The Jewel-Eyed Jester of Pollenwick Hollow

The Invitation Nobody Should Have Licked

Every spring, just after the last frost crawled back into whatever damp little hole it came from, Pollenwick Hollow prepared for the Bloom Ball: the grandest, glitteriest, most self-important event in the entire eastern garden bed.

It was not, despite what the tulips claimed, a party.

It was an institution.

There were invitations pressed from violet petals and stamped with wax made from ethically annoyed bees. There were garlands braided by spiderlings with union rates and very strong opinions. There were seating charts reviewed by three generations of beetle widows, each more judgmental than the last. There were refreshments, musicians, lanterns, pollen fountains, commemorative dew spoons, and one enormous guestbook bound in moss that nobody actually wanted to sign but everyone pretended was deeply meaningful.

The Bloom Ball was where alliances were formed, grudges were polished, flirtations became scandals, scandals became songs, and songs became the reason somebody’s cousin was no longer allowed within six stems of the hydrangea gazebo.

In short, it was exactly the sort of event where Sir Blixby Glimmergob should never, under any circumstances, be allowed.

Unfortunately, Sir Blixby Glimmergob was the official Jewel-Eyed Jester of Pollenwick Hollow.

Officially, this meant he entertained the court, announced festivals, cheered up moody flowers, and distracted visiting dignitaries whenever Queen Marigolda needed time to pretend she had read their treaties.

Unofficially, it meant Blixby was a walking incident report with wings.

He was small, shiny, and built like somebody had glued a carnival to a mosquito. His eyes were enormous, iridescent domes full of rainbow fire, which made him look either blessed by ancient magic or one hiccup away from seeing through time. His wings shimmered like stained glass after a sugar binge. His antennae were tipped with golden droplets that bobbled dramatically whenever he lied, which was often. His legs were speckled with jewel-bright hairs, his face was covered in tiny pearl-like knobs, and his tongue had a habit of appearing in situations where no tongue was required.

Which was most situations.

“Absolutely not,” said Lady Primselia Snapdragon, chairwoman of the Bloom Ball Committee, when Blixby’s name was mentioned during the final planning meeting.

The meeting was being held beneath the arching shade of the Grand Peony, a flower so large and pink it had developed the personality of a wealthy aunt. Around the petal-table sat the most powerful busybodies in the Hollow: Lady Primselia, stiff-backed and terrifying; Baron Thistlewick, who wore a waistcoat made of lint and spoke only in complaints; the twin moth sisters Mopsy and Mopsy-Other-One, who insisted everyone could tell them apart and were wrong; and Dame Honeymug, keeper of refreshments, who had already sampled so much ceremonial nectar that her wings hummed like a guilty violin.

At the center of the table lay the guest list.

It was beautiful. It was alphabetical. It had been cross-checked against three feud ledgers and one “do not seat these two near fruit” registry.

Blixby’s name sat near the bottom, circled in red berry ink.

Then circled again.

Then underlined.

Then surrounded by a tiny drawing of a flaming mushroom.

“The Jester is a royal appointee,” said Baron Thistlewick, squinting at the list. “By law, he is invited to all courtly events, including festivals, proclamations, coronations, executions, and balls.”

“Executions?” asked Mopsy.

“We haven’t had one in years,” said Thistlewick. “Budget cuts.”

Lady Primselia tapped the table with one sharp green claw. “This is not about legality. This is about dignity.”

“Dignity died when the buttercups hired that erotic harpist,” Dame Honeymug mumbled into her cup.

“He was avant-garde,” said Mopsy-Other-One.

“He was naked except for pollen dust and confidence.”

“Exactly. Art.”

Lady Primselia closed her eyes. “Blixby cannot attend. Last year, he replaced the rosewater in the fountain with fermented plum sap.”

“Allegedly,” said Baron Thistlewick.

“The fountain burped for six hours.”

“Circumstantial.”

“Mayor Bumblethorpe got trapped in a lily with his ex-wife.”

“Poor man nearly remarried by accident,” Dame Honeymug said, shuddering.

Lady Primselia leaned forward. “And the year before that, Blixby rewrote the ceremonial welcome speech so Queen Marigolda accidentally declared the entire evening ‘a moist little circus of social foreplay.’”

The moth twins looked at each other.

“It was memorable,” said Mopsy.

“People still quote it,” said Mopsy-Other-One.

“I bought the tea towel,” Dame Honeymug admitted.

“He is a menace,” Lady Primselia snapped.

“He is also popular,” Baron Thistlewick said. “Especially with the younger pollinators.”

“The younger pollinators eat glitter off bark.”

“And they vote.”

That settled the table into a grim silence.

Democracy, as everyone knew, was a beautiful concept until it involved young beetles with face paint and opinions.

Lady Primselia inhaled through her spiracles with the slow, hissy control of someone trying very hard not to commit committee-based violence. “Fine. He may attend.”

Dame Honeymug hiccuped. It smelled faintly of peach and regret.

“But,” said Lady Primselia, lifting one claw, “there will be restrictions.”

The restrictions were as follows:

Blixby was not allowed within licking distance of the refreshment table.

Blixby was not allowed to touch the ceremonial pollen urn.

Blixby was not allowed to improvise songs about anyone’s abdomen, thorax, marital history, molting habits, or suspiciously glossy rear plating.

Blixby was not allowed to use the phrase “nectar nethers” in any official capacity.

Blixby was not allowed to dance on the head table unless invited by a titled member of the court, and no, he could not create a title for himself by shouting one.

Blixby was not allowed to challenge any priest, judge, ambassador, caterpillar, or swan-shaped centerpiece to a duel.

And under absolutely no circumstances was Blixby to approach the trumpet lilies after sundown.

Everyone agreed this was reasonable.

Everyone also understood it was useless.

Still, the invitation was printed.

It read:

Her Verdant Majesty Queen Marigolda invites Sir Blixby Glimmergob, Jewel-Eyed Jester of Pollenwick Hollow, to attend the Eighty-Seventh Annual Bloom Ball, held beneath the Moonlit Foxglove Pavilion, where joy, refinement, and respectful celebration shall flourish.

Then, in smaller handwriting added by Lady Primselia herself:

Behave, you glittery little bastard.

When the invitation arrived at Blixby’s mushroom bungalow, delivered by a deeply underpaid aphid courier, Blixby was upside down on his ceiling, trying to teach a dew drop to juggle.

“Message,” said the aphid.

Blixby rotated his head a full alarming amount. “Is it a threat, a summons, an apology, or a love letter from someone with poor judgment?”

“Invitation.”

“That’s all four if you read it correctly.”

The aphid handed over the violet-petal envelope using tongs.

Blixby dropped from the ceiling, landed on all six legs, and snatched it with a delighted squeak. The wax seal bore the Bloom Ball crest: three roses, two crossed fern fronds, and a bee pretending not to be drunk.

“Ah,” Blixby said. “My yearly opportunity to disappoint the elite.”

He peeled open the invitation, read it once, read it twice, then licked Lady Primselia’s handwritten note for emphasis.

“Spicy.”

The aphid took one careful step backward.

Blixby’s jeweled eyes widened until they reflected the entire room in kaleidoscopic panic and possibility. “Do you understand what this means?”

“Overtime?” asked the aphid.

“Destiny.”

“That’s what overtime feels like.”

Blixby bounded across the bungalow, knocking over a stack of tiny drums, a jar labeled Emergency Confetti: Do Not Open Near Authority, and three half-written jokes about beetle divorce.

“I need attire,” he declared. “I need flair. I need a plan.”

“You are not supposed to have a plan.”

“Correct. Which is why this plan must be disguised as a wardrobe decision.”

The aphid watched him fling open a walnut-shell wardrobe packed with ribbons, bells, shiny scraps, stolen tassels, and what appeared to be a ceremonial sash from the Order of the Moist Orchid.

“Didn’t they ban you?” asked the aphid.

“Temporarily.”

“It’s been nine years.”

“A long temporary.”

Blixby selected a collar of golden pollen beads, a waist sash woven from spider silk and poor choices, and a pair of dew-polished anklets that jingled every time he moved. Then he produced a tiny velvet cape in shades of lavender and teal.

The aphid frowned. “Is that Dame Flutterwick’s curtain?”

“Repurposed.”

“Stolen.”

“Sustainably relocated.”

Finally, Blixby reached for a small corked vial tucked behind a cracked acorn mirror.

The aphid’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”

Blixby froze.

“Nothing.”

“You’re holding it like it’s definitely something.”

“This?” Blixby said, waving the vial casually, which was a mistake because the liquid inside glowed a violent shade of pink and released a bubble shaped like a screaming daisy. “Just a little party polish.”

“That looks illegal.”

“Everything fun looks illegal to aphids.”

“What is it?”

Blixby held the vial up to the light. Inside swirled a glittering nectar blend, thick as honey and sparkling like a fairy had exploded in a perfume shop.

“Shimmer sap,” he whispered.

The aphid’s mouth fell open. “That’s banned at court events.”

“Only in quantities above one drop.”

“How many drops are in that vial?”

Blixby tilted it. “Emotionally? One.”

“Legally?”

“Several felonies.”

Shimmer sap was made from moon nectar, blushberry syrup, crushed giggle fern, and something the recipe referred to only as “the suggestive dust.” It did not make creatures drunk, exactly. Drunk was too simple. Shimmer sap made creatures feel as though every thought they had was clever, every dance move was sensual, every secret deserved an audience, and every bad idea had been personally approved by destiny.

In very small amounts, it made parties sparkle.

In larger amounts, it made parties testify before the council.

“You cannot bring that to the Bloom Ball,” the aphid said.

Blixby tucked the vial into his sash. “Of course not.”

“You just did.”

“Technically, I am still in my house.”

“Blixby.”

“Fine. I will not bring it.”

“Promise?”

Blixby looked deeply offended. “I am a royal jester, not a common liar.”

His antennae bobbled.

The aphid sighed. “You’re going to ruin the ball.”

Blixby smiled, all iridescent eyes and dangerous joy. “Ruin is such an ugly word.”

“What word would you use?”

“Liberate.”

“That’s worse.”

“Only for people with seating charts.”

By sunset, Pollenwick Hollow had transformed.

The Moonlit Foxglove Pavilion rose from the center of the meadow like a cathedral built by drunk butterflies. Its towering purple blossoms formed natural arches overhead, glowing softly from within as fireflies nested in their throats. Dew lanterns hung in delicate chains from curling vines. The dance floor, polished smooth by generations of snail artisans, shimmered with a thin glaze of moonlight. Tables were set beneath broad leaves, each one decorated with petals, curled fern tips, and miniature place cards written in gold pollen ink.

The entire scene was beautiful enough to make a poet cry, a painter faint, and a tax collector briefly reconsider his life.

Guests arrived in waves.

The beetles came first, glossy and overdressed, clicking across the moss in jeweled shells buffed to a mirror shine. Then came the bees in formal stripes, wings combed, stingers tastefully capped. The moths arrived in clouds of powdery elegance, pretending not to notice the flame lanterns. The butterflies swept in last, as always, because butterflies treated punctuality as something that happened to lesser creatures.

At the entrance, Lady Primselia Snapdragon stood with a clipboard, a smile like a sharpened spoon, and the spiritual energy of a prison warden guarding dessert.

“Name?” she asked each guest.

“Lord Velvetthorpe of the Upper Trellis.”

“Welcome.”

“Countess Amberwing and companion.”

“Companion’s name?”

“He’s decorative.”

“Fine. Decorative plus one.”

“Bumblethorpe.”

Lady Primselia looked up. “Current wife or ex-wife?”

Mayor Bumblethorpe went pale. “Neither. Accountant.”

“Wise.”

Inside the pavilion, the orchestra tuned their instruments: cricket fiddles, beetle drums, a harp strung with spider silk, and one moody cicada who kept saying he only performed because his truth demanded it.

Dame Honeymug supervised refreshments with the intensity of a general commanding troops. There were dew cocktails, blushberry spritzers, pollen puffs, candied clover, fermented fig foam, and the legendary centerpiece: the Golden Nectar Fountain, a three-tiered marvel imported from the western hive and guarded by two bees named Rusk and Kevin.

Rusk was muscular.

Kevin was nervous.

Both had been warned about Blixby.

“What does he look like?” Kevin asked.

Rusk flexed his mandibles. “You’ll know.”

“That’s what everyone keeps saying.”

“You’ll know.”

At precisely moonrise, Queen Marigolda entered.

She was magnificent, draped in petals of gold and cream, her crown made from woven stamens and one absolutely enormous dew gem that had its own insurance policy. The crowd bowed, curtsied, dipped, fluttered, or in the case of the snails, began bowing several minutes earlier to allow time.

