"You look like you need to sit down." Melinda steered Rose towards the living-room.

She barely even registered when Melinda helped her peel out of her coat and took her bag to drop it on the coffee table.

"I—I think I do," Rose mumbled, sinking onto the sofa, the soft cushions dipping under her weight.

"You stay here while I fix us both some hot tea and warm up the food, and then we'll talk." Melinda gave her a concerned look and offered her the blanket Rose kept on the sofa for her quiet reading sessions. "There's this new chai latte I've just discovered. It's delicious. You'll love it."

With those words she made her way to the kitchen. Usually Rose would have protested at her friend fussing around, but she was too tired and exhausted for that. Her body felt like it had been through hell and back. So she pulled up her knees and snuggled into the blanket.

While she listened to Melinda rummaging in the kitchen, Rose looked around her home, the place she had left only a few days ago in search for an adventure that had turned into a nightmare. She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Her eyes went from her messy desk, littered with papers, to the shelves crammed with too many books she hadn't yet found the time to read. A few potted plants Melinda had convinced her to get, dotted the tiny living room with some green.

Even though the place was familiar, she felt strangely disconnected from everything, as if she had been uprooted from her life and planted into a different one, just to be ripped from it again. She felt lost and disoriented. How was she supposed to fit back in? By growing new roots? Why was she even thinking about roots? Wait — she wasn't a flower anymore, so she quickly scratched that thought from her mind.

A sudden tickle against her ear broke her from her thoughts. She flinched, panic rising, until she realised that it was Antares who had jumped onto the back of the sofa.

A sigh of relief escaped her. "Hey big boy, I'm glad to see you again." Antares brushed up his elegant head against her cheek and when she ruffled his chin, his instant purring resonated through the entire living room.

"I see he found you already." Melinda peeked from the kitchen-door, a kettle in her hands, the smell of crispy duck and soy sauce hitting Rose's nose. "He refused to eat anything at all when you didn't show up Sunday evening. It's like he knew something was wrong."

Rose smiled quietly at the way Antares closed his bright yellow eyes when he leaned into her touch. "I missed you too," she whispered.

"Something did go wrong indeed, right?" Melinda balanced a tray with two steaming mugs and a food carton towards the small coffee table in front of the sofa. She pushed aside a box of tissues and a pack of fashion magazines that Rose had never seen and could only belong to Melinda.

"It definitely didn't go as expected." Rose took the cup Melinda offered her, and inhaled the sweet and spicy aroma. It smelled divine, like cinnamon and chocolate, and a whole lot of other things she was too tired to name.

Antares jumped to the floor and snaked around her legs, before he took off towards his favourite sleeping place on the window-sill behind her desk.

Melinda sat down beside her and reached for her own cup. Dark circles were under her eyes and there was a stain on her blouse, but she didn't seem to care. She only looked at Rose expectantly.

"You were gone for four days. You should have been back on Sunday night and now it's Tuesday evening. Your mom's been worried sick and your boss called yesterday to find out if I knew where you were hiding. So girl, what happened?"

"You want the long version or the short one?"

"We have tea and crispy duck with rice. What do you think that means?" Melinda raised her cup towards Rose with a meaningful look. "I want to hear everything."

And so Rose told Melinda everything.

Between chai and Chinese, she explained how she had found the glade and stumbled upon an elf named Andor, how he had approached her with unearthly charm and all her alarm bells should have gone off, but hadn't. How he had lured her into trusting him, promising her that she could stay in the forest forever and be one of them.

Melinda let drop the meat from her fork. "And you believed him? If that doesn't sound fishy, then I don't know what does."

"I know it sounds stupid, but it felt completely right at that moment. This elf, Andor, he was — different, otherworldly. He wasn't like anyone I had ever seen before. I was drawn to him like a moth to the flame and I couldn't do anything against it." Heat flushed her cheeks at the admittance of her own weakness. "It was like he had found a way into my mind to silence all reason. You know when they say that the elves can glamour humans? That's what he did. I could feel it. It was like a palpable thing in the air."

"That's creepy," Melinda said between two sizeable bites of duck.

"I know it was, but it didn't feel like that to me. It felt like he had pulled me into a dream, a dream that he controlled. And then he —"

For a moment she hesitated. There was no way she could tell Melinda that she had allowed him to kiss her. The whole thing sounded bad enough already. She didn't need Melinda calling her out for kissing a complete stranger. Under normal circumstances, Rose would have agreed with her friend, but there hadn't been anything normal about her encounter. On top of all that she had enjoyed the kiss, had even wanted more, and would have given Andor pretty much anything, had he asked for it.

"And?" Melinda prompted her, when she had fallen silent.

"Sorry...I forgot where I was." She had to pull herself together, if Melinda wasn't going to consider her completely insane.

