Vera’s eyes trace themselves over the same soft ridges that her fingertips touched along, admiring the rose that she’d been gifted. Just from a stranger she didn’t know for the sake of a show, yet… the words sung with a frailty akin to the flower in her hand seemed to reverberate so strongly in her mind.
♪ “Wise men say ‘only fools rush in’...” ♪
She spoke the words in soft sing-song, her thoughts drifting away with the melody as it tapered into just her murmuring quietly to herself.
“But this is years in the making...”
Was she trying to convince herself of something?
The attempt at singing the lyrics like how the woman had done at the show seemed a bit futile.
Lips drooped ever so slightly, a solemn and soft sort of frown coming over her. She stood there, pensive and wholly fixated on tracing the rose. It was almost like she was trying to memorize the shape of it in her mind. But then, seemingly without any provocation, she began to delicately pluck away each petal.
♪ “Some things are ‘meant to be’...” ♪
The common game, ‘loves me, loves me not’, would be put on pause. Instead of the rose, she’d refocused on the view beyond it, the L’Atelier’s fresh, untouched garden plot waiting there right at her feet. Silently she resumed her game and no longer counted the petals that fell.
‘Meant to be. Just...maybe not with me?’
The thought hurt her, but not as much as she anticipated that it would. It’d been years, after all. Years of looking for him, while it’d been years of him running from the shame of abandoning her; letting his heart forget her, bit by bit by bit.
Things had changed. Now was now, the past was the past, and expecting time to not re-shape fickle hearts was a kind of naive she had long since grown out of.
But, again, there was no need to count the petals. She wasn’t afraid of the change. Hearts were fickle, but minds were stubborn to change.
...and she had made up her mind.
Bit by bit by bit. She plucked the rose clean till the soil was dappled in flecks of red.
It was poetic, really. The turn of the New Year was upon them, and red roses were considered good luck. She wanted to imbue the very dirt beneath them all with good fortune. Till it up, plant the seeds, tend and water and see what grows--
She had promised him a garden, and tonight the resolve had solidified in her heart.
Was that truly what he believed he --and all he was-- now amounted to?
Deep, deep down inside, was that truly what he saw?
But, she had made a promise. She’d meant every word. She was going to ‘grow flowers where the dirt lay.’
Here, in the soil of their new home, she’d plant those first seeds: just like how tonight she’d begun sowing more metaphorical seeds of progress. She was looking for friends in lucrative places, and she prayed that Papadmini would be the first rose in a long, beautiful chain of flowers to come.
It had all just been an idea up until now. Just a hope for prosperity, a hope for success and business, profit, and community…
But this was the year of the dog. It was her year. It was time to shine. It was the year to gain all the fortune everyone always asks for in their prayers and is eager to receive in their red envelopes.
It was Jean’s year, too: a year he’d have roses, and would apologize to no one.
She’d fashion it just like in tonight’s tale the Storyteller had weaved. Gather all the ants together, and make him a crown.
He’d not have to stand still. She’d help set him free to wander, to explore beyond the boundaries that had always been forcibly set upon him.