“My friends,” Queen Marigolda said, voice warm and regal, “welcome to the Eighty-Seventh Annual Bloom Ball. Tonight we gather not merely to celebrate the flowering season, but to honor the bonds that root us together. May we dance with joy, feast with gratitude, and behave with enough restraint that tomorrow’s council meeting can remain under three hours.”

Polite laughter rippled through the pavilion.

Lady Primselia relaxed by one-eighth of a muscle.

Perhaps, she thought, this year would be different.

That was when the trumpet lilies sounded.

Not with the scheduled royal fanfare.

With a wet, dramatic honk that sounded like a goose falling into pudding.

Every head turned.

At the top of the entrance arch, silhouetted by moonlight, stood Blixby Glimmergob.

He had somehow acquired a hat.

Not a tasteful hat.

Not a formal hat.

A hat made from a curled orchid petal, three dangling bells, and what appeared to be Lady Primselia’s emergency backup corsage.

His jeweled eyes blazed. His cape fluttered. His tongue lolled out in what he clearly believed was a charming expression but looked more like a medical event.

“Good evening, you overdressed sacks of pollen and unresolved tension!” Blixby cried.

The pavilion went silent.

Somewhere near the refreshment table, Kevin whispered, “I know.”

Lady Primselia’s clipboard snapped in half.

Blixby sprang from the arch, wings flashing, and landed directly in front of Queen Marigolda with the sort of flourish that would have been impressive if he had not skidded the last inch and bumped his face into the royal toe.

“Your Moist Magnificence,” he said, bowing so low his antennae slapped the floor.

Queen Marigolda gazed down at him. “Blixby.”

“Radiant as ever. Terrifying jewel. Floral thunderbolt. Matriarch of petals and emotional damage.”

“You received the behavioral addendum?”

“I licked it respectfully.”

“And understood it?”

“In spirit.”

Lady Primselia appeared beside them like a tax bill in heels. “Sir Blixby, you are late.”

“Fashion is never late. It arrives once the boring people have warmed the room.”

“You are wearing my corsage.”

“Our corsage now.”

“Remove it.”

“But it brings out my eyes.”

“Your eyes already look like a rainbow got trapped in a panic attack.”

“Exactly. They need grounding.”

Queen Marigolda raised one delicate claw. “Lady Primselia. Let him enjoy the evening.”

“Your Majesty—”

“Blixby,” the Queen said, turning her gaze on him, “do not make me regret mercy.”

Blixby placed one claw over his heart. “I shall be as dignified as a monastery full of beetles.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“No, but it has imagery.”

He scampered away before anyone could frisk him.

His first destination, naturally, was the refreshment table.

Rusk and Kevin stepped in front of the Golden Nectar Fountain.

“No,” said Rusk.

Blixby blinked up at him. “I haven’t done anything.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“Thinking is still legal in most districts.”

“Not the way you do it,” Kevin muttered.

Blixby peered around them at the fountain. Golden nectar cascaded from blossom bowl to blossom bowl, thick and fragrant, catching the lantern-light like liquid sunshine. It smelled of summer afternoons, expensive mistakes, and bees with generational wealth.

“That is a majestic piece of plumbing,” Blixby said.

“Step away,” Rusk said.

“I merely wish to admire it.”

“Admire it from elsewhere.”

“Can I smell it?”

“No.”

“Can I compliment it?”

“Briefly.”

Blixby leaned sideways and called past them, “You’re doing amazing, you sticky golden bastard.”

Kevin frowned. “Was that brief?”

“Too brief,” said Blixby. “I had a whole second verse.”

Rusk crossed his arms.

Blixby sighed dramatically, then wandered away, jingling.

He did not go far.

He circled the room like a tiny sparkling shark at a buffet of weak decisions. He complimented Baron Thistlewick’s waistcoat by saying it looked “less flammable than usual.” He asked a butterfly countess whether her third husband had molted emotionally or only financially. He told the cicada musician that his truth sounded “a bit like a door hinge begging for death.”

Within fifteen minutes, three guests had laughed, two had gasped, one had threatened litigation, and Lady Primselia had developed a vein in her forehead shaped like a question mark.

But technically, Blixby had broken no rules.

Yet.

The first dance began beneath the foxglove arches.

It was a traditional number known as The Courteous Turn of the Blossom Moon, which involved partners circling, bowing, touching claws briefly, and pretending not to think about anyone’s abdomen.

Blixby watched from the edge of the floor, vibrating.

Dame Honeymug appeared beside him with a drink in each hand and the relaxed posture of someone who had given up on the future.

“You’re behaving,” she said.

“I know. It feels itchy.”

“Try harder.”

“To behave?”

“To make it interesting without causing property damage.”

Blixby looked up at her slowly.

Dame Honeymug took a long sip. “I said what I said.”

“Are you encouraging me?”

“I am encouraging artistry. Not arson.”

“That distinction has haunted my career.”

Across the dance floor, Lady Primselia glided through the steps with Lord Velvetthorpe, looking elegant, cold, and profoundly unwilling to enjoy herself. Her emergency backup corsage bounced from Blixby’s hat with every thought in his head.

Blixby’s eyes narrowed.

“She needs joy,” he said.

“She needs a nap and possibly a lover with a forgiving schedule,” Dame Honeymug replied.

“Same thing, depending on technique.”

“Careful, Jester.”

But Blixby was already moving.

He darted between dancers, slipped beneath a moth’s cape, bounced off a beetle’s polished shell, and sprang onto the edge of the orchestra platform.

The cricket fiddlers faltered.

“Gentlebugs and assorted soft-bodied romantics!” Blixby shouted.

Lady Primselia froze mid-turn.

The entire dance floor stumbled to a halt.

“No speeches,” Lady Primselia hissed.

“This is not a speech,” Blixby said. “This is a public service.”

“That is worse.”

Blixby turned to the orchestra. “Boys, girls, and emotionally complex cicada—give me something with hips.”

The cicada straightened. “My art does not have hips.”

“Then borrow some.”

He flicked a dew bead from his antenna. It struck the beetle drum with a crisp ting.

The drummer, who had been waiting his entire life for someone to make a terrible decision in tempo, grinned and began a deep, rolling beat.

The fiddlers joined.

The harpist plucked a line so slinky that three elderly moths looked personally attacked.

Blixby spun, cape flashing, anklets jingling, eyes blazing with lunatic invitation.

“The Courteous Turn is dead!” he cried. “Long live The Improper Wiggle of Seasonal Repression!”

A scandalized gasp rose from the elders.

A thrilled murmur rose from everyone under forty.

“Absolutely not!” Lady Primselia shouted.

But then Dame Honeymug stepped onto the dance floor.

She rolled her shoulders.

She cracked her neck.

She smiled at Lady Primselia with the serene malice of a woman about to turn a formal event into evidence.

“Oh,” said Mopsy.

“Hell yes,” said Mopsy-Other-One.

Dame Honeymug began to dance.

It was not elegant.

It was not appropriate.

It was magnificent.

She moved like a bumblebee with a secret tattoo. She kicked one leg, shimmied her wings, and performed a full-body ripple that made Baron Thistlewick drop his monocle into his fig foam.

The younger guests cheered.

The older guests pretended not to watch while watching extremely hard.

Blixby leapt from the orchestra platform to join her, clapping wildly. “There she is! The Duchess of Damn, the Baroness of Back Problems, the reason the clover boys learned prayer!”

Dame Honeymug pointed at him. “Less commentary, more knees.”

“I have six and none are insured!”

He danced.

Calling it dancing was generous in the way calling a landslide “assertive landscaping” was generous. Blixby bounced, spun, wriggled, flailed, slid, posed, and at one point appeared to briefly argue with his own left leg. But he had rhythm, charisma, and the sacred confidence of a creature who had never once been humbled by a mirror.

The floor erupted.

Bees stamped. Beetles clacked. Moths twirled. Butterflies abandoned grace and started moving like they had debts to shake loose.

Even Queen Marigolda laughed.

Lady Primselia did not.

She marched toward the orchestra, mouth tight enough to cut twine. “Stop this music immediately.”

The cricket fiddlers looked at Blixby.

Blixby looked at the drummer.

The drummer looked at Dame Honeymug.

Dame Honeymug looked at Lady Primselia and performed a hip circle so pointedly disrespectful that it deserved its own legal category.

The music got louder.

That was when Blixby remembered the vial.

It rested in his sash, warm against his side, glowing faintly through the fabric.

He had, by the strictest definition, not brought it.

He had merely failed to leave it behind.

A philosophical difference, really.

He did not intend to use it. Not at first. The evening, after all, was already becoming beautiful. The dance floor had loosened. The elders were sweating through their judgment. A beetle baron had accidentally smiled and seemed horrified by the sensation.

But then Blixby saw Lord Velvetthorpe whisper something to Lady Primselia.

Whatever he said made her glance toward the dance floor, then toward Queen Marigolda, then toward the refreshment table.

She lifted one claw and signaled to Rusk.

Rusk nodded.

Kevin looked nervous.

The bees moved to cover the nectar fountain more fully.

Lady Primselia was shutting it down.

Not just the dance.

The fun.

The loosened collars.

The laughter.

The tiny, fragile crack in the wall of manners that allowed everyone to breathe.

Blixby felt something hot and rebellious spark inside his chest.

Possibly courage.

Possibly indigestion from the candied clover he had stolen earlier.

Either way, it wanted action.

“No,” he whispered.

Dame Honeymug, still dancing beside him, glanced over. “That sounds like the beginning of a felony.”

“A misdemeanor at worst.”

“Blixby.”

“They’re going to neuter the room.”

“Rooms do not have testicles.”

“Not after Primselia’s done with them.”

Dame Honeymug’s expression softened in a way that was both affectionate and deeply tired. “What are you about to do?”

Blixby pulled the vial halfway from his sash.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, you sparkly dumbass.”

“Just a drop.”

“That bottle has never heard the phrase ‘just a drop.’”

“I have excellent control.”

“You once sneezed yourself into a wind chime.”

“A charming anecdote from my youth.”

“It was Tuesday.”

Across the pavilion, Lady Primselia reached the refreshment table. She spoke sharply to Rusk and Kevin, then turned toward the crowd with an announcement face.

An announcement face was a terrible thing. Everyone in Pollenwick Hollow knew it. It meant rules were coming. It meant a schedule was being restored. It meant some poor bastard was about to be reminded where the exits were and how little dignity they had left.

Blixby uncorked the vial.

The scent of shimmer sap drifted out: sweet, sharp, fizzy, wicked. It smelled like berries, moonlight, bad judgment, and someone saying, “No one will ever know,” approximately seven seconds before everyone knew.

Dame Honeymug grabbed his wrist. “Do not put that in the fountain.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were absolutely going to.”

“I was considering atmospheric enhancement.”

“That is fountain crime.”

“Fountain crime is not a real category.”

“It will be tomorrow.”

Blixby looked at her. His huge rainbow eyes reflected the lights, the dancers, the Queen, the guards, the entire fragile ridiculousness of the evening.

“They invite everyone here to celebrate blooming,” he said quietly, “then punish anything that actually opens.”

Dame Honeymug’s grip loosened.

“That was almost wise,” she said.

“I hated it too.”

Lady Primselia tapped a spoon against a crystal cup.

Ting. Ting. Ting.

The music faltered.

The dancers slowed.

The room turned toward her.

“Esteemed guests,” Lady Primselia began, voice bright and deadly, “while enthusiasm is appreciated, the Bloom Ball is a celebration of refinement, not a public molting of one’s standards.”

A few elders nodded.

The younger guests groaned.

Queen Marigolda watched with unreadable eyes.

Blixby looked at the vial.

Then at the fountain.

Then at Kevin, who was staring directly at him with the pale, haunted expression of a guard who had just realized history was about to happen on his shift.

“No,” Kevin mouthed.

Blixby smiled.

“Yes,” his face replied.

He sprang.

It was a beautiful leap.

A stupid leap.

A leap sung by destiny and prosecuted by common sense.

He launched from the dance floor, bounced off Baron Thistlewick’s head, ricocheted from a hanging dew lantern, spun through the air with his cape flaring like a tiny flag of rebellion, and aimed himself directly at the Golden Nectar Fountain.

Rusk lunged.

Kevin screamed.

Lady Primselia shouted something that began with “You glitter-stuffed—” and was mercifully swallowed by the orchestra’s accidental drumroll.

For one suspended second, Blixby hung above the fountain, vial raised, eyes blazing.

“To blooming!” he cried.

And then, because life enjoys slapstick more than justice, Dame Honeymug’s discarded fig foam cup rolled under his landing foot.

Blixby slipped.

The vial flew from his claw.

