Just Like Dust, We Settle
The garden behind Stuart house was a little known haven for the students that took the time to find it. It was well-hidden, kept out of sight by the trees that surrounded the building on either side and the wrought-iron fence that encased those around back. Small, well-cared for, it was the perfect hide out for anyone who wanted to get away from the other students for a little while.
Logan, of course, always wanted to get away.
It was a surprise, still, when he found the garden. Initially thinking he’d just hide in the trees, he paused at the sight of it, looking over the area in front of himself and smiling slightly. It was lovely – white and red roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, a few other flowers that Logan couldn’t identify off the top of his head, all well-cared for and clearly freshly weeded.
Glancing around again, he moved to settle on the bench near the edge of the flowers, tilting his head and humming softly. Someone was caring for this – who it was, he wasn’t sure. Whoever they were, they had a good hand for flowers. Setting his sketchbook down on his lap, he flipped open to a blank page, starting to sketch the roses lazily.
They weren’t the usual, of course; Logan didn’t ever draw anything precisely as he saw it. He drew them as he knew he would see them if it weren’t for the medication his father pumped into him on a daily basis. It was too easy for them to smother that part of his mind with pills, with liquor, with anything they possibly could. Logan hated it, felt like it was smothering the very essence of him.
Still, he took the medications. And he let what his mind wished him to see come out on paper when he could. The roses were charred on the edges, blurred and smoldering; the grass around it was singed down to the dirt, leaving the ground visible under it. Just on the edges, there were bits of flame and the pointed ends of what couldn’t be identifiable, but that Logan knew as claws. The claws that would rip those roses to shreds soon, if he didn’t pause them in time, if he didn’t find a method.
He faltered as the outline came to shape, looking up at the bush and biting his lip before getting to his feet tentatively. Stepping toward the bush, he reached a shaky hand out, intending to touch the flowers.
Just then, a voice sounded from behind him. “Looking for something in the roses, Knave?”
Two voices, as a matter of fact. Not simply one. Turning on his heel, Logan made his face blank, staring at the twins in front of him. How they turned up, sometimes, he had not a clue in the world. But they always appeared to be there somehow. Shaking his head, he pursed his lips, attempting to look unenthused. “Nothing, Tweedles. Can I help you?”
“Of course not,” Jeremy began.
“And so we came upon you.”
“What were you drawing, Knave?”
If there was one thing about Jeremy and Adrian Humphrey that always drove Logan insane, it was their endless penchant for finishing one another’s sentences. He hated it, sheerly because it made it more difficult to tell them apart, and he prided himself on his ability to do precisely that.
“I was drawing the flowers, Tweedles. May I go now?”
“As you wish,” Adrian said, nodding before the two gave twin Cheshire grins.
“Don’t forget to finish that later, though.”
“For the gallery perhaps.”
“The gallery always needs new work, and yours-“
“Is easily the best we’ve seen so far.”
“Take a look into it, Knave.”
“And come around the garden later.”
“We’ll have tea.”
Perhaps the garden tender was the Tweedles then, Logan decided, walking away without responding. Somehow, though, he doubted it. He just wondered who, precisely, it was.
