Jen had always had a fascination with horticulture. In her formative years, since she read 'The Secret Garden' and 'Flower Fairies' books, she was enchanted with her mother's garden, plants, flowers, and the magic of growing them. As a child, she lived in a large old manor house in the Surrey countryside and was lucky enough to have 3 acres of garden land surrounding her house. She loved to explore. She would wander through the grounds, exploring, roaming, and discovering new secrets about the gardens, happening upon unusual shrubs and fungi that nestled in the wooded shaded areas. She adored searching for the flowers she had read about in her Flower Fairies books, hoping one day she might catch a glimpse of a fairy herself.
As a little girl, Jen would spend time with her mother, who would show her the art of tending flowers and plants. Jen would learn how to grow her own vegetables too. She would collect fruit pips and seeds, and plant them in small trays and pots, leaving them in the greenhouse to sprout and shoot. She loved to see those first seedlings, their teeny tiny little green leaves poking their heads out of the black soil. Jen would use an old camera and take pictures of their progress, sketching them and painting them in her journal with watercolours.
All through her childhood, over many years of living in this beautiful place, she continued to keep her botanical journal. She filled it with new growing projects, and, over the years, it became sacred to her. This was her calling in life. She felt utterly and beautifully connected to plants, in her heart and soul. This was how she wanted to spend her life and what she wanted to build her career upon. She hoped one day that she would hand the journal she had created down to her own daughter or niece one day.
Fast forward 20 years, and Jen did indeed fulfil her dream and now was putting her real passion into practice. She ran a small specialist boutique, buying and selling rare tropical plants, working with traders all over the world, curating the most fantastic and unusual specimens, importing them to the UK and selling them onto keen collectors and buyers.
She loved discovering new plant life and sharing it with the elite specialist plants communities. Her 'Botanical Boutique' became a trusted source of new information and discoveries, and her selections commanded high prices and much demand. Her suppliers were small independent natives of many of the world's remotest locations, contacts from places such as the Pacific islands, Indonesian archipelagos, deepest African jungles to South American rain forests.
Jen had a great exciting life and career. Every day brought a new surprise. She had no idea at this point in her life, just what surprise she was about to receive, and just how connected to plants she would end up becoming.
It was a hot Friday night in June, just before she closed the boutique for the weekend. A lazy weekend lay ahead of her -- for once. She was fantasising in her mind about a long hot bath, and pyjamas all weekend with her television permanently on.
Just as she was locking her doors, a courier in a van pulled up outside of the shop.
"Jen Clifton?" a man's voice shouted from the van.
"Yes, that's right?" She replied.
"Delivery for you." the man called, sounding relieved he'd caught her before she locked up. He got out of the van and went to the back to open up the doors and retrieve the package.
He started over towards her, a long package under his arm. The delivery mark looked like it was from one of her suppliers in Brazil. She suspected it would be a new specimen for her to sell, although this supplier sometimes did send her gifts to keep for herself. There was no letter attached to the outside, which her main supplier in Brazil usually did enclose. But she felt sure it would be from him. She would take this one home and inspect it herself before bringing it back to the shop, in case it would cross contaminate other plants she had in the shop.
It felt quite heavy, and its box also seemed to be slightly warm to the touch. She gently loaded it into her car boot and got in her car to drive home.
Whilst driving along on her way, she pulled up to a traffic light and in the silence in the car, heard a gentle buzz from inside the package, as if something was vibrating inside and hitting the outer packaging. She hoped there was not some sort of insect inside the box, sometimes this happened, and of course, it can mean disaster for unfamiliar countries, with tropical species being set loose where they should not be. Jen would be sure to close the studio doors and take extra care should there be any untoward living creatures stowed away in the package.
Then, just as the lights turned green, she heard another feint noise coming from the box. Like a gentle hiss, as if some air or gas was leaking. She was close to home now, so stepped on it a little more to get it home as quickly as possible. It was likely that a seed pod had burst, or a bud had cracked open.
She pulled up at her house and parked up. Getting out of her car she walked round to the boot, opened it up and looked at the innocent-looking package.
"Hmmm. So, what are you, mister?" she said to the long, tall box.
It did smell so delightful, though.
What hit the air when she had opened the boot, was an intriguing, heady fragrance, like the most beautiful lilies. Jen figured that the buzzing and hissing noise she'd heard earlier, and this fragrance, were connected. Perhaps the fragrance came from the gases held within seed pods. She inhaled deeply, loving the feeling that this fragrance gave her body as she took it into her lungs. It seemed to soothe her immediately, in a profoundly noticeable way. She closed her eyes and smiled, standing motionless for a tiny moment as her mind went blank. She opened her eyes again and came back to normality, hurriedly and excitedly gathering the package from the boot. This was something rather different, she thought to herself as she fumbled for her door key.
Jen placed the box on her coffee table in her lounge. She carefully cut at the cardboard. Peeling it away to reveal the plant, there was another strange popping sound, and following that, a hiss again. She got another really strong smell of lilies. This time her face was a little closer to the plant and she inhaled at the right time to have a rather large lungful of the fragrance. Wow. It really was strong. So intense. More intense than any other lily she had ever smelled. Gosh, it was an addicting fragrance. Then she continued to unwrap this little mystery, completely removing the box.
Revealed fully, Jen was transfixed at the weird and intriguing sight that lay before her.
The leaves at the base of the plant were a blue green, a very unusual colour in nature. Going up the main stem of the plant were lots of stalks that seemed to be budding, and long. They resembled a cactus -- there were micro fine hairs all over the surface of each branch, and very rounded and cylindrical like a cactus. But the hairs were almost... mammal-like, which Jen noticed, but this was likely because the plant seemed quite mature. From the end of each branch/stalk, grew a far smaller tendril-like growth, like a mini-stalk, like the larger ones. At the end of each of these tendrils Jen could see a sort of moisture or nectar, in tiny, almost microscopic beads, forming. This is where the fragrance was coming from. Jen suspected that the sound she had heard was these tendrils sprouting from the top of the stalks, and that it was coming into bloom, somehow.
The central stalk/vine was about three times thicker than each of the branches. It was considerably longer. The whole plant was about 70cm tall, with the central stalk about 20cm clear of all the other ones growing from it.
This was not a plant Jen had ever encountered the likes of before. It almost felt other-worldly. She was transfixed with its beauty, its weirdness, its... animation? Yes, she definitely sensed it was slightly animated. It seemed so very alive. And that smell. She felt intoxicated by it. So incredible.
But that smell wasn't just a smell. As Jen would find out. If it felt like a heady drug, that was just the beginning.
Jen, in increments of minutes, felt compelled to be near this plant. To touch it. Hold it. Have its leaves and stalks and vines and tendrils touching her hands. To take care of it, intimately. As if she had tended it from seed. Almost a motherly instinct of care and affection. It seemed to warm her skin, like the sun. It aroused her senses.
It was the smell that was making her feel that way. The smell was the plant's pheromones. Those chemicals within the smell now filled the air in Jen's living room.
The smell was arousing her every sense, every nerve ending. It felt like the best drug in the world. Jen was completely oblivious to the way it was altering her conscious state. She remained transfixed on the plant; she wasn't sure if she was imagining it, but its juicy, tender stalks seemed to be growing a little. Thickening. Lengthening.