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The Boston Botanical Garden Center was a chilling sight. Age had not been kind to the structure, and the visitor’s center was a nasty pile of rubble laced with green nets of vines, flowering in the brightest neon colors, swaying softly with no breeze. Preston could identify its sweet smell from yards away even through his gas mask.
“They’re trying to lure you in,” Daisy warned him, carefully picking her way across the rubble. “Incredibly dangerous to living things. The spores get to your head and make you act crazy. It wants to get to a water source to spread, so if it colonizes you, it makes you feel thirsty. You find still water and drink until you drown, then it uses you for fertilizer while it spreads.”
Preston was looking a bit green around the gills. “Why haven’t I heard of that? That seems like it would be devastating if it gets into Boston.”
Daisy approached a cluster of pretty purple vines and hacked at them with her machete, holding her breath as the plant dried and crumbled in front of her, scattering dust. She backed away and shook the spores off before rejoining Preston and taking a breath, her first in minutes.
Not technically needing to breathe made these trips much easier. Having good company was making it downright pleasant.
“It likes humid places. We don’t have a lot of that anymore. This place has been a big greenhouse that gave it a chance to mutate undisturbed. It used to infect ants and make them climb into trees so that they’d shower spores down when they died, but the war killed off most of its natural hosts, so it had to adapt.”
“That’s frightening, ma’am. How’d you get to know so much about this?”
Daisy laughed like trodden gravel, broken and rough. “I’ve had a lot of time to read a lot of things. The rest, experience. I’ve been trying to get out here for years, but it’s been too dangerous to go alone past a certain point. You need eyes in the back of your head around plants like these. Cassia trees don’t like giving up their bark much anymore.”
The two had been getting along surprisingly well since their first meeting in Goodneighbor. Daisy could often pull strings with her trader friends to get creature comforts sent to Preston’s castle, and he was more than happy to accompany her out to scavenge supplies in return. He didn’t know much about plants, but he had a laser musket and a sharp eye, and it was only proper to escort a lady in need.
“What’s cassia?”
Daisy turned to him, smiling like sunshine as she took his elbow. “Oh, it’s wonderful, Preston! It’s the bark of a tree that’s used in baking as a replacement for cinnamon. It has a spicy, sweet flavor, and I know there’s a cluster of trees in here somewhere. I’ve seen bits of the bark smashed up outside, but I’ve never dared to go inside.”
Preston let her guide him, and gladly. She really came alive in here, surrounded by an ecosystem that was lost to the rest of her world. “Do daisies grow here? I’ve never seen one up close.”
She leaned into him with a giggle. He felt her hand brush his, and he laced their fingers, tentative.
Was he too bold?
She squeezed his hand. “I haven’t seen them since the war. Ironic, actually; do you know what the name means? Bellis perennis. Pretty and everlasting.” She glanced up at him, sadness tinging her smile. “The flower gets to be pretty, and I get to be everlasting.”
Preston shook his head and pulled his mask aside. “I’ll have to disagree with you there, Bellis… perimeter? Daisy.” He pulled her hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles, feeling rough scars under his lips. “You’re a beautiful person, and time hasn’t taken that from you at all.”
A faint color stained Daisy’s sunken cheeks. “You would say that to every ghoul.”
Preston laughed. “Every ghoul hasn’t taken me three days outside of the city to pick flowers. You have a beautiful heart. I’m… really glad to know you.”
Daisy turned away, hiding a smile. “You are a rascal, Preston Garvey. I’m glad you’re here.”
The creatures of the greenhouse were definitely not what Daisy remembered from her time. Yellow-red orbs in the trees weren’t mangoes at all sometimes, but quick-footed spiders that were content to scuttle away as they approached, and earthworms were, frankly, terrifying and huge, but mostly harmless.
The bloodbugs, on the other hand, were quickly losing their charm. Preston kept busy defending them, and usually it just took a few shots to scare off the other fauna that would gather to observe them, but the damned mosquitoes were persistent, especially near Daisy’s cassia trees. He held them off as long as he could while she collected the bark, and he was close to calling a retreat when Daisy shouted, “Got it! Let’s go!”
They couldn’t go the way they came, choked as it was with hungry bugs, so they ran in some direction and hoped for the best.
If getting lost in a tropical forest outside of Boston had any advantage at all, it was that very occasionally the mango in the tree wasn’t a giant spider in disguise, and sometimes the bugs settled down and let you enjoy a midday picnic in a patch of sun.
Preston bit into one of the fruits they’d gathered and wrinkled his nose. “I think I’m not doing this right.”