The cork popped loose.

The shimmer sap arced overhead in a glittering pink ribbon.

It did not pour neatly into the fountain.

It splattered everywhere.

Into the Golden Nectar Fountain.

Onto the pollen puffs.

Across the candied clover.

Into Baron Thistlewick’s monocle.

Onto Lady Primselia’s announcement spoon.

And, most catastrophically, directly into the open mouths of the trumpet lilies.

The pavilion went silent.

Blixby landed upside down in the bottom bowl of the fountain, legs twitching, tongue out, drenched in golden nectar and felony-grade sparkle.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then the trumpet lilies inhaled.

Their petals flushed hot pink.

Their stems stiffened.

Their throats bulged with terrible musical purpose.

Lady Primselia whispered, “Oh no.”

The first trumpet lily blasted a note so loud it knocked three moths out of the air and peeled the frosting off a clover cake.

The second joined, deeper and wetter.

The third began improvising.

And then, to the horror of every respectable creature in Pollenwick Hollow, the enchanted flowers began to sing.

Not the royal anthem.

Not a spring hymn.

Not even something with plausible deniability.

They sang the filthiest tavern song ever banned from the Lower Compost District, in perfect four-part harmony.

Queen Marigolda’s mouth fell open.

Dame Honeymug slowly raised her drink.

Kevin sat down on the floor.

Lady Primselia turned toward Blixby with murder blooming behind her eyes.

Blixby lifted his nectar-soaked head from the fountain, shimmer sap dripping from his antennae.

He blinked once.

Then grinned.

“Well,” he said, “the acoustics are better than expected.”

The Trumpet Lilies Knew Too Much

The trumpet lilies had not merely begun singing.

They had begun performing.

There is a difference, and it is the same difference between accidentally burping at dinner and standing on the table to deliver a twelve-minute burp opera about everyone’s mother.

The first verse of the banned tavern song came belting out of the enchanted blossoms with such obscene confidence that the entire Moonlit Foxglove Pavilion seemed to blush from root to roof. Fireflies dimmed themselves out of modesty. Three elderly moths collapsed into a decorative fern. A young beetle near the punch bowl whispered, “I didn’t know flowers knew that word,” and his mother smacked him so hard his shell rang like a dinner bell.

The lilies sang on.

No one dared repeat the lyrics afterward, partly because they were filthy, partly because they rhymed “stamen” with something no decent garden historian would put in writing, and partly because the fourth line implied a watering can could be used in ways that would void its warranty.

Blixby Glimmergob, Jewel-Eyed Jester, professional nuisance, and current centerpiece garnish, sat upside down in the bottom bowl of the Golden Nectar Fountain with sap glittering down his face.

He listened.

He blinked.

He tilted his head.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve heard worse.”

Lady Primselia Snapdragon looked as though her soul had attempted to leave her body, seen the catering bill, and been forced back inside.

“Stop them,” she said.

Blixby wiped nectar from one eye. “I’m not sure I can.”

“You started this.”

“That is a hurtful oversimplification.”

“You poured banned shimmer sap into the royal fountain.”

“Splashed,” Blixby corrected. “Poured implies control.”

The trumpet lilies reached the chorus.

A wave of horrified gasps swept the room.

Then, from somewhere near the younger pollinators’ table, one drunken beetle shouted, “Again!”

The room split.

Half the guests were appalled.

The other half had discovered that appalled people made excellent cover for dancing.

Within seconds, the dance floor devolved into a glittering battlefield of dignity versus hips. The older butterflies stood rigid with offense, wings trembling in delicate outrage. The younger bees stomped in rhythm. A pair of gnats began a scandalous two-person whirl that looked less like courtly dance and more like a custody dispute between elbows. The moth twins Mopsy and Mopsy-Other-One had each grabbed a candied clover stick and were waving them overhead like tiny glowing clubs.

Dame Honeymug stood at the edge of the fountain, one hand over her mouth, eyes wet with laughter.

“This,” she wheezed, “is the worst Bloom Ball in history.”

Blixby beamed from the nectar bowl. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t say best.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Queen Marigolda rose from her throne of curled foxglove petals.

At once, a hush tried to fall.

It failed, because the trumpet lilies were still belting out a verse about a lonely slug and a morally flexible mushroom cap.

The Queen waited.

Queens were good at waiting. It was half the job, right after wearing heavy things and pretending ambassadors were interesting.

When the lilies paused to inhale, Queen Marigolda’s voice rang through the pavilion.

“Enough.”

The word carried.

The room snapped still.

Even the lilies shivered, petals twitching with unsung profanity.

Blixby slowly lowered one foot out of the fountain. It made a wet plonk.

Lady Primselia pointed at him. “Your Majesty, I demand that he be removed.”

“Into what?” Blixby asked. “Prison? Exile? A tasteful napkin?”

“Silence.”

“Ah. The cruelest container.”

Queen Marigolda looked from Blixby to the trumpet lilies, then to the fountain, where pink shimmer sap now swirled through golden nectar in luminous ribbons. The whole fountain bubbled gently, as though pleased with itself.

“Sir Blixby,” the Queen said, “did you bring contraband to my ball?”

Blixby’s antennae bobbled.

“That depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On whether this is an emotional inquiry or a legal one.”

“Legal.”

“Then I request a lawyer with flexible morals and tiny hands.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the room.

Lady Primselia made a strangled noise. “This is not funny.”

The trumpet lilies, still under the influence of shimmer sap and evidently developing comedic timing, gave a tiny supportive honk.

That made the younger guests laugh harder.

Queen Marigolda did not smile, but one corner of her mouth twitched as if it had considered treason.

“You have endangered the dignity of this court,” she said.

Blixby climbed out of the fountain, slipping twice and landing with a splash at her feet. His cape clung to him like a dead lavender bat. “With respect, Your Majesty, dignity was doing fine endangering itself before I arrived.”

Lady Primselia gasped. “How dare you?”

“With practice.”

“You are covered in nectar and criminal sparkle.”

“Yes, and yet somehow I’m still less sticky than the seating politics.”

Another ripple of laughter.

Lady Primselia’s claws curled.

The shimmer sap had begun to work its deeper magic.

At first, shimmer sap merely loosened movement, brightened color, and convinced shy beetles that dancing badly was a civil right. But once it soaked into food, drink, and enchanted flowers, it became something much more dangerous.

It made hidden feelings buoyant.

Secrets rose like gas bubbles in a pond.

Tact dissolved.

Politeness began shedding its skin.

The first casualty was Baron Thistlewick.

He had been standing near the fig foam, muttering about standards, when a shimmer-splashed pollen puff rolled against his shoe. He looked down. He looked around. Seeing no one of sufficient authority watching, he picked it up and popped it into his mouth.

His eyes widened.

His moustache quivered.

Then he turned to the nearest table and announced, “I have never understood the difference between a canapé and a small wet biscuit.”

The table stared.

He clutched his chest, horrified by his own honesty.

“Also,” he continued helplessly, “my waistcoat is stuffed with stolen cocktail napkins because they are softer than the ones at home.”

Mopsy gasped. “I knew it.”

Mopsy-Other-One leaned in. “You said it was grief weight.”

“It is,” Baron Thistlewick said, voice cracking. “I grieve quality linens.”

Across the pavilion, Countess Amberwing took one sip of dew cocktail and immediately turned to her decorative plus one.

“I told everyone you were decorative because I forgot your name three weeks ago.”

The plus one blinked. “It’s Gerald.”

“That feels unlikely.”

“We have been engaged since autumn.”

“To be fair, autumn was busy.”

At the refreshment table, Kevin the nervous bee licked a drop of shimmer nectar off his wrist before he could stop himself.

His pupils expanded.

He gripped Rusk’s arm.

“I don’t want to guard fountains anymore.”

Rusk frowned. “Kevin.”

“I want to write emotionally devastating poetry about moss.”

“Kevin, not now.”

“I have a chapbook.”

“You told me that was a ration ledger.”

“It is a ration ledger. Of longing.”

Rusk stared at him for a long second.

Then, very quietly, he said, “I would read it.”

Kevin burst into tears.

The trumpet lilies made a soft romantic wah-wah noise.

“Do not encourage them,” Lady Primselia snapped.

“They’re flowers,” Blixby said. “Encouragement is ninety percent of their diet.”

“This is a disaster.”

“Yes, but it has layers.”

The shimmer spread.

Guests who had sampled refreshments began confessing, arguing, laughing, apologizing, flirting poorly, dancing worse, and saying the quiet parts loudly enough to be entered into the minutes.

Mayor Bumblethorpe admitted he had faked a pollen allergy for nine years to avoid brunch with his in-laws.

A moth dowager confessed she had been pretending to be frail because people carried her places and she enjoyed the view.

A young butterfly named Pim revealed that he had written all seven anonymous love poems to himself because “the dating pool was shallow and I deserved better metaphors.”

The cicada musician climbed onto his stool and announced, with tears in his eyes, “My truth does have hips.”

Then he played the sluttiest chord anyone had ever heard from a stringed instrument.

Even the harp looked embarrassed.

Lady Primselia seized her broken clipboard, remembered it was broken, and seized the nearest spoon instead.

“Enough!” she shouted, tapping the spoon against a cup.

The spoon had shimmer sap on it.

This was unfortunate.

The spoon glowed.

Lady Primselia froze.

Her pupils shrank to pinpricks.

Her jaw clenched.

Then her own mouth betrayed her with the bright, ringing clarity of a bell thrown through a church window.

“I hate this ball.”

The pavilion gasped.

Lady Primselia slapped both claws over her mouth.

The spoon clattered to the floor.

Blixby’s eyes widened with the reverence of a criminal witnessing a miracle.

“Oh,” he whispered. “Now we’re cooking.”

Queen Marigolda tilted her head. “Lady Primselia?”

Lady Primselia shook her head violently, still covering her mouth.

Unfortunately, shimmer sap did not care about dignity, career consequences, or the desperate pressure of claws against lips.

Words squeezed through anyway.

“I hate it,” she said, muffled. “I hate every cursed petal of it. I hate the seating chart. I hate the ceremonial welcome. I hate pretending the butterflies arrive late because they are elegant when really they are vain little curtain scraps with legs.”

A cluster of butterflies gasped.

“I hate the beetles polishing themselves until I can see my own despair in their backsides.”

Several beetles turned defensively.

“I hate the moth powder. I hate the fig foam. I hate the phrase ‘heritage pollen.’ I hate that every year someone asks if we can make the theme ‘more timeless’ and then suggests beige.”

Dame Honeymug slowly lowered her drink.

“Go on,” she murmured.

Lady Primselia looked trapped inside her own face. “And I especially hate that for eighty-seven years, this ball has been called a celebration of blooming when half this court wouldn’t recognize honest blooming if it crawled up their stems and slapped them with a damp leaf.”

The room fell silent.

Even the trumpet lilies stopped singing.

Blixby stared.

For the first time all evening, he had nothing clever to say.

Lady Primselia’s eyes shone. Whether from rage, shame, or shimmer sap was anyone’s guess.

“Every spring,” she continued, softer now, “I make the ball perfect. Perfect lanterns. Perfect music. Perfect guest list. Perfect little lies arranged in rows like sugared berries. And every spring, everyone complains anyway. The roses want better lighting. The bees want better security. The butterflies want more mirrors. The snails want more ramps, which is fair, actually, and I did fix that, you ungrateful gliders.”

The snails, who had just arrived at the emotional part of the evening, cheered faintly from the ramp.

Lady Primselia swallowed.

“And I have not danced at my own ball in sixteen years.”

No one moved.

That landed differently.

Not like a joke.

Not like scandal.

Like a tiny door opening somewhere no one had bothered to look.

Queen Marigolda’s expression softened.

“Primselia,” she said gently.

Lady Primselia stiffened. “Your Majesty, I apologize. I have been compromised by unauthorized sparkle.”

Blixby raised one claw. “For the record, that phrase will look excellent in court documents.”

Dame Honeymug elbowed him.

“Ow.”

“Read the room, you damp jewel goblin.”

Blixby looked around.

The room was not the same room he had entered.

Its polished mask had cracked. Beneath it, Pollenwick Hollow was not graceful or refined or even especially sane. It was exhausted, lonely, vain, funny, horny in a vague floral way, resentful of beige, terrified of being seen, and absolutely desperate for permission to stop pretending.

It was, Blixby realized, magnificent.

And also maybe his fault.

Which complicated the smugness.

The trumpet lilies began humming again.

This time, not a tavern song.

Something stranger.

Their petals pulsed with shimmer-pink light. The glow traveled down their stems, into the vines wrapped around the pavilion, then across the dew lanterns. One by one, the lanterns brightened until the whole pavilion glowed like the inside of a gemstone.

