She pours a generous serving of a steaming liquid and hands it to me. Her eyes are endearing. They remind me of Nurse Lydia. They remind me of home. They make me feel safe and loved.

I thank her and blow the vapor from the surface before I sip. I swallow and moan in delight. This is the best tea, no, the best drink my senses have ever been blessed by. It’s a heady mix of flavors and scents, yet I can call them out individually. At first, a caramel tart washes over my mouth, but soon my tongue is coated with an earthy, nutty flavor. Somehow, this merging isn’t repulsive; it’s invigorating. Intoxicating. It soothes my throat, and when I sip again, the palate switches to pine, then to dark, warm, and sweet. I can’t explain why, but this is the most pleasurable flavor of all. I wish I could taste it forever. I take another sip.

“Ah,” I scowl when the cup touches my mouth, and my head rears back. The woman cocks her head. “It stung me!” I exclaim and hold it away from my body.

She doesn’t take it from me. She remains still.

I look back into the cup and am shocked that it’s almost empty. My sips must have been larger than I thought. I rest it on a small mosaic glass table and nurse my wounded lip.

“How did the liquid shock me?” I ask, but she remains quiet. I rub my lip once more and lean forward. “Can you speak?”

The woman smiles, the crinkles beside her eyes deepening as she tilts her head the other way. I slowly blink, and the vines on the wall shift. “The plants…they’re moving!” I warn as a vision of Torrent wrapped in those fatal green ropes plays in my mind. “You need to move! You’ll die if you don’t!”

The elder stays immobile; her smile doesn’t falter. I breathe heavily and try to rise, knock her out of the way, and escape but I can’t move my legs or my arms. I’m weighted down. My vision hazes, and my words slur. “We’ll die… We’re going to die. I can’t save us.”

The woman kneels and rests one hand on my knee. “Why?” Her voice isn’t that of an older woman. It’s a golden gong that could resonate throughout an entire kingdom. It’s powerful; it’s many women speaking at once.

My head rolls back, and I stare at the ceiling. “I can’t save us because I can’t move,” I manage.

The many voices roll like thunder before a crack of lightning whips to the ground. “Why can’t you move?”

“Because of the tea.” Is this drool spilling from the corner of my mouth?

“No,” they counter. “Answer truthfully.”

A sensation grows, like I’m falling off a cliff, and my organs are traveling upwards.

“I can’t move because…because…”

“Tell me,” the voices command.

The plants crawl across the floor; their sinister vines encroach from every corner of the room, bony fingers inching towards me to clutch my throat. They’re moments away from suffocating the very life from our bodies. Then, they begin to glow. Half of the room rests in deep shadows, and the vines undulate in the darkness between them. The other glows as if it’s lit by the bright morning sun, and golden tresses curl in hoops, repeating their patterns over and over. These vines stretch towards me.