(anon) puts a flower crown on Ace's head... Oh wait it's so big it falls to his shoulders.
♠ @post-mortem-lullaby
Emil always came up with the most unpredictable and random gifts, from chocolate bunnies to blocks of cheese. Maybe her idea was not to keep Ace well-fed as much as it was for him to take a hint and invite her over for a fondue party. Not much was needed for it, either, as long as there was a pot to stand between his hot hands and forks to fish out gooey goodness from within.
Today, however, Emil switched departments and food gave way to flowers, twisted and intertwined in a crown just the kind a younger Ace imagined his mother would have liked to braid and wear atop her angelic strawberry-blonde hair, queen-like.
With a smile that had nothing boyish or impertinent to it, Ace lowered his head to receive the flower crown as though he were being knighted by Queen Emilia of House Utter. This was a rare honour, to receive so pretty a gift from the lady herself without it being accompanied by a teasing remark anywhere between the ‘before’ and the ‘during’; perhaps even the ‘after’ would be silent.
Alas for the freshly knighted Ace, the flower crown’s diameter surpassed that of his head and fell limp over his shoulders, petals cascading now down his person in a soft dance. So much for the grandeur of the moment! Then again, how easy could it be for a blind fishwoman to accurately measure a man’s skull without using her fingers for guidance if she had no sight to rely on? Emil had not rested her hands against Ace’s cranium for this or any other purpose.
With a pout he could not and cared not to hide, Ace told Emil to “Hold up!”, a solution already formed in his mind.
A single, controlled flame scorched the the hard stalks and bare hands pulled the halves apart, thus fashioning two bands of the original circlet. One of these Ace placed on Emil’s hair, the other atop his own. She may share no resemblance with Portgas D. Rouge but the woman’s son reckoned Emil looked pretty with a flower tiara adorning her black mop of hair. The vivid hues of the flowers reflected well her liveliness while the flowers themselves added softness to her figure.
“Everything’s fixed now, see?”
In the end, it was he who crowned her queen.