Daisy looked over and clapped her hands over her mouth, hiding a giggle. “We usually peel them. Here.” She took the fruit from him and sliced away a portion of the skin, then ran the machete over the flesh to peel it from the seed. “I haven’t tasted this in centuries,” she sighed, halving the piece and returning part of it to Preston.
“I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything this sweet,” he remarked, something like awe in his voice. “That’s so much better than mutfruit. You’re sure it’s safe?”
“Not at all. Everything in here is sure to be incredibly irradiated, but then again, isn’t everything back home?” She finished her bite, then frowned at her sticky fingers. “I didn’t think this through.”
Preston pulled a mostly clean handkerchief from his pocket and offered it with a smile. “Then let’s say it’s worth the risk. I’d have never tasted anything so sweet if I let a little radiation scare me.”
“Right? That’s—oh, you aren’t talking about fruit, are you.” Daisy took the handkerchief, flushing again. Preston laughed while she added, “How are you even real?”
“Poor timing, I suppose.” He took her hand with the handkerchief and guided it to her thin lips, wiping away a shine of sweet juice.
Daisy clutched his hand tight. “So… you do understand that if this was a date, this is where he’s supposed to kiss her, right? If—if that’s what this is. I hadn’t made assumptions. Are you…?”
Preston leaned in. “Daisy…?”
And then one of the mangoes crawled out of the basket and bit his hand, because storybook romance just never was destined for people like them.
They’d brought first aid, and an old field guide, and after some quick research on Daisy’s part, she’d identified the spider as a very large mutation of a nonvenomous variety. “But it’s going to hurt, and there’s always the chance of infection, but I think you’ll be fine until we can get you home if we clean it back at camp.”
Preston grit his teeth against the pain while she wrapped his hand. “If we can find a way out of here.”
“We will. Now chew on this, it will help with the pain; I didn’t think to bring Med-X, sorry.”
He took the chunk of bark she handed him with some skepticism. “And this is…?”
“White willow bark. Ancient medicine, good for pain.” She finished his bandage and dabbed at his sweaty forehead with his handkerchief. “I’m so sorry, Preston. I got you hurt.”
He shook his head, and she frowned as she saw his defenses rise up, closing off the vulnerability she found so sweet. “I let my guard down. It was my own fault.”
Daisy sighed and got to her feet, offering him a hand up, which he politely declined.
Well then.
They followed vines of bright cordyceps flowers in hopes of finding their way out, Preston behind his mask and Daisy silent, willing herself not to breathe it in. The air was sticky and damp, much more so than before, and she got the feeling that they’d gone deeper into the heart of it instead.
Trees very nearly choked out the light, but just enough filtered down to catch the petals of a white flower, seemingly suspended in midair.
Daisy gasped, forgetting herself, and Preston tensed. “Hey, hey, don’t breathe in here.”
“Preston, that’s a ghost orchid!” She ran ahead for a closer look; it wasn’t floating, exactly, but clinging gently to a corkwood tree. “These are very rare. It’s incredibly difficult to cultivate; look how fragile.”
He reached out to touch it with his good hand, barely firm enough to rustle it. “Any flower seems rare these days. It is pretty… but how does it compare to a daisy?”
She tied his handkerchief around her face, suddenly aware now of the dense cover of sporing vines. It wasn’t safe there. She risked a breath once more to say, “Almost as good.”
Tiny green tendrils were weaving down the tree, crushing the delicate flower as it struggled to reach Preston. He gestured to the path, shuddering, and they picked up their pace.
The forest was a living, breathing, hunting thing, and once it had gotten a taste of flesh, it wasn’t going to let it go so easily. Familiar paths they’d cleared earlier were now choked with weeds, roots snapping under their boots as they tried to circle their ankles. It took a full running pace to finally break through the exit and keep moving as long as they could, but once outside, the oppressive sun and dry air baked the sweat from Preston’s skin, and Daisy collapsed to the ground, fatigued from the effort.
He crawled over and pressed her into the hard, dry ground, tearing off his hat and mask to collapse against her chest, both laughing pitifully as she ran her rough hands over his sweaty head.
She tugged him closer for a messy kiss, panting at each other’s mouths, and maybe it wasn’t a traditional first date, but, well… they were hardly a traditional pair, were they?
Later that week, Daisy introduced Preston Garvey to cinnamon rolls; thus began the Boston Botanical task force, staffed by dedicated Minutemen in power armor to ensure that Daisy never went missing for cassia bark ever again.