orange roses | crowley & claudia
@anthony-j-crowley
It was flowers that she wanted this particular night.
She wanted the fragrance of them, filling up her rooms back at the house to drive out the stench of deat;, to watch them wither and drop their petals as they began to rot in their cores. Yes, flowers she wanted, and with dusk throwing its blanket over the land earlier and earlier as winter approached, it wasn’t that hard of a task to find one.
She had always been somewhat of an early riser. Not at first, and certainly not as early as Lestat, but over the decades she grew to wake up a fraction earlier each and every night. And unlike Louis, she left early on her hunt. Rather than wait for the thirst to build, Claudia preferred to satisfy it on the spot.
And thus she was the flushed little angel, with rose on her cheeks and golden curls framing her ethereal face. At this hour, many a head turned, worried about the little girl wandering the streets so late without a guide, but she ignored them all in favour of following the course she had set out.
The bell happily chimed away as she slipped inside the warmth of the flower shop. She took a moment to inhale the wave of scents washing over her, so poignant all here together to form one somewhat overwhelming new fragrance.
After a moment she strode forward to the counter with a natural kind of poise. Yet Claudia taking the hesitant steps of a shy child not quite sure what to do; a child ill at ease, sent on a task of sorts that it does not want to accomplish. Despite this, her eyes were almost sparkling, ill-fitting for such a youthful face.
“Excuse me?” she spoke up, voice ringing like a bell and yet oddly sweet, only a trace of an accent remaining. “Could you help me? I’m looking for flowers.”