Dame Honeymug went pale.

“Oh, bugger.”

Blixby turned. “That is not your casual ‘oh bugger.’ That is your expensive ‘oh bugger.’”

“The lilies are overcharged.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning shimmer sap and trumpet lilies don’t mix.”

“We have established that socially.”

“No, chemically.”

The lilies hummed louder.

Their throats swelled.

Their petals curled open wider than they should.

Kevin, still sniffling, stared at them. “Are flowers supposed to pulse like that?”

Rusk backed away. “Not after dinner.”

Dame Honeymug grabbed Blixby by the shoulders and turned him toward the lilies. “If they keep building pressure, they’ll blow.”

Blixby blinked. “Blow how?”

“A full pollen discharge.”

“That sounds survivable.”

“Shimmer-charged pollen discharge.”

“That sounds festive.”

“Across the entire Hollow.”

Blixby’s smile faded.

Dame Honeymug nodded grimly. “Every creature within three garden beds will be glitter-stoned, emotionally honest, and rhythmically unstable until sunrise.”

Blixby considered this.

“How is that bad?”

“The eastern roses are hosting a funeral.”

“Ah.”

“The night-blooming jasmine are in trade negotiations.”

“Less good.”

“And the Lower Compost District has karaoke.”

Blixby inhaled sharply. “We have to stop them.”

“There he is.”

Lady Primselia, still glowing faintly with unwanted honesty, marched toward them. “What now?”

“The lilies are going to explode,” Blixby said.

“Good,” she said. “Maybe they’ll take the centerpiece with them.”

“Primselia.”

“Fine. Bad. Exploding lilies bad. What do we do?”

Dame Honeymug pointed to the tallest trumpet lily, whose throat now bulged like a bagpipe full of bad intentions. “They need to vent the charge through a controlled performance.”

“A song?” Queen Marigolda asked, approaching.

“A song, a dance, a ritual, something with enough emotional force to pull the shimmer out through the bloom before it detonates.”

Blixby clapped. “Excellent. I am a performer.”

Dame Honeymug gave him a look. “It needs structure.”

“I resent that.”

“Of course you do.”

Lady Primselia rubbed her temples. “There is the old Blossom Reel.”

Everyone stared at her.

She lowered her hands. “What?”

Dame Honeymug’s eyebrows rose. “You know the Blossom Reel?”

“I chaired the archival dance committee for six years.”

Blixby’s mouth opened.

Lady Primselia pointed at him. “Say one thing about my archival dance committee and I will staple your tongue to a seed pod.”

He closed his mouth.

Then opened it again. “Respectfully, that threat has tension.”

“Blixby.”

“Shutting up.”

Queen Marigolda stepped forward. “The Blossom Reel was performed before the Bloom Ball became formal. It was meant to guide spring energy through the Hollow, yes?”

Lady Primselia nodded. “Before it became a social event, it was a release ritual. Everyone danced. No ranks. No seating chart. No little cards telling Lord Velvetthorpe he wasn’t allowed near the melon wine.”

Lord Velvetthorpe, across the room, shouted, “That melon started it.”

“The Reel channels excess bloom magic,” Primselia continued. “It could drain the lilies safely.”

“Then do it,” said the Queen.

Lady Primselia froze.

“Your Majesty?”

“Lead the dance.”

Primselia’s face tightened. “I cannot.”

“You just said you knew it.”

“Knowing is not leading.”

“Why not?” Blixby asked.

Her eyes flashed. “Because no one here will follow me.”

That silence was sharper than the last.

Blixby looked around the pavilion. At the guests whispering behind cups. At the butterflies still offended. At the beetles avoiding eye contact because they had laughed at her pain and now felt like polished assholes. At Kevin, clutching his poetry ledger. At Rusk, still pretending he had not offered to read it. At Dame Honeymug, whose face had gone tender and sad beneath the nectar flush.

Then Blixby looked at Primselia.

Proper, furious, exhausted Primselia.

The woman who had spent years building beautiful cages and calling them traditions because everyone praised the cage and forgot the creature inside.

Blixby had entered the evening wanting to crack her.

He had not expected to find someone alive in there.

“I’ll follow you,” he said.

Lady Primselia stared at him as though he had just laid an egg in a wine glass.

“You?”

“Don’t sound so disgusted. I’m very emotionally available when cornered.”

“You do not know the Blossom Reel.”

“No, but I possess enthusiasm, legs, and a flexible relationship with shame.”

“It is a ritual dance.”

“All dance is ritual if someone regrets it later.”

Dame Honeymug snorted.

Primselia looked toward the swelling lilies. The tallest one gave a strained musical groan. Glittering pollen puffed from its throat.

Time was running out.

“Fine,” she said. “Stand opposite me.”

Blixby sprang into place on the dance floor, leaving sticky little footprints behind him.

Primselia turned to the orchestra. “Can you play The Root Beneath the Revel?”

The cricket fiddlers looked uncertain.

The cicada musician placed one leg dramatically over his heart. “I was born to play what has been buried.”

“That sounds like yes,” said Dame Honeymug.

The drummer adjusted his sticks. The harpist tuned one trembling string. A low melody began, old and winding, nothing like the polished court dances from earlier. It crawled up from the moss. It throbbed with rain, roots, hunger, sunlight, and the rude insistence of green things splitting the earth whether anyone found it tasteful or not.

The lilies responded.

Their hum dropped into harmony.

Lady Primselia lifted her arms.

“First turn,” she said. “Three steps in. Bow. Do not lick anything.”

Blixby nodded solemnly. “Restrictive, but clear.”

They stepped toward each other.

One, two, three.

They bowed.

Blixby’s tongue emerged by instinct.

Primselia’s glare shoved it back into his mouth.

“Second turn,” she said. “Cross and spiral.”

They crossed.

Primselia moved with crisp precision, every limb sharp, controlled, exact.

Blixby moved like a sparkler trapped in a jar.

“Not like that,” she hissed.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re being chased by your own pelvis.”

“That’s my signature.”

“Unsign it.”

The lilies groaned louder.

A wave of shimmer pollen drifted into the crowd.

Guests began swaying where they stood.

Queen Marigolda turned to them. “Everyone join.”

Lady Primselia nearly tripped. “Your Majesty, the Reel requires coordination.”

“Then coordinate them.”

“They are intoxicated, emotional, and half of them cannot count past two without making it political.”

“Then shout.”

Blixby grinned. “She is good at that.”

Primselia bared her teeth. “Form a circle, you decorative disasters!”

The court scrambled.

There was confusion at first. Beetles bumped into bees. Moths drifted too high. Butterflies tried to make their mistakes look intentional. Snails continued arriving at their positions with noble slowness. But the old music wound through them, patient and demanding, and soon the mess began to shape itself.

One circle became two.

Two became three.

The dancers moved around the fountain, around the Queen, around the swelling trumpet lilies.

Primselia called the steps.

“Inward!”

The circles stepped in.

“Bow!”

They bowed.

“Outward!”

They stepped back.

“Turn your partner!”

Lord Velvetthorpe grabbed a fern by mistake and turned it with surprising tenderness.

“Not the décor, Velvetthorpe!”

“It understands me!” he shouted.

“Nothing understands you. Switch partners!”

The circles spun.

Blixby found himself passed from Primselia to Dame Honeymug, from Dame Honeymug to Kevin, from Kevin to a beetle widow who pinched his cheek and said, “You’re shorter than your criminal record,” and finally back to Primselia.

The lilies pulsed brighter.

The dance was working.

Shimmer poured from the flowers in ribbons of pink light, wrapping around the dancers, then flowing down through their feet into the mossy floor. The whole pavilion breathed with it.

For a few glorious minutes, it seemed possible the Bloom Ball might survive.

Then the cicada musician got inspired.

This was dangerous.

Artists, like mushrooms, should be appreciated but monitored closely.

The cicada’s eyes rolled back. His wings vibrated. His bow dug into the strings.

“I feel the ancient ache!” he cried.

“Play the notes on the page!” Primselia shouted.

“The page is a prison!”

“The page is preventing flower shrapnel!”

But the cicada had already launched into a solo.

It was technically brilliant.

It was emotionally naked.

It was also completely wrong for the ritual.

The Reel stuttered.

The dancers stumbled.

The shimmer ribbons snapped loose and whipped through the air like glittering eels.

The trumpet lilies inflated again, this time with furious musical pressure.

“Oh, for the love of compost!” Primselia yelled.

One shimmer ribbon struck the Golden Nectar Fountain.

The fountain erupted.

A geyser of sparkling nectar shot upward, hit the foxglove canopy, and rained down across the entire pavilion in warm golden droplets.

Everyone froze.

Then the shimmer nectar touched their skin.

The second wave began.

If the first wave of shimmer sap had loosened secrets, the second wave kicked open the barn door, slapped the cow, and yelled, “Run, you emotionally repressed heifer.”

The dance floor exploded into confessions.

“I only joined the garden council for the snacks!” shouted a beetle alderman.

“I lied about inventing lavender etiquette!” cried a butterfly scholar. “It was mostly bees!”

“I have been using the sacred urn as a hat stand!” said a moth priest.

“My thorax is padded!” shrieked Lord Velvetthorpe.

“We know!” shouted half the room.

Rusk, stoic fountain guard and professional wall of muscle, grabbed Kevin by the shoulders. “Your moss poems make me feel things in my sternum.”

Kevin sobbed harder. “That is where I aimed them.”

The trumpet lilies, delighted by fresh material, began harmonizing snippets of confessions back at people in increasingly jazzy tones.

“No,” Blixby said, pointing at them. “Bad flowers. No gossip jazz.”

The tallest lily honked at him.

“Do not take that tone with me. I made you famous.”

Lady Primselia shoved past him toward the orchestra platform. “Stop playing!”

The drummer stopped immediately.

The fiddlers stopped.

The harpist stopped.

The cicada continued sawing away, eyes glowing with terrible sincerity.

“Crispin!” Primselia shouted.

The cicada’s name was apparently Crispin, which somehow made everything worse.

“I am no longer Crispin,” he cried. “I am resonance with legs!”

Blixby turned to Dame Honeymug. “Was he always like this?”

“He once wrote a lament because soup was temporary.”

“Fair.”

Primselia climbed onto the platform and wrestled Crispin’s bow away from him.

He gasped as if she had stolen his spine.

“My truth!”

“Your truth is off-tempo,” she snapped.

But the damage was done.

The old Reel had collapsed.

The lilies were now swollen past safety, their petals blazing pink-white. Pollen streamed from their throats in thin, sparkling jets. The foxglove canopy trembled. Dew lanterns swung. The Golden Nectar Fountain bubbled faster, froth spilling over its tiers and crawling across the floor like festive lava.

Queen Marigolda raised her voice. “Evacuate the pavilion.”

That should have been simple.

It was not.

No one at a formal ball ever believes they are the sort of person who needs to evacuate. Evacuation is for kitchens, mines, and relatives with ferrets. Court guests preferred to depart under advisement, which took longer and involved more complaining.

“Where are my gloves?” cried Countess Amberwing.

“Leave them!” shouted Dame Honeymug.

“They’re heirloom gloves!”

“Then they’ve lived enough!”

Mayor Bumblethorpe tried to usher his accountant toward the exit but was intercepted by his ex-wife, who had shimmer sap in her hair and a frightening amount of closure in her eyes.

“Now?” he squeaked.

“Now,” she said.

A cluster of butterflies refused to flee until someone confirmed the lighting outside would flatter them.

Baron Thistlewick crawled under a table to retrieve stolen napkins because “panic is no excuse for waste.”

The snails, having only recently arrived, turned around with the weary patience of creatures accustomed to being behind schedule for history.

Blixby stood in the middle of the chaos, nectar dripping from his chin.

For once, he did not feel delighted.

He felt responsible.

It was a hideous sensation. Heavy. Damp. It settled behind his jeweled eyes like a bill he could not joke his way out of.

He had wanted to embarrass the stiff-necked elite. He had wanted to splash color on their perfect little evening. He had wanted, if he was being honest, to be remembered.

He had not wanted to blow up the Hollow.

Probably.

Lady Primselia jumped down from the orchestra platform, dragging Crispin by one wing until he promised not to become a metaphor again.

“The Reel failed,” she said.

“Slightly,” Blixby said.

“The flowers are about to detonate.”

“Less slightly.”

“We need another channel.”

“Can we plug them?”

“With what?”

Blixby looked around, then slowly removed his ridiculous orchid hat.

Primselia stared. “No.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“You were going to suggest stuffing your hat into a trumpet lily.”

“It is absorbent.”

“It is my corsage with delusions.”

The tallest lily made a dangerous squeal.

