The king daisy roared with laughter. Swaying on his stem, all his petals and leaves quivered with his royal mirth.
“You have little Froozles that eat dirt where you come from?” he asked at last, still trembling with mirth. “And that is why you imagined I would serve you soil?”
“Well…yes,” Terra admitted, hoping she hadn’t offended him.
“My word! That’s dashed good!” Reginald remarked. He and Tomkins had been laughing along with the king.
“Indeed it is!” the king replied. “Someone go get my little daughter, Maribel, and have her bring her pet, will you?” One of the daisies with pink petals rushed off and the king winked conspiratorially at Terra. “Just wait until you see this, my dear! I think you’ll find it most amusing.”
Terra tried to smile and look interested, but she still wasn’t sure about staying for dinner. Before she could ask the guys what they thought, the pink petaled daisy returned, bringing a much younger and smaller daisy with pale purple petals. The daisy, which seemed to be a girl, was only about six feet or two meters high, which made her face much easier to see. She was clutching something close to her stem, enfolding it in her leaves.
“There you are, Maribel!” the king daisy said to her. “What do you think of these strange creatures?”
“I…I don’t know, father.” The little girl daisy stared at them with round golden eyes, the same color as her father’s. “Are…are they a kind of really big skinkle?” she asked at last.
“Ha! That’s what we thought—but they can talk! Go on, say something to them,” the king daisy urged her.
The little girl daisy looked at Terra shyly.
“Er…hello,” she murmured in a voice so soft it was barely audible.
“Hello, Maribel—it’s nice to meet you.” Terra smiled at her, the same way she would smile at a shy student on the first day of school. “What’s that you have in your…in your, er, leaves?” she asked. She had been going to say “arms” but she wasn’t sure what the giant daisies called their various body parts and she didn’t want to give offense.
“Go on, Maribel—show them,” the king urged.
Shyly, the little girl opened her leaves—or arms, whichever you wanted to call them—and Terra saw what looked like a tiny human perched on all fours. This miniature human was completely naked and appeared to be an old man with a slight pot belly and thinning gray hair. He was about as big as a Chihuahua and he bared his teeth at Terra when he saw her.
“Oh my! He’s…that’s a…a very interesting pet,” Terra finally managed to say. “What…what’s his name?”
“I call him Duncan,” Maribel told her, smiling. “He’s very old now—for a skinkle anyway—almost ten which is seventy in skinkle years. That’s why I’m so careful with him,” she added, enfolding the miniature old man in her leaf-arms again. “He lives on a special soft diet and he’s not allowed to run around with the other skinkles anymore because the younger ones might hurt him.”
“Do you see why I was so amused?” the king daisy interjected, looking at Terra. “You tell me that you have miniature creatures that look like us and we just happen to have miniature creatures that look like you as well! Is it not a good jest?”
“Oh, yes.”
Terra nodded and tried to laugh, though to be honest, she was much too weirded out to find the situation funny. She kept seeing the blank look on the tiny old man’s face. Clearly the “skinkles” here weren’t sentient creatures. Or were they?
“So, you keep them as pets?” she asked, looking up at the king daisy.
“Among other things,” he said, smiling easily. “So now you see why you simply must eat with us and tell us about yourselves! I never thought I’d see such a sight—the entire court will want to meet you!”
“Well…” Terra hesitated, she didn’t want to offend them but she still wasn’t sure about staying.
“I have a poison indicator in my pocket,” Rive murmured in her ear. “If you’re worried that their food and drink won’t agree with our physiology.”
Terra cast a glance at V’rone and Tem. Tem nodded and V’rone shrugged, but she thought the big red Monstrum looked more tired than he wanted to admit.
“All right,” she said to the king daisy. “We’d be honored to accept your invitation to eat with you and your court, Your Majesty. As long as you don’t mind if we move on afterwards—the quest we are on has a strict time limit attached to it, I’m afraid.”
“But of course!” the king daisy exclaimed. “I only wish you’d come to us tomorrow for our Grand Feasting Day! Still, I’m sure our cooks have prepared some very tasty fare for today as well. Come, let’s get the four of you washed up. Prudence?” he called and another daisy with pink petals came over.