Flora, by aaron

This one's gonna be more action-y than my previous stuff. This will probably be my longest one so far, I could easily see this going at least 8-10 chapters with the plot I've written.

Flora

by aaron

Prologue

Excerpts from the diary of Andrew Salz (1898-1960)

March 27, 1935

"...It has been nearly a month since my arrival in the Amazon Basin, and initial contact with the tribe has gone well. Their language appears to a dialect of Arawakan which I am thankfully familiar with..."

April 18, 1935

"...It has been some time since my last entry, but much has happened in the last two weeks. I will start at the beginning. Some ten days ago, I came across a young mother and her child, no more than a year old. Though I am no medical doctor, I knew the mother would soon be dead: her chest was pierced by a single arrow, and the shaking of her body could mean only one thing: the arrowhead was poisoned, likely with curare. Her garments marked her as an outsider, and I knew the life of her child, and my own, were forfeit were I to bring her to the village. Through her suffering, she saw me and called to me. With her last breath, she pressed the child into my arms and uttered the following in her native tongue:

'Protect her'

There was little I could do, so I returned to my camp, child in arms. I have since decided to leave South America prematurely. If I am to honor her wish, I feel I must return home. Rebecca will be overjoyed to have a child; through all my efforts to comfort her, I know our inability to concieve has been the source of much grief for her..."

May 10, 1935

"...Since my return to the comforts of our home, I have been able to give more thought to something that has puzzled me to no end; the child's necklace. It is quite a curious affair. The necklace is adorned with a single piece of white stone. At first, one might be persuaded to believe it was an arrowhead, save for the tip. The point has been ground into a crescent moon shape. While this gives the piece a rather sinister quality, I am sure it was not used as a weapon. My efforts to research it have been fruitless; the design is like nothing I have seen in my studies. My colleagues at Columbia University have fared no better. I have attempted to scrape off a sample from the piece, in an attempt to identify the type of stone used, but it is too hard for my instruments to even scratch... Even stranger is our child's attachment to it: Each time I have taken it out of her sight to study it, she has cried incessantly. While Rebecca has her misgivings about the matter, I have decided our child will keep the necklace; it is the only link to her past. On a less serious note, Rebecca and I have decided on a name: Olivia..."

Chapter 1

Present Day

The warm, humid air clung to her like a funeral shroud. The sounds of forest life were all around her, alien, but somehow familiar. And then there were the drums. Sometimes as quiet as the patter of raindrops on leaves, sometimes as deafe