A crack of pink light split its stem.

Dame Honeymug went very still.

“No time,” she said. “If we cannot dance it out, we need to make them laugh it out.”

Blixby turned sharply. “Laugh?”

“Trumpet lilies vent through sound. Song, ritual, laughter. Anything strong enough.”

Primselia looked at him.

Queen Marigolda looked at him.

Dame Honeymug looked at him.

Several nearby guests looked at him.

Even the lilies somehow looked at him, despite not having eyes, which was frankly presumptuous.

Blixby blinked.

“Oh no.”

Primselia stepped closer. “You are the court jester.”

“Yes, but in a symbolic, pension-adjacent sense.”

“Make them laugh.”

“You want me to perform at them?”

“I want you to save the Hollow.”

Blixby looked at the overcharged lilies, then at the crowd still struggling toward the exits, then at the Queen. Marigolda’s crown gem reflected him in miniature: sticky, ridiculous, frightened, glowing with accidental crime.

“What if I fail?” he asked.

Lady Primselia’s face changed.

Just a little.

“Then we all wake up tomorrow glittering in public and telling the truth at funerals.”

“That is motivating.”

“Blixby.”

“Yes?”

She swallowed. “Please.”

That word hit him harder than any insult.

Primselia did not beg. She commanded, corrected, condemned, organized, and occasionally threatened to staple tongues to horticultural objects. But she did not say please.

Not to him.

Blixby straightened.

His cape peeled wetly from his back.

His bells jingled.

He looked absurd.

He also looked, for the first time all night, like the title Jewel-Eyed Jester might mean something more than “tiny bastard with a hat.”

“Clear me a stage,” he said.

Dame Honeymug grinned. “There he is.”

Primselia turned toward the crowd. “Everyone away from the lilies! Give the Jester room!”

“Is that wise?” Baron Thistlewick called from beneath a table.

“No,” Primselia snapped. “It is necessary. Keep up.”

The remaining guests stumbled back, forming a rough semicircle around the swollen trumpet lilies. Some crouched behind tables. Some peered from under leaves. The butterflies arranged themselves in fearfully flattering angles. Kevin and Rusk stood shoulder to shoulder, Kevin clutching his poetry ledger like a shield.

Blixby climbed onto the slick rim of the Golden Nectar Fountain.

He nearly fell.

Recovered.

Pointed at the fountain. “That was character work.”

A nervous laugh fluttered from the crowd.

The lilies pulsed.

Blixby took a breath.

Performers know the difference between laughter and noise. Noise can be yanked from a crowd with shock, insult, pratfall, or panic. Laughter is trickier. Real laughter requires surrender. It requires the room to unclench. It requires, Blixby knew with sudden terror, honesty.

He had spent his career making jokes to avoid being seen.

Now he had to be funny enough to be useful.

Disgusting.

He began with the easy targets.

“Gentlebugs, honored guests, and whatever Lord Velvetthorpe is after three cups of fig foam—welcome to the portion of the evening where we pretend this was scheduled.”

A few laughs.

The lilies shuddered, releasing a thin ribbon of pink steam.

Good.

“I know some of you are upset. Some of you came tonight expecting refinement, elegance, and a tasteful selection of seasonal puffs. Instead, you got forbidden sap, emotional collapse, and flowers screaming tavern smut at a volume usually reserved for weather emergencies.”

More laughter.

The smallest lily deflated slightly.

Blixby paced along the fountain rim. “To those offended, I offer my deepest apologies. Not for the crime itself, obviously. That had flair. But for the uneven distribution. Some of you got fully splashed, while others remain tragically under-sparkled and emotionally constipated.”

Dame Honeymug barked a laugh.

Queen Marigolda covered her mouth.

Blixby pointed toward Baron Thistlewick. “Baron, for example, has been emotionally constipated since before I was hatched. The man steals napkins just to feel softness.”

The crowd laughed harder.

Baron Thistlewick crawled halfway out from beneath the table. “They are excellent napkins!”

“And yet you hoard them like a dragon with a sinus problem.”

The lilies honked.

Pink light streamed from their throats.

Blixby felt the rhythm now. Not the dance rhythm. The room rhythm. The old pulse beneath manners, beneath titles, beneath everyone’s desperate little costume of control.

“Countess Amberwing,” he said, swinging toward her, “congratulations on your engagement to Gerald, a man so decorative you forgot he had a name.”

Gerald raised one claw. “I am choosing to find this empowering.”

“Good for you, Gerald. Start small. Maybe next spring you’ll get a personality.”

Gerald nodded solemnly, as though this were actionable advice.

The crowd roared.

Another lily deflated.

The tallest one still bulged dangerously.

Its stem crack widened.

Blixby’s smile flickered.

He pushed harder.

“Mayor Bumblethorpe, where are you? Ah, yes, being emotionally cornered by a woman who knows where you hid the brunch invitations.”

The Mayor made a strangled squeak.

His ex-wife smiled without warmth.

“To be fair,” Blixby said, “faking a pollen allergy to avoid in-laws is not cowardice. It is strategy. Bad strategy. Damp strategy. Strategy with crumbs in its beard. But strategy.”

Laughter. Stronger now.

The tallest lily trembled.

Not enough.

Blixby’s eyes darted to Primselia.

She stood rigid at the edge of the stage space, claws clasped so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. Not because she feared the explosion, though surely she did.

Because she feared being next.

Everyone expected him to mock her.

She expected it too.

The old Blixby would have done it. The version of him who had licked invitations and juggled regulations and lived for the crack in someone else’s composure would have gone straight for the exposed place. He could have made the room howl. He could have turned her pain into performance and called it art.

His mouth opened.

For one terrible second, the joke lined itself up on his tongue.

Sharp.

Perfect.

Cruel.

Then Dame Honeymug’s earlier words returned.

Read the room, you damp jewel goblin.

So Blixby did.

He read the room.

And he changed the joke.

“And Lady Primselia Snapdragon,” he said.

The pavilion held its breath.

Primselia lifted her chin, bracing.

Blixby bowed deeply.

“The only creature in Pollenwick Hollow powerful enough to organize eighty-seven years of floral nonsense and still terrify a clipboard after it has died.”

A beat.

Then laughter.

Not cruel laughter.

Relieved laughter.

Primselia blinked.

Blixby continued. “Do you know what this woman has endured? Seating charts. Dietary restrictions. Bee union negotiations. Butterfly lighting demands. Beetle polishing complaints. Moth powder on every blessed surface. Snails requesting ramp gradients in fractions. Fractions, my friends. In a garden. We barely have math.”

The snails applauded politely.

“And every year, she built you a miracle. Then you strutted in, complained the miracle was too damp, too bright, too traditional, too modern, too crowded, too empty, too much, not enough, and in one case ‘insufficiently erotic for a Tuesday.’”

Dame Honeymug slowly raised her hand.

“Of course it was you,” Blixby said.

The room howled.

The tallest lily sagged a little.

Blixby stepped down from the fountain rim and approached Primselia.

His voice softened, but carried.

“Lady Primselia has spent sixteen years making space for everyone else to dance while standing at the edge with a clipboard and a migraine. That is not dignity. That is martyrdom with stationery.”

Primselia’s eyes shone again.

Blixby offered her one sticky claw.

“So, my lady, chairwoman of perfection, tyrant of place cards, patron saint of clenched buttocks everywhere—will you please take one ridiculous turn around your own damn floor?”

The room went silent.

Primselia stared at his offered claw.

“You are covered in fountain sludge,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Your hat is stolen.”

“Sustainably relocated.”

“You nearly destroyed the Hollow.”

“There is still time to say ‘nearly’ with optimism.”

The tallest lily gave a warning squeal.

Primselia looked at it.

Then at the crowd.

Then at Queen Marigolda.

The Queen nodded.

Primselia exhaled.

“One turn,” she said.

Blixby grinned. “That’s how all scandals start.”

She took his claw.

The orchestra, wisely, did not wait for instructions this time. The drummer found a beat. The fiddlers followed. The harp slipped beneath them, warm and bright. Crispin the cicada opened his mouth.

Primselia pointed at him without looking.

“Do not.”

Crispin closed his mouth and played the written notes.

Blixby and Primselia stepped onto the dance floor.

At first, the dance was awkward.

Of course it was.

She was precision. He was chaos. She moved like punctuation. He moved like someone had thrown jewelry into a fan. Their steps argued. Their timing bickered. His anklet caught on her hem. Her claw nearly clipped his ear. He spun too early, she corrected too sharply, and for a few seconds it looked less like a dance and more like a formal dispute with music.

Then Primselia laughed.

It was small.

Unplanned.

A crack in the marble.

Blixby nearly missed a step.

“Was that a laugh?” he asked.

“No.”

“It had laugh architecture.”

“It was a respiratory error.”

“A beautiful respiratory error.”

“Do not ruin it.”

“Too late. I’m sentimental now.”

She rolled her eyes.

But she kept dancing.

The room began clapping in rhythm.

Blixby bowed. Primselia turned. He ducked beneath her arm. She swept around him. Their styles did not merge so much as negotiate a temporary ceasefire. But the result worked: crisp and wild, proper and rude, graceful and ridiculous.

The tallest trumpet lily quivered.

Blixby saw it.

Primselia saw it too.

“Almost,” she said.

“Almost what?”

“It needs one final release.”

“Another joke?”

“A bigger laugh.”

“From them?”

“From everyone.”

Blixby swallowed.

“No pressure.”

“Only explosive pollen pressure.”

“You are becoming funny under stress.”

“I hate that you’re proud.”

The lily screamed.

A seam of bright pink split up its throat.

Dame Honeymug shouted, “Now would be ideal!”

Blixby spun away from Primselia and sprang back onto the fountain rim. He raised both claws.

“Honored guests!”

The room turned.

“I had prepared a closing number tonight.”

Lady Primselia’s face went blank. “You what?”

“Nothing obscene.”

“Blixby.”

“Fine. Moderately obscene.”

“Blixby.”

“Artistically obscene.”

The lily pulsed.

“But,” he said quickly, “given the evening’s events, I shall instead perform something honest.”

A murmur spread.

Blixby looked out at them all.

His jeweled eyes caught every lantern, every face, every mess. There was Baron Thistlewick clutching his stolen napkins. Countess Amberwing and Gerald having what appeared to be their first meaningful conversation, mostly about whether Gerald enjoyed being called Gerald. Kevin and Rusk stood close together, pretending not to. Dame Honeymug watched with a proud, tipsy smile. Queen Marigolda stood serene and expectant. Lady Primselia stood below him, flushed, furious, alive.

Blixby took a breath.

Then he began the most dangerous act of his career.

He told the truth.

“I brought shimmer sap because I wanted tonight to go wrong.”

The crowd quieted.

“Not explode wrong,” he said. “That was bonus incompetence. I wanted it to crack. I wanted the perfect little ball to split open and spill something real onto the floor.”

The tallest lily’s scream softened to a hum.

“Because every year, I come here and watch everyone pretend. Pretend they like the music. Pretend they don’t resent their table assignment. Pretend they haven’t loved the wrong person, hated the right one, stolen napkins, faked allergies, written poems to moss, padded their thorax, forgotten Gerald—”

“Still Gerald,” Gerald said.

“—and it makes me itchy. Because I am very bad at pretending. Obviously.”

A few smiles.

Blixby wiped nectar from his brow.

“So I made a mess. Because messes are easy. Messes get attention. Messes make people look at me and say, ‘There goes Blixby, tiny bastard, glitter hazard, emotionally unsupervised fruit fly with legal fees.’”

Dame Honeymug murmured, “Accurate.”

“And that feels better than being ignored.”

He swallowed.

The crowd had gone very still.

“But tonight I learned something horrible.”

He looked at Lady Primselia.

“Some messes aren’t liberation. Some messes are just someone else cleaning up after you.”

Primselia’s expression softened.

Blixby shuddered. “Ugh. Growth. Disgusting. I feel like I swallowed a sermon.”

The crowd laughed gently.

The lily’s glow dimmed another shade.

“So, for the record, I am sorry.”

A shocked murmur.

Blixby grimaced. “Yes, yes, enjoy it. Rare collectible. Put it in a jar.”

Queen Marigolda smiled.

“I am sorry to the Queen, whose fountain is now legally soup. I am sorry to Kevin and Rusk, who told me no and were correct, which is humiliating for all of us. I am sorry to Dame Honeymug, who asked for artistry and not arson, and apparently those are different departments. And I am sorry to Lady Primselia Snapdragon, who deserved a dance before she deserved a disaster.”

Primselia looked down.

The tallest trumpet lily trembled.

Blixby spread his claws. “There. Honest. Mature. Absolutely revolting. If anyone tells the Lower Compost District I have become emotionally nuanced, I will deny it and bite a plum.”

