Kat spun around and glared at her mother. Her fiery red hair blew wildly in the gathering wind. "Mother, what's going on? This doesn't feel like a normal earthquake... I can sense an energy... I can't describe it."
Catra calmly walked to the edge of the large wraparound porch and leaned on the railing, Dan's cutting still clenched in her fist. She stood about fifty feet away from her children, one of whom was a rapidly dying sunflower plant. His stalk blew dangerously in the wind. He had no idea who or what he really was, at the moment. Nor of what he would become. But he was safe; Catra was sure of that. It was Kat who was in real danger here, despite all appearances to the contrary.
Catra's heavy, terse reply filled Kat with dread. "Kat, you have failed your test."
Kat's father, Stephen, calmly opened the door to the house and joined his wife on the porch. Taking his pipe into one hand, he only shook his head back and forth slowly. He spoke to Catra, eyes still locked on their daughter. "It's time, then." Catra only nodded.
Where Dan's seed-tear had hit the dusty ground a chasm was rapidly spreading. Silvery mist poured out from a ten foot long crevice, compounding and gathering into itself. It piled and writhed until it had taken the vague shape of an eight foot tall man. The winds died down. The shaking of the earth stopped. The earth sealed itself. An eerie calm took hold of the area, as though time itself had been stopped.
All was silence. The Silvery Man opened his blood red eyes. Kat went through the motions of a scream, but could only choke on her fear. The Silvery Man then spoke in what could only be described as a booming whisper. The sound froze Kat's blood. Her parents knelt on the porch, their faces hidden in a genuflection of respect for this, one of the Powers beyond. The Judge of Evil. Their daughter was lost to them.
"THE BEING KNOWN AS KAT HAS BEEN TRIED AND FOUND EVIL. SHE SHALL BE JUDGED THREEFOLD FOR THE CRIME SHE HAS PERPETUATED AGAINST THE BEING KNOWN AS DAN. INDEED, FOR THE CRIME PERPETUATED AGAINST LIFE AND THE COSMOS ITSELF."
Kat railed against the being in an angry tirade, a torrent of words spilled from her mouth, but their sound was lost in its presence. Kat flailed her arms. Angered motions punctuated the air to no effect. The affront seemingly held no offense to the Power.
It merely continued. "THE BEING KNOWN AS KAT SHALL BE STRIPPED OF HER POWERS. SHE SHALL BE STRIPPED OF HER HUMAN FORM. SHE SHALL BE STRIPPED OF HER VERY SOUL, SET TO WANDER IN LIMBO UNTIL THE APPOINTED TIME."
And with its sentence read, the Power of Judgment of Evil dissipated back into the ether. Time and the cosmos resumed, picking up where they had left off. Kat's fury poured out in full force.
Catra and Stephen rose, silent and understanding observers, unwilling to intervene. Catra opened her fist, taking her husband's hand. She dropped Dan's cutting to the ground. It was no longer needed. As soon as it hit the dirt, it crumbled to ash, all power gone out of it.
"If I am going to go I will at least take this damnable plant with me! The cause of a year of torment and troubles, and the final pain of my failure! Let this freak of nature burn to the ground until wind scatters the ashes!" Laughing maniacally, eyes wide, Kat raised her fist in a destructive stance to summon a fireball. She went pale when she realized she couldn't perform the magic. Any magic, ever again. Kat only whimpered.
The seven foot tall sunflower began to shimmer. Life turned its browning leaves a healthy shade of green. It's grey seeds took on a brown hue, and the yellow petal surrounding the face perked up, a bright yellow. Dan's memories were returning, the haze was lifting from his mind. Two eyes and a mouth opened up among the seeds. A nose poked out from the middle. The contours of a face reasserted themselves, and Dan took the first breath he had taken in over a year. His eyes blinked, and coming out of his daze, he spoke a single word.
"Sister..."
Kat's clothes evaporated in the waning afternoon sun. She stood straight up in the yard, unable to move her legs, as her skin took on a sickly shade of green.
Dan's leaves pushed themselves out into a pair of human hands. His stalk thickened as his organs re-formed in his chest. Air filled his lungs; he could feel his roots receding into his feet, reshaping themselves from out of the earth. His stems bulked up into a pair of semi-human arms.
At the same time, Kat's legs became stuck together. All holes beneath her waist sealed themselves, as her feet began to flake apart and split into a fine root system. Her butt and hips flattened out into a uniform tube, perfect for transporting water to the rest of her rapidly forming plant vascular system. Her arms turned green, and her breasts receded into her thinning stalk. She grasped at them with her hands, unable to stop the changes. She stammered and looked around in a panic, unable to twist her body. In a bit of cosmic justice, Kat's mouth sealed itself shut forever as her lips melted into her face.
Dan's legs split, leaving him naked. He slumped to the ground on newly human knees. His parents ran over to him, draping him with a robe as his head and neck thickened to match his now human torso. His petals fell out, one by one. His skin turned back to a pale tan, and his black hair re-sprouted. He looked up at his parents, confused and scared by what was going on. All three turned to watch the final stages of Kat's transformation.
Kat reached toward Dan with rapidly thinning hands, her eyes full of hatred. Her arms diminished to stems, as the changes crept up her neck. It became nothing more than the upper portion of a plant stalk. Her skull flattened and her ears disappeared. Kat's red hair blew away as yellow petals poked out from under her green skin, unfurling in layers to frame her newly brown face. It bore a striking resemblance to Dan's as he had voiced his protests that day, one year ago. Unable to move and stripped of her human body, Kat had turned completely into a sunflower, with only a face, a pair of eyes, remaining.
Dan and his parents stood by, watching all of this silently. Kat began to lose her human height, until she was no more than 12 inches tall. A pair of tiny eyes stared up at her former family, blinking in the sunlight.
Catra and Stephen glanced nervously at each other, for this was the final day of Dan's trial as well.