in his eyes all they wanted to do was to lure the people in; they wanted an audience to fuel their voices.

Both ventured though, the girl first then the boy.

She sat, ways away from the flowers, smart enough to know the dangers they could have but naïve enough to listen to their voices when they spoke. Murmurs filled the crowd at the first sign of life, they spoke up a plan to bring the girl to them to get them to hear her voice.

They noted her white teeth and her cherry red lips. That day she wore a blue dress, a bit duller than the sky but it stood out among the bright red and pinks of the flowers. They saw the life in her eyes but they also saw her curiosity, and in one that possessed both, they knew they would be able to use her to their advantage.

She spoke with the flowers for many days, similar to the boy before he drew near. She asked them of the stories the school had told her and asked about their songs. When told the answers to their question, she knew they didn’t need the life of the world but they needed someone who could hear them, they needed the girl to listen.

At the time she didn’t understand the flowers were lying, they needed nothing but her life and because of her apparent youth, they knew she had much to give. They told her they would sing if she came closer, they told her they would sing if she could hear. Blinded by the idea of song the girl went to the flowers and with her first step in the chorus of flowers erupted.

Their words came to her as screams at first, thousands of them fought for her attention but the longer she stayed the more they calmed and took their songs slowly.

“Look at the girl with the red lips

She brought in the life we needed

Look at the girl we need be lost

She gave her life for a song

We gave our song for her liking

Look at the girl with the red lips

Cherry lips, Cherry lips,

let you sing along”

They sang for hours and hours, leading her deeper and deeper into the flowers. The farther she got from the edge the less she knew her way back but the better the song got. Once she met the middle, she found there was a small clearing. Day had passed by now but she was unaware of anything but the songs of the flowers. They seemed to radiate enough light using her life as if to trick her into thinking it was day.

She had been in that same trance until the next day when they decided to sleep themselves. The rested for no more than ten minutes but looking out, the girl had realized she knew not her way home.

All she had remembered from that moment was panic; the flowers woke and they began to sing to her again but the fear never left. It was as if she was trapped, but that feeling fled the second their voices hit her ear.

Slowly she grew back into the trance she was in before and the flowers didn’t dare to rest again knowing had they, they would lose the girl to her own sanity. They created people using their voices, they created characters to keep her company when she was alone.

Though even with the company her life was beginning to fade. She grew tired easier and lost the desire to play. Instead, they sang her songs, knowing she was slowly learning the idea of the trance she was in. They told her stories of a boy, the boy who would hear her story and come in sought of her aid. They told her of the battles he would have to fight and the states he would have to go through to reach her but in the end, they knew he would.

Soon though, her skin became wrinkled and her hair began to gray, the blue in her dress had faded away completely and all that had remained in her eyes was curiosity, though even that was dim. All the remained of the girl was her red lips and her smile, the flowers were mute once more and they allowed for her to sleep.

Now the boy stands at the edge, the flowers bitter at the loss of their good friend. Some time had passed since her rest and she has since fallen into the ground. He asks for the end of the story, knowing the one told at the schoolhouse one had never been finished, but the flowers refused to tell knowing it would only make him want to leave.

Instead, they told him the false ending, the one where the girl chose to stay, she gave the flowers her life, and to this day she remains. They told him she was unaged, but as the days passed the songs were driving her to insanity.

Not all they spoke of was lies, but he believed it all. With many days, years almost, of the stories being told to him once more, he decided to go in sought of the girl. He feared though he too would be driven to insanity.

He had asked the flowers not to sing when he entered, but to save it for when he found the girl, otherwise, he would soon leave. Those around him granted his request but the others, unheard to him, did not. He was still thrown into the same trance as the girl was, but slowly.

The songs the flowers sang from afar met with his ears eventually, they weren’t the songs the girl had heard years before though, they were the songs of her character. It was as if with their voices they were reanimating the girl.

He heard her laughter, her cries, and her voice but he never found her. The girl's laughter leads him to the heart of the flowers, the place where her panic still filled the air. It was the closest he would get to the girl, and something in his gut told him that.

“I wish to hear the end of the story.” He yelled out to the flowers, knowing all of them heard, but all that followed back was the girl's laughter.

Soon after, he sat and waited, his mind by this point had created a version of the girl solely based off of what he knew. He built her off of her panic, and himself was wondering the cause of the panic. Every so often he would yell the same question out to the flowers, but most of the time he got the same response. Until the thirty-third time he asked did he hear the voices of the actual flowers and not the girl, “Let us sing and we will tell you the tale of the girl.”

He thought, their voices were persuading enough that he was already lost in the trance. He knew he wouldn’t find his way back, but he feared the songs of the flowers would become a distraction, as he assumed they had the girl. He decided the idea of learning the story was worth more to him than the idea of getting out for he only had curiosity in his eyes.

“I grant you permission to sing, sing me the story of the girl.” he yelled out as he had before, only this time the laughter in response was joined with song.

“The girl with Cherry lips, her teeth white

We let her pass, she didn’t give us her life

We drained her so we could sing

You tread on are heart so you must now reach the same fate

We give you our oath

To entertain as we can

But our vocals have since been strained

And the life from you will not remain

You have days while she had years

It’s in your eyes love, it’s in your eyes”

They sang on for days upon days until to him it didn’t feel like living anymore. He lost sense of time, direction and slowly all the colors seemed to fade. By his end, his life was nowhere near as glamorous as the girl’s had once been before, and the only idea that was able to stick with him to the end was her.

While he had no name, he had her story, and he still believed she was somewhere in the flowers despite the chanting of the flowers around him and that maybe one day when he stood in the heart, he would find more than her laugh.

When his days came to an end though, he had done nothing of the sort and was only met with the final voices of the flowers as they tried to use the life he had left to the fullest, but that too was soon muted.

The boy was met with rest as the girl had before him and on that final night, his dreams allowed him to live the life he had not gotten to, though he was aware it was only a dream. In the end of the dream, he was old, much as he was now only older, granted none of his life had been drained to go towards the voices of some flowers. He had a family, a wife, and kids, both who were grown by that point of the dream though.

Through his sleep he smiled, he found peace with a girl, a girl in a blue dress and bright red lips. He knew it was the girl despite the ravishing amount of color his dream had for he knew that the flowers only saw in black and white.