So Rose went on to explain how he had offered her a strange liquid which she then had agreed to drink and the painful transformation that had followed.

Melinda seemed to have all but forgotten about her tea and the food when Rose described how her body literally had melted away, until she hadn't been human but a flower. The pain was still too fresh, so instead of elaborating on the details, she jumped ahead to the moment when she had found herself awake again, not a flower, but a human, completely naked, and in the presence of not just one but several elves. How Andor had apparently decided to return and set her free. And finally how dreadful shadows had risen in the glade and how the elves had helped her escape.

Melinda's mouth hung open, her cup forgotten in her hands. "Wow. That's some crazy shit!"

Rose might have as well told her she had been abducted by aliens, and Melinda would have reacted much the same.

"Are you sure they didn't drug you? Sounds like you've been on a trip."

"I was on a trip, but not that kind of trip. And no, they didn't drug me, although I've no idea what that liquid was. It tasted horribly and felt like it burned away my insides." Rose made a face of disgust and took another long swig from her cup. The chai latte had nearly gone cold. A glance out the window and the darkening sky revealed that the evening was fast approaching.

"How is that even possible to turn someone into a flower? I mean, where does your body go and how does it come back again? That sounds like some obscure piece of magic from one of those weird books you like to read." Melinda picked at the food and skewered a juicy bit of duck with her fork.

"You don't think I'm making all this up, do you?" Why was her friend so stubbornly refusing to believe her? Did Melinda think that this was some sort of cheap trick? Or that she had been imagining all of this?

"Everything I said is true. I met this elf and he turned me into a flower and now I'm back again. Do you think I wanted to be part of this...this ritual sacrifice, or whatever it was? To have my whole body melt away? Do you think I wanted all that pain?" Tears burned in the back of her eyes. "Why would I even invent something like that?" It was hard to swallow past the tightness in her throat.

"Of course not. That's not what I'm saying. I just think that there must be some logical explanation for all this. There always is."

"No, there isn't! Were you even listening to a word I was saying? Can't you just accept for once that there are things that don't fit into your neat little logical boxes? Those elves out there are very real and they are powerful and dangerous. And I thought that I could just wander into their territory and walk away unharmed." Her voice was choked up. "Well, I was wrong, and I paid the price. They took my body and turned it into something else and I couldn't do anything against it." Rose pulled a tissue from the box and blew her nose, anger and frustration bubbling dangerously close to the surface.

"I—I'm sorry, of course, I believe you. That's not what I meant." Melinda placed her cup on the table and folded her hands on her lap. "It just all sounds so mind-boggling."

"I know." Rose nodded quietly, dabbing at her eyes. "I—I'm just still...I don't feel so well."

Melinda leaned closer, rubbing her flat hands over her thighs.

"Rose, you're sure you didn't get, you know..." Melinda's voice was laced with concern. "I mean, since you were naked, these elves, they didn't force you to —?"

"No, no, they didn't," Rose assured her, wiping her nose with the tissue. "They even brought me clothes." She pulled at the neckline of her dress. "And the female one helped me getting dressed, but I think she was more annoyed than pleased with Andor's choice of coming back for me. As a matter of fact, they all seemed to be."

Melinda nibbled at one of her fingernails. "The question is, why would he do that? Like, what's the point of turning someone into a flower and then coming back to undo it? That makes no sense at all." She threw her fingers a scrutinising glance. "Not that any of it makes any sense to me."

"I don't know. I don't know why he did what he did, and why he undid it. All I know is that I'm home and I'm never going back to that forest."

Rose took a last sip from her teacup before she resolutely placed it on the table with a clank. "I want to get out of these clothes and I need a shower. And then I just want to fall asleep." She plucked some black cat hair from her blanket.

"Yes, get some sleep, and then tomorrow you can sort out everything."

Rose groaned inwardly at the thought of having to explain her absence to her boss. Ms. Odinsen wasn't known for being the most understanding person on the planet. She would possibly make Rose work extra hours on the most boring inventory for the rest of the week.

"Could you call my mum and let her know that I'm all right? I haven't even looked at my phone and I'm not really in the mood of talking to anyone else tonight."

"Yes, of course, do you want me to call your father too?"

"No, my mum can tell him, if he even cares. But don't tell my mum anything about elves. Just invent something."

"Invent something, like what?" Melinda raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I don't know, something. You can just say that I got trapped in that god-forsaken place because of the thunderstorms. She should have heard about those, so that's credible enough."

"Right." Melinda pouted. "And you think she'll believe that, given that she's completely aware of your obsession with the elves and that book?"

"The book is gone," Rose said, suddenly reminded of her loss.