A laugh broke from the crowd.

Then another.

Then more.

It rolled outward, warm and loose, not the sharp laughter of mockery but the full-bodied laughter of creatures who had been afraid all night and suddenly remembered they were alive.

The lilies began to laugh too.

Not with mouths, exactly.

With sound.

Great brassy bursts of floral laughter blasted from their throats, ridiculous and wet and thunderous. The smallest lily honked. The middle lily wheezed. The tallest lily released one enormous, glorious trumpet laugh that shook pollen from the canopy and rattled every spoon in the pavilion.

The pink glow drained from its stem.

The crack sealed.

The swelling eased.

A fountain of shimmer light shot harmlessly upward, burst against the foxglove roof, and rained down in soft glittering sparks.

The danger passed.

For half a heartbeat, everyone stared.

Then the pavilion erupted.

Cheers. Applause. Wingbeats. Foot stomps. Snail tapping. Bee buzzing. Moth sobbing. Beetle clacking. The sound rose into the moonlit canopy until even the fireflies flared bright again.

Blixby bowed.

Then slipped on nectar and fell backward into the fountain.

The crowd laughed even louder.

From inside the bowl, Blixby raised one claw. “Planned.”

Lady Primselia walked to the fountain and looked down at him.

Her face was unreadable.

“Sir Blixby.”

“Yes?”

“You are reckless, obscene, disobedient, sticky, and possibly the reason I now have to invent a new subsection of fountain law.”

“All fair.”

She extended a claw.

“You also saved the Hollow.”

Blixby took her claw.

She helped pull him up.

For one shining moment, it looked like peace.

Then the trumpet lilies, now sober but apparently changed forever, gave one final soft chorus:

“Nectar nethers...”

Lady Primselia closed her eyes.

Blixby whispered, “I didn’t teach them that.”

“I know,” she said.

“Do you believe me?”

“Unfortunately.”

Across the pavilion, Queen Marigolda lifted her cup.

“Let the record show,” she declared, “that the Eighty-Seventh Annual Bloom Ball has survived.”

The crowd cheered.

“Let the record also show,” she continued, “that tomorrow’s council meeting will be unbearable.”

The crowd groaned.

“But tonight,” said the Queen, eyes gleaming, “we dance.”

The orchestra struck up again.

This time, no one requested the Courteous Turn.

This time, there were no perfect circles, no rigid lines, no dance cards, no carefully managed pairings. Bees danced with moths. Beetles danced with butterflies. Snails danced very slowly with whoever was patient enough to call it romance. Kevin read Rusk one moss poem near the fountain, and Rusk cried with such quiet dignity that no one dared tease him until at least breakfast.

Lady Primselia danced.

Not once.

Not politely.

She danced until her hair loosened, until her claws stopped measuring space, until her clipboard hand forgot it had ever held anything but someone else’s fingers. Dame Honeymug joined her for a scandalous turn that caused three elders to whisper and two younger beetles to take notes.

Blixby watched from the fountain rim, wringing nectar out of his cape.

For the first time in years, the Bloom Ball felt like blooming.

Then Baron Thistlewick approached.

He cleared his throat.

Blixby looked down. “If this is about the napkin joke, I stand by it.”

“No.”

“If this is about your thorax—”

“That was Velvetthorpe.”

“Right. Yours is the napkin grief.”

Baron Thistlewick glanced around, then leaned closer. “There is something you should know.”

Blixby frowned. “That sounds like plot.”

“Before the shimmer sap incident, I saw someone near the ceremonial pollen urn.”

Blixby’s wings stilled.

“Someone besides me?”

“Yes.”

“That narrows the suspect list less than I’d like.”

“They were adding something to it.”

Blixby turned toward the far end of the pavilion.

On a pedestal beneath a veil of silver moss stood the ceremonial pollen urn, untouched since the Queen’s entrance. It was supposed to be opened at midnight for the Blessing of the Bloom, the oldest and most sacred moment of the ball.

Blixby had been expressly forbidden to go near it.

For once, he actually had not.

The urn glowed faintly.

Not gold.

Not pink shimmer.

Green.

Sickly, swampy, bubbling green.

Blixby’s stomach dropped.

“Baron,” he said slowly, “why did you wait to tell me this?”

Baron Thistlewick clutched his stolen napkins. “I was under a table experiencing personal growth.”

From the pedestal, the urn gave a small, ominous burp.

Lady Primselia turned at the sound.

Queen Marigolda lowered her cup.

The trumpet lilies went silent.

The midnight bell, grown from a hollow bluebell at the center of the pavilion, began to chime.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The Blessing of the Bloom was about to begin.

Blixby stared at the glowing urn.

Then at Primselia.

Then at the Queen.

“I would like everyone to remember,” he said, “that this one might not be my fault.”

The urn burped again.

This time, it giggled.

The Blessing Went Feral

The ceremonial pollen urn was not supposed to giggle.

It was supposed to sit beneath its silver moss veil like a sacred object: quiet, dignified, old enough to make everyone lower their voices and pretend they understood tradition. Once a year, at midnight, Queen Marigolda would lift the veil, stir the pollen with the ancestral fern wand, and cast a golden blessing over the gathered court. The pollen would glow, rise in a graceful spiral, kiss the foxglove canopy, and drift across every guest like warm spring light.

That was the official version.

The unofficial version was that everyone got mildly sneezy and sentimental, then made promises they forgot by breakfast.

But tonight, the urn was glowing green.

Not fresh-leaf green.

Not hopeful-sprout green.

Not charming little “look, nature is awake” green.

This was swamp-burp green. Compost-after-a-heatwave green. The sort of green that suggested something at the bottom of a pond had developed opinions and none of them were hygienic.

Then the urn giggled again.

It was a small sound. High. Wet. Personal.

Every creature in the Moonlit Foxglove Pavilion turned toward it.

Blixby Glimmergob stood frozen beside the Golden Nectar Fountain, still dripping, still sparkling, still wearing Lady Primselia Snapdragon’s emergency backup corsage as a hat because dignity had died in several installments that evening and no one had filed the paperwork.

“I would like to say,” he repeated, more loudly this time, “that I have not touched the urn.”

Lady Primselia looked at him.

Queen Marigolda looked at him.

Dame Honeymug looked at him.

Rusk and Kevin looked at him.

The trumpet lilies looked at him in spirit, which was irritating because they still had no eyes and too much attitude.

Blixby spread all six limbs. “Why are we doing the face? I recognize the face. That is the ‘Blixby has fingered the sacred object’ face.”

“You have a history,” Lady Primselia said.

“With many objects. Not that one.”

“You were forbidden to approach it.”

“Exactly. And for once, I obeyed.”

Baron Thistlewick coughed delicately from behind his stolen napkin bundle. “He is telling the truth.”

Blixby pointed at him. “Thank you, grief linen man.”

Baron Thistlewick straightened. “I saw someone else near the urn before the shimmer incident.”

A murmur snapped through the crowd.

Queen Marigolda raised one claw, and the pavilion quieted at once.

Even scandal knew when royalty wanted the floor.

“Who?” she asked.

Baron Thistlewick’s moustache trembled. He glanced toward the tables, toward the dance floor, toward the long purple shadows cast by the foxglove arches.

“I did not see their face,” he said.

Lady Primselia exhaled sharply. “Wonderful. Very helpful. Truly, Baron, your usefulness has bloomed like mildew.”

“I was under a table.”

“Yes, having personal growth with stolen napkins. We are all caught up.”

“I saw a cloak,” the Baron said. “Dark blue. A silver clasp. Tall. Thin. Moved like they were trying to be dramatic but had weak ankles.”

Several heads turned.

Slowly.

Toward Lord Velvetthorpe of the Upper Trellis.

Lord Velvetthorpe stood near the edge of the dance floor, one claw pressed to his padded thorax, his lint waistcoat damp with nectar, his expression arranged into outrage with the careful craftsmanship of a man who rehearsed gasps in mirrors.

He wore a dark blue cloak.

It had a silver clasp.

He was tall.

He was thin.

His ankles had long been the subject of private concern.

“How dare you?” Velvetthorpe said.

Blixby tilted his head. “That is what guilty people say when they forgot to prepare a second sentence.”

“I am a lord.”

“Yes. Tragic that crime reaches all classes.”

Velvetthorpe drew himself up so sharply his thorax padding shifted with a soft, shameful squeak.

The room heard it.

Everyone pretended not to.

Badly.

Lady Primselia narrowed her eyes. “Lord Velvetthorpe, were you near the ceremonial urn?”

“Certainly not.”

The green glow inside the urn pulsed.

Then it said, in a bubbling little voice, “Liar.”

The pavilion exploded into gasps.

Blixby’s eyes widened until they looked like two stained-glass moons. “Oh, I like this urn now.”

Queen Marigolda stepped closer to the pedestal. “Who speaks?”

The urn burbled.

The silver moss veil trembled.

A foul little puff of green pollen slipped from beneath it and formed a face in the air: bulbous nose, sagging cheeks, wicked grin, and tiny eyes full of swampy glee.

Dame Honeymug swore under her breath. “Sourmirth mold.”

Lady Primselia stiffened. “Impossible. Sourmirth has been banned from ceremonial use since the Cabbage Wedding Riots.”

“I remember those,” said one elderly moth from beneath a fern. “The bride punched a priest with a turnip.”

“He deserved it,” said another moth.

“He rhymed ‘eternity’ with ‘fertility.’”

“Unforgivable.”

Blixby leaned toward Dame Honeymug. “For those of us whose education was interrupted by arson accusations, what exactly is Sourmirth mold?”

“A parasitic truth fungus,” Dame Honeymug said. “Feeds on secrets, spits out mockery, turns sacred ceremonies into public humiliations.”

Blixby considered this. “So shimmer sap with a worse personality.”

“Shimmer sap reveals feelings. Sourmirth weaponizes them.”

The green face in the pollen puff grinned wider. “Secrets taste better when they scream.”

Kevin whimpered. Rusk moved half a step in front of him.

Queen Marigolda’s expression hardened. “If the urn opens at midnight?”

Dame Honeymug looked toward the bluebell clock, whose petals were slowly peeling open for the final chime.

“Then the Blessing of the Bloom carries Sourmirth through the entire Hollow. Every flower touched by it will repeat the worst thing it has ever overheard. Every private confession from tonight will root, sprout, and bloom into public gossip by dawn.”

Blixby made a small face. “That sounds socially inconvenient.”

“Blixby,” Lady Primselia said, “the roses border three districts. The vines carry sound. The mushrooms remember everything. If that mold spreads, Pollenwick Hollow won’t have a gossip problem. It will have a civil war with petals.”

The urn giggled.

“Petal war,” it whispered. “Petal war. Delicious.”

The bluebell clock chimed again.

Nine.

Ten.

Two chimes remained.

Queen Marigolda turned to Lord Velvetthorpe. “Did you contaminate the ceremonial urn?”

Velvetthorpe looked around at the court. He attempted indignation. Then innocence. Then moral injury. None of them fit his face properly.

“I was preserving the sanctity of the ball,” he said.

Lady Primselia’s voice went dangerously quiet. “By putting banned mold in the sacred pollen?”

“It was not supposed to spread.”

“That is what idiots say immediately before a quarantine,” Dame Honeymug snapped.

Velvetthorpe pointed at Blixby. “He was ruining everything. Everyone saw it. The vulgar music. The indecent dancing. The fountain contamination. The emotional spectacle. I simply wished to expose the rot beneath the revelry.”

Blixby blinked. “You tried to out-chaos me?”

“I tried to prove that without order, this court collapses into filth.”

“And your chosen method was filth mold.”

Velvetthorpe faltered. “Symbolically.”

Lady Primselia stared at him with the cold wonder of someone watching a man drown in a puddle he had dug himself.

“You absolute ornamental hemorrhoid.”

A scandalized silence followed.

Then Dame Honeymug whispered, “Beautiful.”

Blixby placed both claws over his heart. “I have never been prouder.”

Primselia did not look away from Velvetthorpe. “Do you have any idea what you nearly did?”

“I nearly restored standards.”

“You nearly turned the Blessing of the Bloom into a fungal gossip cannon.”

The urn puffed green sparks. “Gossip cannon. Gossip cannon.”

“Quiet, you damp little sin cabbage,” Blixby snapped.

The urn hissed.

The bluebell clock chimed eleven.

The urn’s lid rattled.

The silver moss veil began to smoke.

Dame Honeymug lunged toward the pedestal. “We need to seal it.”

The green pollen face stretched wide. “Too late.”

Vines around the pedestal tightened. The urn lifted half an inch, trembling with pressure from within.

