milliways_bar | (no subject)

She brushes the cover again, with the same gentle touch. "I haven't found much. Lots of rooms with no one in them, lots of quiet places. I ought to have looked in my Mama's books to see if there was anything in particular that I should try to find, but I thought it would be nice to be surprised. Is there something I should look for?"

She catches sight of his hands as she gives him the book, and her mouth purses sorrowfully. "You've hurt yourself again."

"There is a man-eating mermaid living in the lake, but she's been subdued already, and is a patron besides," he says, and he tilts his head, thinking. His smile is boyish, almost playful. "Have you ever been to the greenhouse?"

And now he has the impulse to poke her lips back into place. "I learned something new," he says, and his shrug sets the bar for casual. "Well worth the cause."

"Mermaid flesh is supposed to be very tasty," Punie says, almost idly. "At least it is where I come from, if you can eat it without it killing you or turning you into a demon. It depends on the person who eats it, I think. I've never tried it myself."

She'll let his own comment on his hands pass by without comment. She wasn't the cause, after all. This time.

"What's the greenhouse like? I've walked past it, but never been inside. I wasn't sure if you needed a key, or someone's permission to go in."

Punie's tone appears to be such a contrast to her words about the mermaid that he almost laughs, but he knows who she is. Mermaid flesh probably is a culinary delicacy in Magical Land. "Sounds like a food to avoid if one has a delicate constitution."

The boy takes a second or two to phrase an answer to her question. "The greenhouse is just like it sounds. It has a massive variety of flowers, indoors and out, from different worlds. I have no idea how big it really is."

He turns to his books and encodes them in his sylladex without the use of a couplet. She may catch sight of a pink envelope when he tucks his folded list into his blazer pocket. "I am fairly certain the doors are unlocked if you wanted to visit."

Edited 2013-04-28 06:28 (UTC)

"So it's all right to go in without asking?" Her expression turns wistful. "I do like flowers. I wasn't home this spring to see the ones in the palace gardens start to bloom, and it made me feel a little homesick to think about it, but the cherry blossoms in Japan almost made up for it. And the ones here were lovely, too."

She hadn't missed the pink envelope. The sight of it makes her want to giggle, but she catches herself and merely presses a hand to her mouth to partly hide her smile.

"Do you?" he says, and the thought pleases him more than it should. "I suspect the palace gardens put on quite a show."

He leads her through the bar to the grounds--holding the doors open, of course--and ignores the squelching sound his boots make on the wet grass on the way to the greenhouse. "How long do cherry blossoms last, usually? A month or so? And yes, you can visit the greenhouse whenever you wish."

Punie's step is a little lighter as she picks her way across the grass. "They last only about a week, normally, if they're not magical. Even the magical ones at home don't last more than two weeks. I think that's part of what makes them so pretty -- you only have a short time to appreciate them before they're gone."

Even if she doesn't fully know the language of flowers, the fleetingness of life is a matter dear to her heart.

Autor nods in agreement. His opinion matches hers, which is why he preserved the petals she gave him in a book, fragile and drying, and not immortally fresh in his sylladex.

The reach the greenhouse in short order, and the flowers outside are just a hint of what's shielded behind the massive panes of glass. As he opens the door for her, the mingled scents wafting through are enough to make him dizzy. "After you, Miss Tanaka."

Edited (that sentence didn't make sense) 2013-04-29 01:31 (UTC)

She gives him a perfect little curtsy before she walks through the door.

The riot of colors and scents is dazzling, as the warm air surrounds them with the bounty of hundreds of flowers. Once she has taken a few steps inside, she clasps her hands in front of her, overjoyed with the sight of such beauty.

"Oh, how lovely!" She darts over to one cluster of flowers, then to another, twirling with light-footed speed to reach each new blossom that catches her eye. She almost seems at home among the flowers; there is nothing feigned about her delight. "I wish I'd come here ages ago!"

Autor presses his reddened knuckles against his lips to keep from laughing. Her delight is contagious, and it's not just the air that warms him.

"I was told that there may be a few fertility gods among the patrons, because everything bloomed en masse last year," he says, scooping up a pair of pruning shears from a nearby tool cabinet.

The boy falls quiet for a bit, leaning against the cabinet to watch her cheerfully run around. There's a smile on his face, though he doesn't know it.

"Have you heard of the language of flowers?" he says eventually, and snips off a white hydrangea cluster, a ball of delicate blooms. "Where I'm from, people use them to send messages to one another. I've heard that there exists a different dialect in Japan, though I don't know it."

[OOC: Sorry about the instant slowtimes this morning!]

"I know that white chrysanthemums are only appropriate for funerals." An important thing to know, in her position. "Though the yellow and orange ones are a sign of royalty, in Japan at least. But apart from that, I didn't know they really had meanings behind them."

She spins around, hands clasped behind her back. "What kinds of messages do people send with them?"

It all sounds very secret and romantic to her.

[OOC: No problem! Slowtimes are perfectly fine.]

Huh, good to know.

Autor spins the stem of the hydrangea between his thumb and index finger. "The meaning depends not only on the blossoms you've chosen, but also the arrangement," he says quietly. "Even the orientation of the flowers are important."

He steps forward to present the little white pom-pom. "This hydrangea, for example, can mean frigidness," he says. "Heartlessness." His smirk is there and gone again.

"And heartfelt gratitude for being understood," he murmurs.

The bright, cheerful expression on her face doesn't change as he holds out the hydrangea.

She's still smiling when she takes it from him -- though there might be a different sort of brightness and cheerfulness in her eyes, as the tips of her fingers trace the cut edge of the flower's stem.

Then, softly, with that cool darkness just below the surface of her voice:

"Can it mean all three at once?"