"What do you mean, gone? That book was your treasure! I still remember the time you had an angry fit when I accidentally got some cookie crumbs between the pages. You were like a fire-breathing dragon."

"I didn't lose it, if that's what you're thinking. They took it."

"What do you mean? Who took it?"

"The elves, who else?"

"The elves? How do you know that? Did you see them taking it?"

"No, I didn't see them taking it, but it's the only explanation I have. There wasn't anyone else there and they returned my bag with everything inside except the book."

"But why would they take your book? What do you think they want with it?"

"I don't know. I didn't even notice it was gone until I was on the train back home."

"What if someone on the train took it? You should go to the police station and report it as stolen."

"Seriously? How would that look if I tell them that I suspect my book has been stolen by some elves? And then they're going to ask me what happened and I'll have to tell them that I've gotten myself turned into a flower. They're going to think that I'm nuts."

"Yeah, that might be a problem." Melinda bit her lower lip.

"It's lost and I can't get it back and that's that." Rose crumpled the tissue in her hand and tossed it into the small bin beside the sofa. "I don't need it anymore. It hasn't done me any good, so I better forget about all this and move on."

But apparently Melinda was on a roll now.

"What if the elves knew about the book, and that was the reason they turned you into a flower in the first place? What if it's all connected somehow?"

"I don't know. I told you already." Rose rubbed her eyes. Her head was spinning and she wasn't in the mood for Melinda's conspiracy theories. "And I'm tired, I really don't want to think about it right now."

"Yes, of course, I understand. You must be completely exhausted. Not that I know anything about being a flower, but I'm sure it's not a very pleasant feeling." Melinda rose from the sofa and arranged the food-carton and empty mugs on the tray. "I'll take these to the kitchen and then I'll let myself out, so you can get all the rest you need."

"Thanks for everything, Melinda." Rose dropped the blanket and got to her feet too. "The tea was wonderful and the food too. You're the best friend one can wish for. I should have probably taken you with me on my trip."

"Oh, definitely, I would have kneed that elf in the groin so hard, he'd have accidentally turned himself into a flower." Melinda threw her a mischievous grin.

"Yeah, that surely would have changed things," Rose answered her grin with a small smile and then made her way towards the bathroom.

It was time for her to get rid of those clothes and hopefully, a steamy shower would wash away the lingering sense of eeriness that still clung to her. She'd have much preferred a hot bath, but unfortunately, her bathroom was tiny and there was no way a tub would have fit in.

She peeled herself out of the dress and matching underwear, a flimsy piece of clothing that barely served its purpose. Together with the leather slippers, she stuffed everything into a bag. Good riddance! Never in her entire lifetime did she want to wear this ridiculous outfit again. The only reason it didn't land in the rubbish right away was to remind her that her field-trip had been real and not a figment of her imagination.

She stepped into the shower, and for a while she let the hot water run down her body, enjoying how the rivulets snaked over her skin. She shampooed her hair and lathered her body and then quickly rinsed herself. Sleepiness was beginning to overcome her and she just wanted to hop into bed. She towelled herself down and dried her hair, avoiding the mirror. Her too pale skin and the emptiness in her eyes were too unsettling. "You look terrible indeed." She grimaced at her own reflection. "Better get some sleep."

When she reached for her toothbrush, her hand froze mid-motion. It wasn't there. Then it dawned on her.

Of course, it wasn't, because she had left it in her backpack, which was still at the inn, together with her spare clothes, cosmetics, maps and other stuff she couldn't remember right now. Darn it! She'd been so focused on returning home that she had completely forgotten about it. At least she had paid for her room upfront, but she had deposited her backpack at the reception with the intention of picking it up after her trip to the glade.

She rummaged in the mirror cabinet and pulled out another toothbrush. Lucky she always kept a spare. She would have to add all those things to her list of lost items, alongside the book and her watch. There was no way she'd ever set foot in that cursed place again.

Yawning, she shuffled to her bedroom, where she first stored the bag of clothes in the deepest corner of her closet. She pulled out some white cotton underwear, reasonably sized, and her favourite nightshirt, the cream-coloured flannel one with tiny foxes printed all over it, and collapsed onto her bed. The shirt was cute and comfortable, and that was all she needed her clothing to be. Lucky Melinda had left already, or else she would have frowned at Rose's choice, telling her that this shirt was way too childish for a young woman like herself. Melinda was a good friend and all, but her taste in fashion couldn't be more different from her own.

Rose plugged in her phone to charge it over night, set her alarm clock on the nightstand for six in the morning, and slid under the duvet. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, but first, she'd earned herself a few hours of rest.

She exhaled a long breath, pulled the covers up to her chin, and closed her eyes.

This was real. It smelled like home. She was in her bed, and most importantly of all, she was in her own body.

Maybe she could find her way back into her human life after all.