Queen Marigolda raised the ancestral fern wand. Golden light flared along its curled tip.

“Stand back.”

Lady Primselia stepped with her. “Your Majesty, if you strike it, the urn may rupture.”

“If I do nothing, it opens.”

Blixby climbed onto the edge of the pedestal, slipped, caught himself, and glared at the urn. “What does it want?”

Dame Honeymug frowned. “What?”

“You said it feeds on secrets. It wants secrets. Big ones. Juicy ones. Nasty little under-the-moss secrets.”

The green face turned toward him. Its grin widened.

“Jester has secrets.”

Blixby’s skin prickled beneath his bead-like face. “Everyone has secrets.”

“Jester hides behind jokes. Tasty. Tasty.”

The room watched him.

Blixby wished, with a sudden and sincere passion, that he had been blamed for the urn after all. Being accused of crime was familiar. Comfortable, even. He knew how to wriggle through suspicion, how to make guilt charming, how to make outrage trip over its own shoes.

But being seen by a sentient fungus in front of a room full of damp aristocrats?

Deeply rude.

“No,” he said. “We are not doing emotional dentistry on me in public.”

The urn rattled harder.

Dame Honeymug’s face changed. “Blixby.”

“No.”

Lady Primselia looked at him. “What are you thinking?”

“Something noble and therefore disgusting.”

The bluebell clock drew in breath for its final chime.

Blixby turned to the crowd.

“The mold wants secrets. Fine. Feed it.”

Everyone recoiled.

Baron Thistlewick clutched his napkins to his chest. “Absolutely not.”

Blixby pointed at the urn. “If it opens, every secret gets out anyway. But if we give it enough now, maybe it gorges before the blessing fires.”

Dame Honeymug’s eyes narrowed. “Overload it.”

“Like a gossip aunt at a funeral buffet.”

Queen Marigolda considered him. “Could that work?”

“No idea.”

“Wonderful,” Lady Primselia said. “Another plan built from panic and damp string.”

“Those are my strongest materials.”

The clock began the twelfth chime.

A deep, resonant note rolled through the pavilion.

The urn lid lifted.

Green light poured out.

Blixby leapt onto the pedestal and shouted, “I am terrified that I am only lovable when I am entertaining!”

The entire pavilion froze.

The urn froze too.

The green pollen face whipped toward him, nostrils flaring.

“Oh,” it crooned. “Soft meat under sparkle.”

Blixby swallowed hard. The words had ripped out of him hotter than expected. He had meant to toss the mold something theatrical. A fake little confession. A joke shaped like vulnerability.

Instead, the truth had come out naked and yelling.

Dame Honeymug stared at him with heartbreaking tenderness.

Primselia’s claws relaxed at her sides.

Blixby hated it.

He hated it so much he kept going.

“I make messes because if people are furious, at least they’re looking. I act like I don’t care because caring feels like handing someone a knife and saying, ‘Aim for the soft bits.’ I have three unpaid apology letters hidden under my mattress. One is to a snail. I pretend I forgot his name. I didn’t.”

The urn sucked in the confession greedily. Green light pulsed brighter, but the lid stopped rising.

Dame Honeymug stepped forward.

“I water down the ceremonial nectar every year because half this court drinks like traumatized raccoons and I am tired of dragging titled idiots out of shrubbery.”

The urn moaned with pleasure.

Lady Primselia turned to her. “You water down the nectar?”

“You’re welcome.”

Kevin raised one trembling hand. “My moss poems are not all about moss.”

Rusk blinked. “What are they about?”

Kevin looked at him.

Rusk’s wings went still.

“Oh,” Rusk said.

The urn slurped.

Baron Thistlewick stumbled forward, eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t steal napkins because they are soft. I steal them because my house is empty and setting places for one makes me feel like a chair has been left out of a song.”

The pavilion softened around him.

Mopsy and Mopsy-Other-One exchanged a look, then both went to stand beside the Baron.

Mopsy gently took half his napkins.

“We host brunch on Thursdays,” she said.

Mopsy-Other-One nodded. “The food is mediocre, but the gossip has structure.”

Baron Thistlewick’s moustache trembled so hard it nearly resigned.

The urn fed and fed. The green glow intensified, but its laughter grew strained, overfull.

Countess Amberwing stepped forward. “I call Gerald decorative because I’m frightened that if I admit he is kind, I will have to become kind enough to deserve him.”

Gerald took her claw. “I forgot we were engaged too.”

She stared. “What?”

“I thought we were just committing very hard to a bit.”

Blixby pointed at them. “That is either tragic or the healthiest relationship here.”

The urn made a choking giggle.

The confessions came faster.

A beetle widow admitted she missed her third husband but not his banjo.

A butterfly scholar admitted half of etiquette was invented to avoid talking to boring cousins.

A moth priest confessed he had never believed the sacred urn liked him.

The urn hissed, “Correct.”

“Rude,” said the priest.

Mayor Bumblethorpe admitted his pollen allergy was fake, his brunch fear was real, and he had once cried during a cheese course because the rind looked disappointed in him.

His ex-wife sighed. “That part I knew.”

“You did?”

“You always cried at judgmental dairy.”

All around the pavilion, shame loosened. Secrets became words. Words became laughter, tears, groans, shocked silences, and occasionally someone shouting, “Honestly, I suspected that.”

The urn swelled.

The green pollen face grew fat and twitchy.

“Too much,” it burbled.

Dame Honeymug grinned. “Keep going.”

Lady Primselia stepped toward the pedestal.

Blixby looked down at her. “You don’t have to.”

“Yes,” she said, “I do.”

She faced the court.

Every eye turned to her.

The woman who had controlled the Bloom Ball for sixteen years. The keeper of charts. The terror of corsages. The snapdragon with sharpened manners and a spine made from rules.

She lifted her chin.

“I did not hate Blixby because he ruined order,” she said.

The room stilled.

Blixby’s wings gave a small involuntary flick.

Primselia continued, each word measured but no longer armored. “I hated him because he could survive disorder. Because when he was laughed at, he turned it into applause. When he was scolded, he turned it into theater. When everyone looked at him, he seemed to enjoy it. I spent years making myself useful because I was afraid that if I stopped organizing, no one would invite me anywhere at all.”

Dame Honeymug pressed a hand to her mouth.

Queen Marigolda’s gaze lowered, not in shame exactly, but recognition.

Blixby slid down from the pedestal and stood before Primselia.

For once, he did not interrupt.

“And I hated,” Primselia said, voice catching, “that the first time I danced at my own ball in sixteen years, it was because a criminally glossy insect with the impulse control of a fart in a teacup asked me to.”

A beat.

Blixby’s mouth twitched.

The court burst into laughter.

Not at her.

With her.

Primselia laughed too, one hand pressed to her chest as if the sound had surprised its way out of a locked room.

The urn gurgled violently.

Its green face bulged.

“Too full,” it whined. “Too soft. Too honest. Needs cruelty. Needs shame. Give shame.”

Velvetthorpe backed toward the exit.

Blixby saw him.

“Where are you off to, weak-ankled fungus daddy?”

Velvetthorpe froze.

Lady Primselia turned.

Queen Marigolda’s voice cut across the pavilion. “Lord Velvetthorpe.”

He swallowed. “Your Majesty, surely my intentions—”

“Were vile,” said the Queen.

“Misguided,” he corrected.

“Vile,” said Rusk.

“Moistly vile,” Kevin added, then looked startled by his own courage.

Dame Honeymug raised her cup. “Put that in your chapbook.”

The urn, still overfed and trembling, suddenly latched its green gaze onto Velvetthorpe.

“Culprit secret,” it crooned. “Best secret. Rotten middle. Sweet rot.”

Velvetthorpe shook his head. “No.”

The urn’s smoke curled toward him like a searching tongue.

“No,” he said again, stepping back.

Blixby hopped down beside Primselia. “Oh, this should be educational.”

“It may also be admissible,” she said.

“You’re flirting with bureaucracy again.”

“It calms me.”

The green smoke wrapped around Velvetthorpe’s silver cloak clasp. He tried to yank it away, but the mold had found him. His mouth snapped open.

“I contaminated the urn because Queen Marigolda refused my petition to abolish the jester’s office!” he blurted.

Gasps.

Blixby blinked. “You tried to destroy comedy?”

“Not all comedy,” Velvetthorpe said, horrified as words kept spilling from him. “Just yours.”

“That is somehow more personal.”

Velvetthorpe clutched his throat. “I wanted the court to see that laughter makes us weak.”

The urn fed eagerly.

“I wanted Primselia blamed for failing to control the ball.”

Lady Primselia went very still.

Velvetthorpe’s eyes widened in panic. “I wanted her position.”

The court erupted.

“Her position?” Dame Honeymug snapped. “You couldn’t organize a sneeze in pepper season.”

“I have administrative gifts,” Velvetthorpe protested.

“Your table cards last winter seated three widows with the same ex-husband.”

“Efficient!”

Primselia’s voice was ice. “You planned to humiliate the entire Hollow so you could chair a committee?”

Velvetthorpe’s face collapsed. The mold dragged the final truth out of him.

“I planned to humiliate you because you rejected my courtship proposal in the winter.”

Silence.

Then Dame Honeymug set down her cup with great care.

“Oh,” she said. “So he’s not just a villain. He’s a tiny-dicked grievance in formalwear.”

A shocked cackle broke from the younger pollinators.

Lady Primselia’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“You tried to poison a sacred ceremony because I would not marry you?”

Velvetthorpe lifted one claw. “Courtship is a strong word.”

“You sent me a sonnet comparing my discipline to a locked pantry.”

“It was sensual.”

“It was pantry-based.”

Blixby winced. “Never go full pantry.”

The urn convulsed, packed too full of confession, shame, laughter, and Velvetthorpe’s moldy little revenge fantasy. The green pollen face swelled until it looked ready to pop.

Dame Honeymug shouted, “Now! Seal it before it vents!”

Queen Marigolda raised the fern wand.

Golden light flared.

Primselia lunged for the silver moss veil.

Blixby sprang onto the pedestal.

“What are you doing?” Primselia shouted.

“Something stupid but themed!”

He snatched the stolen corsage-hat from his head.

“Not my corsage!”

“Our corsage!”

He shoved it directly into the mouth of the urn.

The urn made a muffled shriek.

Green smoke blasted sideways.

Blixby grabbed the lid with all six limbs and slammed it down.

Queen Marigolda struck the urn with the fern wand.

Primselia whipped the silver moss veil around it, knotting with such ferocity that several spiders in the crowd applauded her technique.

Dame Honeymug hurled her cup of watered-down nectar over the seal.

The trumpet lilies, perhaps sensing a finale, blasted one triumphant chord.

The urn jumped.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then it released a tiny, resentful fart of green smoke and went still.

No one breathed.

Blixby remained sprawled across the lid, eyes squeezed shut, limbs clamped around the urn like a very anxious decorative brooch.

“Am I dead?” he asked.

Lady Primselia stared at him. “No.”

“Am I heroic?”

“Do not push your luck.”

“Am I sticky?”

“Catastrophically.”

He opened one eye. “Good. Continuity matters.”

The pavilion erupted again, but this time the cheers were wilder, louder, looser than before. Not polite applause. Not courtly appreciation. Real celebration. The kind that came after danger passed, villains got exposed, and someone finally admitted the nectar had always been watered down.

Queen Marigolda stepped before Lord Velvetthorpe.

He had wilted visibly. Even his padding seemed ashamed.

“Lord Velvetthorpe of the Upper Trellis,” she said, “you introduced banned Sourmirth mold into a sacred ceremonial vessel, endangered the Hollow, attempted to frame Lady Primselia, and petitioned against the office of court jester because your pantry sonnet failed.”

Blixby raised one claw from atop the urn. “The pantry sonnet should be a separate charge.”

“Agreed,” said Queen Marigolda.

Velvetthorpe paled.

“Your title shall remain,” the Queen said, “because bureaucracy is a weed that cannot be killed in one evening. However, your committee privileges are revoked. Your ceremonial seating rank is suspended. You will fund the restoration of the fountain, the cleansing of the urn, and no fewer than six snail ramps.”

The snails erupted in slow, delayed triumph.

“Furthermore,” said the Queen, “you will attend Dame Honeymug’s remedial ethics brunch every Thursday until she decides you are tolerable.”

Dame Honeymug smiled like a butcher sharpening honey.

Velvetthorpe whispered, “How long will that take?”

“I admire your optimism,” she said.

Two bee guards escorted him away. Rusk did not go because Rusk was busy standing near Kevin in a manner that could technically be explained by guard positioning but spiritually could not.

As Velvetthorpe passed Blixby, the Jester leaned down from the pedestal.