Autor shivers at her tone, at her gaze, at her bearing. His answering grin is sharper than the blades in his hand. "All languages are open to translation. Shall we expand your vocabulary?"

He bends a little, keeping his eyes on her, and plucks up a few long-stemmed flowers featuring closed purple balls. "Lavender," he says smoothly as he nestles them in her little bouquet. "Devotion. Distrust."

"And then there's belvedere," he says, and clips off a bloom with white spiked petals which he has to bring to his nose--of course he does--because it's wild licorice.

"I declare war against you," he whispers, inching his shears towards the chain on her Princess Rod.

Edited 2013-04-29 04:52 (UTC)

He would get a very nasty surprise if he tried anything of that nature -- and she doesn't want to spoil the moment over something so trivial as that. So she brings the flowers (now more like a bouquet, of sorts) close to her chest, in what might easily be construed as a demure and sentimental gesture.

"It's a very fine language to give so many meanings to the flowers." The green of her eyes seems to sparkle against the purple and white blossoms below them. "And is the person who receives them supposed to reply with flowers as well?"

Clever, Autor thinks. He knows all about the use of demure and sentimental shields. Happily thwarted, he clasps the shears behind his back and straightens.

Then the boy hesitates, because he doesn't know. "I do not believe the receiver is obligated to reply in the same manner," he says, stealing a peek at her, "but the flowers are often used in conversations between parties."

Still holding the precious bouquet close, Punie turns a little to look around the flowerbeds. Her search does not take long before she bends down to carefully pluck a single stem. "I don't know if it means anything special in the flower-language you know," she says, as she straightens up, "but I've always liked this one."

The plant she is holding out to him has a cluster of slender, pinkish-purple flowers hanging down like a string of bells, with flat leaves that look very much like fresh sage. It might be an illustration in a botany book for how well it represents its genus and species: digitalis purpurea, the common foxglove.

"Oh, a fingerhut," Autor says, adjusting his glasses. "Those are homes for faeries, the stories say. But in real life, these flowers leech toxins into the water of the vases which hold them."

He lays his shears down on the ground near his foot and calls The Language of Flowers into being from his sylladex. After a few seconds of paging through his book, he chuckles softly.

"Insincerity," he says, pointing out the illustration--which, oddly, isn't as pretty as the blooms she holds. "But sometimes a wish."

Edited 2013-04-29 07:24 (UTC)

"One of the first things I learned about it, when I was little, was that it is useful as well as pretty." The little flowers sway as she holds the stem, bells swinging in silence. "It can be made into a good medicine that can make the heart beat faster, and stronger."

The color in her cheeks is a delicate pink, a few shades lighter than that of the foxglove flowers.

"It can also make the heart stop beating entirely."

The boy's gaze tracks the motion of the bells until he follows to her cheeks, at which he turns his head, hiding his own bloom. He focuses on her fingers when he speaks again. "Beautiful things often hold sway over the heart," he says softly, tucking his book under his arm. "But this flower's ability to both harm and heal appeals to me."

He glances up at her face, blush be damned. "There's one more I think you might like, Miss Tanaka," he says, and crouches down to snatch up a long strand of grass. When he stands again, he offers to tie it around her wrist like a bracelet. "Grass is fairly versatile. It can mean utility, usefulness, or"--and again, if she allows, he'll pluck one of the foxglove bells and tie it up with the strand--"submission."

Grasses are wont to bend with the wind, instead of breaking under it. And they spring back when they're stepped on, instead of being crushed and broken like a flower trodden underfoot. But the tallest blades of grass are often the first to feel the edge of the scythe.

Punie is beginning to like this flower-language more than she had ever expected.

"I'm glad you like it." Curiosity, as much as his offer, prompts her to tilt the foxglove toward him and offer him a flower from the stem in her hand. "I always look out for these, when they're blooming in the spring and summer."

Where Autor is from, grasses were presented to the conquering by the conquered, who gave up their rights live on and be interred in their homeland. He's not about to tell her that, and he'll never give her grass again. I declare war on you, he thinks. I will fight you every step of the way.

"I do," he says, accepting one of the bells. "Very much so. And I'm happy to have met with one in the early spring."

Then he grins at her. "I'm glad you like the greenhouse."

"If I'd known it was open to everyone, I'd have suggested that we come here sooner." There's real warmth in the smile she gives him. "Flowers are so much nicer when you have someone else to share them with. Especially someone who appreciates them, and knows so much about them."

Flattery? Yes, perhaps, from the way it sounds. But like her delight in the flowers, it doesn't ring false at all.

And now he's unsure if she's just sped up his heartbeat or plans to stop it entirely. The boy is certainly overcome by the former effect, which happens to be directing blood straight to his cheeks.

"Ah, I had help," he says, indicating the book under his arm, "and an interest. Had I known you liked flowers"--he didn't know, but he'd guessed--"I would have liked to come with you. They are indeed lovely with lovely company."

After encoding the book back into his sylladex, he scoops up his shears. "I am pleased you seem to appreciate their language as well. There isn't one in Magical Land, correct?"

Punie shakes her head. "Not for sending messages, no. Except for some of the messages that are probably the same almost anywhere, like the ones for roses. Pink roses for someone you like, red and white roses for someone you love." She glances down at the bouquet in her hand. "But everyone thinks roses are pretty -- and there are other plants I like much more, even though they're not so popular."

Belladonna, for one. Aconite. Strychnine. Castor. Not so pretty, but far more useful.

Still holding her bouquet, she takes a few steps to one side, admiring a small trellis with a young climbing plant twisted around its latticework. "There are a few plants that I've seen on Earth that are a little like the ones I know from home, but they're not quite the same -- like the mandrake." She looks back at Autor. "You don't have to wear earplugs to collect mandrake root where you come from, do you?"