“For future reference,” Blixby said, “if your romantic rejection plan involves fungus, treason, and public mold confession, consider poetry instead.”

Velvetthorpe glared.

“Actually,” Blixby added, “not poetry. We’ve heard about the pantry.”

Kevin called after him, trembling but brave. “And moss is taken.”

The crowd cheered Kevin like he had slain a dragon.

Rusk looked as though he might faint with pride.

Once the villain had been removed, the pavilion settled into the strange quiet that follows chaos when everyone realizes they still have bodies, names, and consequences.

The Golden Nectar Fountain sputtered in the center of the room, half-functional and morally changed. The trumpet lilies drooped, exhausted but smug. The dance floor was sticky. The tables were wrecked. The ceremonial urn sat sealed beneath moss, corsage, nectar, and royal spellwork, looking less like an ancient relic and more like a soup pot that had lost an argument.

Lady Primselia surveyed the damage.

Her expression was unreadable.

Blixby slid down from the pedestal and landed beside her with a wet little squelch.

“On a scale from one to exile,” he said, “where are we?”

Primselia looked at him.

Her hair had come loose from its formal twists. Nectar shone on her cheek. One sleeve was torn. Her claws were sticky. Her eyes were bright.

“You saved the urn,” she said.

“With your corsage.”

“Yes.”

“A noble death.”

“It was my favorite corsage.”

“Then it died doing what it loved.”

“Being stolen?”

“Being central to drama.”

She stared at him for three full seconds.

Then laughed.

Not a respiratory error this time.

A real laugh.

The kind that made Dame Honeymug glance over and smile into her drink. The kind that made Queen Marigolda’s shoulders relax. The kind that made Blixby feel as though some small, frightened creature inside him had poked its head out, seen sunlight, and decided not to immediately bite anyone.

“You are still in trouble,” Primselia said.

“Comforting. Familiar.”

“But not for the urn.”

“Excellent. Just the fountain, lilies, dance riot, emotional public nudity, and minor fungal escalation?”

“Major fungal escalation.”

“Fair.”

Queen Marigolda approached them. The court quieted again, though this time less from fear and more from curiosity. Everyone had survived too much to pretend the evening could return to normal.

“The Blessing of the Bloom cannot proceed in its traditional form,” the Queen said.

A disappointed murmur moved through the older guests.

Blixby raised one claw. “Given the state of the urn, I recommend we avoid tradition unless we want the ancestors to call us slurs in fungus.”

Primselia elbowed him.

“Ow.”

Queen Marigolda’s mouth twitched. “For once, Sir Blixby is correct.”

Blixby looked around. “Everyone remember this moment. I want it embroidered.”

“However,” the Queen continued, “the blessing was never truly about the urn. The urn is a vessel. The pollen is a symbol. The ceremony is a promise.”

The crowd listened.

The Queen stepped into the center of the sticky dance floor.

“A promise that we bloom together. Not perfectly. Not politely. Not without mess. But together.”

Lady Primselia looked down.

Dame Honeymug touched her shoulder.

Queen Marigolda lifted the fern wand. Its golden tip glowed again, softer now.

“Tonight, we have been vulgar.”

Blixby nodded solemnly.

“We have been foolish.”

Several guests nodded.

“We have been vain, frightened, petty, loud, sticky, and in at least three cases aggressively underdressed.”

Mopsy and Mopsy-Other-One both looked at the erotic harpist, who had somehow appeared near the back despite not being invited.

“But we have also been honest,” the Queen said. “And perhaps that is a stronger blessing than perfection.”

She turned to Lady Primselia.

“Chairwoman Snapdragon, will you assist me?”

Primselia blinked. “Your Majesty?”

“You built this ball for sixteen years. It should be your hand that helps bless what comes next.”

Primselia stood motionless.

For one painful second, she looked as if she might retreat behind some emergency wall of procedure. Then Dame Honeymug gave her the smallest shove.

“Go on,” she whispered. “Before I say something sentimental and ruin my digestion.”

Primselia stepped forward.

The Queen handed her the fern wand.

Gasps rippled through the room. Not scandalized gasps this time. Reverent ones.

Primselia held the wand like it weighed more than any clipboard ever had.

Queen Marigolda turned to Blixby. “Sir Blixby.”

He perked up. “Yes, Your Radiant Consequence?”

“You too.”

Primselia looked at the Queen. “Your Majesty.”

Blixby looked behind himself. “Me too?”

“The Hollow was nearly harmed by mischief without care,” said the Queen. “It was saved by mischief with courage. You will both participate.”

Blixby approached slowly, as if expecting someone to spring out with a net.

Primselia eyed him. “Do not lick the royal wand.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Your tongue twitched.”

“It admires history.”

“Control it.”

Together, Primselia and Blixby stood at the center of the ruined Bloom Ball, each holding one end of the fern wand. The Queen placed her claws over theirs.

“Everyone,” Queen Marigolda said, “bring what remains.”

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Dame Honeymug stepped forward with a half-crushed pollen puff.

Kevin brought his moss poetry ledger.

Rusk brought one guard’s ribbon.

Baron Thistlewick brought a stolen napkin, folded with great care.

Countess Amberwing brought one heirloom glove.

Gerald brought the other, because apparently he had been holding it all night without knowing why.

The moth priest brought the sacred urn’s spare lid, which raised several questions no one wanted answered before breakfast.

The butterflies brought mirror shards.

The beetles brought shell polish.

The snails brought one ramp blueprint.

Dame Honeymug brought a full pitcher of watered-down nectar and dared anyone to comment.

One by one, the guests placed their offerings in the center of the floor. Not sacred objects, not perfect symbols, but remnants. Little proofs that the evening had happened and no one had escaped unchanged.

Blixby looked at the pile.

Then he removed one bell from his anklet.

Primselia raised an eyebrow.

“What?” he said. “I contain multitudes and at least one spare bell.”

He placed it beside the napkin.

Primselia hesitated.

Then, from her torn sleeve, she removed the last surviving petal from the ruined corsage.

She laid it gently beside Blixby’s bell.

The fern wand glowed.

Not like the old blessing. Not a clean spiral of ceremonial pollen rising from an untouched urn.

This glow was uneven. Speckled. Gold shot through with pink shimmer, dew silver, moss green, nectar amber, shell shine, lint, pollen, poetry, and one faintly questionable trumpet-lily note.

It rose from the pile in a laughing cloud.

Then it burst softly over the room.

Warmth fell across Pollenwick Hollow.

No one sneezed.

No one confessed anything against their will.

No fungus giggled.

Instead, every creature felt, for one brief moment, the same impossible sensation: that they were ridiculous, flawed, overcomplicated, occasionally vile, often tender, and still somehow invited.

The blessing settled into wings, shells, petals, fur, antennae, claws, and hearts.

The trumpet lilies gave a soft, respectful chord.

Then the smallest one ruined it by whispering, “Nectar nethers.”

Lady Primselia pointed at it. “One more word and I replant you near the compost privy.”

The lily shut up.

Blixby smiled at her. “You handled that beautifully.”

“I am expanding my leadership style.”

“Into threats against musical flowers?”

“Growth is not always graceful.”

“Disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Deeply.”

The Bloom Ball resumed, though no one was foolish enough to call it formal anymore.

The damaged fountain was converted into a splash bowl, which the younger bees immediately declared better than the original. The orchestra played whatever the room could survive. Crispin the cicada was allowed one emotional solo, but only after signing a tempo agreement. The erotic harpist was given a tasteful shawl and told to stand near no open flames. The snails’ ramp petition received unanimous support, partly because it was just and partly because everyone had learned not to underestimate quiet creatures with paperwork.

Lady Primselia did not return to the edge of the room.

She danced with Dame Honeymug. She danced with the Queen. She danced with Baron Thistlewick, who wept discreetly into one of his own stolen napkins. She danced, after some negotiation, with Blixby again.

“No Improper Wiggle,” she warned.

“A small Improper Wiggle?”

“A restrained wiggle.”

“That is just a polite tremor.”

“Then tremor.”

He tremored.

It was not his best work, but it was respectful enough to pass.

Near the fountain, Kevin read Rusk a poem called Lichen Where the Light Cannot Reach. Rusk listened with both hands clasped behind his back and tears running down his face like dignified rain.

“Is it too much?” Kevin asked.

Rusk shook his head. “It is exactly too much.”

“Good?”

“Very good.”

They did not kiss, because this was still technically a royal event, but their elbows touched with the force of three novels.

Dame Honeymug saw and sighed. “Finally.”

Blixby appeared beside her, chewing candied clover. “Were we all waiting for that?”

“Since winter.”

“I thought Rusk was just emotionally constipated.”

“He guards fountains, dear. That is the profession of a man afraid of flow.”

Blixby stared at her. “That was filthy and poetic.”

“I contain multitudes and a flask.”

Across the pavilion, Queen Marigolda watched her court dance in the wreckage of its own perfection. She looked tired, amused, and perhaps younger than she had at the beginning of the evening.

At last, just before dawn silvered the edges of the foxglove petals, she called the ball to a close.

No one wanted to leave.

That alone made it historic.

“My friends,” the Queen said, “the Eighty-Seventh Annual Bloom Ball is concluded.”

Cheers rose.

“The official record will state that the evening included music, dancing, a revised blessing, and minor procedural irregularities.”

Lady Primselia closed her eyes. “Minor?”

“History requires mercy,” the Queen said.

Blixby raised a claw. “Will the record mention the fungus?”

“The fungus will be described as an unauthorized guest.”

Dame Honeymug nodded. “Elegant.”

“The fountain?” asked Kevin.

“Under review.”

“The lilies?” asked Mopsy.

“Probation.”

The trumpet lilies gave a tiny offended honk.

“And Sir Blixby Glimmergob,” Queen Marigolda said.

Blixby straightened. “Ah. Here comes the exile.”

“You are hereby assigned to assist Lady Primselia Snapdragon in planning next year’s Bloom Ball.”

The entire pavilion gasped.

Blixby and Primselia turned to each other in identical horror.

“Your Majesty,” Primselia said, “that may constitute cruel and unusual governance.”

“Agreed,” Blixby said. “For both of us. I have rights. Few, but cherished.”

Queen Marigolda smiled. “The next Bloom Ball will require both structure and life. Control and chaos. Tradition and release. Lady Primselia knows how to build the room. Sir Blixby knows how to crack the windows before everyone suffocates.”

“I also know three songs banned in compost districts,” Blixby offered.

“You will submit all lyrics for review,” Primselia snapped.

“There she is.”

“And you will not bring contraband.”

“Define bring.”

“Blixby.”

“Fine.”

The Queen lifted her cup one final time. “To next spring.”

The court raised whatever they had left: cups, spoons, napkins, poetry ledgers, broken corsage stems, and in one case a decorative fern that Lord Velvetthorpe had abandoned during his arrest.

“To next spring!” they cried.

The sun finally crept over the garden wall.

Morning light spilled into Pollenwick Hollow, touching the wrecked tables, the sticky floor, the sealed urn, the drooping lilies, the exhausted guests, and the tiny jewel-eyed jester standing beside the snapdragon who had finally danced.

Blixby looked up at Lady Primselia.

“So,” he said, “planning committee partners.”

“Do not make it sound intimate.”

“Administrative intimacy is still intimacy.”

“I will bury you in subcommittee minutes.”

“I will annotate them with limericks.”

“I will use black ink.”

“I will use glitter.”

“I will lock the glitter cabinet.”

“I have sources.”

Primselia sighed. But there was a smile hiding in it, sharp and reluctant and real.

“You are going to be unbearable,” she said.

Blixby’s eyes shimmered in the sunrise, rainbow-bright and full of terrible promise.

“My lady,” he said, bowing low enough that his bells jingled against the sticky floor, “I intend to be historic.”

Behind them, the smallest trumpet lily waited until Lady Primselia was just far enough away.

Then it whispered, very softly, very proudly, “Moist little circus.”

Blixby looked over his shoulder.

He winked.

And somewhere deep beneath the moss, Pollenwick Hollow began preparing its paperwork.

 

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Bring the glorious garden scandal of The Jewel-Eyed Jester of Pollenwick Hollow into your own home with artwork that captures Blixby’s jewel-bright eyes, ridiculous charm, and felony-grade sparkle in full chaotic bloom. This mischievous little nectar goblin is available as a polished framed print, luminous metal print, dramatic tapestry, and wonderfully unhinged puzzle for anyone who enjoys assembling tiny pieces of absolute nonsense. For a softer splash of Pollenwick mischief, you can also find him on a throw pillow, shower curtain, or greeting card—perfect for gifting someone who deserves a little sparkle, sass, and suspiciously damp garden drama.