milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Duck places one foot slowly after another, dragging her toes, as she slumps her way into the bar.

Pique won't talk to her; Fakir is expelled; Mytho is -- Mytho is she doesn't even know what, and she doesn't have any idea what's going on.

Sitting at a table in Milliways might not actually help with any of that, but it's better than listening to Lilie go on and on about how she and Pique are going to have a battle --

-- not that she's annoyed with Lilie! She's happy Lilie is having fun! Lilie is her only friend right now who isn't sad or upset, and that counts for something, right?

(Okay maybe she's a little tiny bit annoyed with Lilie. But she doesn't know what to do with that feeling, so Milliways it is!)

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"They do." Her snips are in her hand, and with a careful hand she cuts one of the morning glory blossoms. "But for the new flowers to bloom, the old ones have to fade, and be cut back. And most people don't like to think about things changing, or fading, or dying, because it makes them sad and frightens them. They'd rather things stayed just as they are, for as long as they wanted."

(Delaying the inevitable, in her mind.)

Punie turns the cut blossom in her fingers, studying it from this angle and that. The hardness around the edges of her eyes might be mistaken for concentration. "But that's not what it means to be alive."

"Yeah . . ."

Rue's face shows in her mind, and Duck looks away, down to the ground.

"I guess . . . I guess I know people like that."

And wasn't she right? a small part of her demands.

Duck went around changing things, and now Mytho is changing in ways nobody wants, and Edel's gone, and Rue -- Rue's changing too, in ways even she didn't want.

But then, if she hadn't changed things, Mytho would still be a doll, and she and Fakir wouldn't be friends, either -- and Mytho and Rue can still get better. There's always a chance for that. And if nothing ever changed, there wouldn't be.

"You're right," she says, with sudden determination, and looks up again, her firsts clenching. "Stuff has to change!"

Punie hums in soft agreement as she cuts a few more of the morning glories, arranging them in a small bouquet of pink and purple and blue blossoms. "That's why flowers can be beautiful and sad at the same time. Because they don't live as long as people do, they're always a reminder that change will happen, whether you want it to happen or not."

She has a good-sized collection of flowers at this point, so she turns back to Duck. She's smiling again, and the look of hard concentration has faded enough to not be particularly noticeable.

"These are summertime flowers, called morning glories," she says, running the edge of her thumb along the nearest blossom. "The story I know about them is a little sad in the middle, but it has a happy ending. It's about a couple who were separated for a while, but found each other again."

"Most stories are a little sad in the middle, I guess. You gotta go through the sad stuff to get to a happy ending at all -- right?"

Duck takes a breath, and then smiles back. "I'd like to hear it!"

Punie isn't the best at telling stories, but she can put this one in simple enough words. Though perhaps, for Duck's sake, some of the more gruesome parts can be glossed over with a lighter touch.

"It's about a boy and a girl who first meet during a summer festival, and fall in love at first sight. The boy writes a lovely poem about a beautiful morning glory that the girl had painted on her fan, and when he gives the poem to the girl she gives him the painted fan so that he would always think of her." The thought of the gift makes her cheeks turn a little pink, but she continues without a pause. "They were supposed to be married, but the boy has business that keeps him away for a long time, and when she doesn't hear from him for so long the girl starts to worry that he has either died or found another love, and she becomes so sad and cries so hard that she goes blind."

"Oh no!"

. . . . can crying too much make you blind? Duck blinks her own eyes, and rubs them with her fist, a little anxiously. This may be a future concern.

Punie makes her smile as kind as possible as she continues the tale. "After some time passes, the long-lost sweethearts happen to meet each other at an inn, where the blind girl has become a beggar, playing music as she wanders in search of her love. The boy doesn't recognize her at first, but then he hears her play a song based on the poem he wrote all those years ago -- the one about the morning glory -- and realizes who she is and what has happened to her. When they are reunited, he manages to find medicine that can restore her sight, and they live together happily from then on."

(Never mind that the medicine comes from the blood of the innkeeper, who had seen the lovers and been touched by their plight. The story takes it as given that such a sacrifice would be made.)

She holds out the bouquet of flowers out to Duck. "Morning glories bloom brightest in the summer, in the warm light of the sun. When the girl in the story was blind, she spoke of herself as a morning glory because she could turn her face to the sun and feel its warmth, even if she couldn't see it. And whenever she sang the poem that her sweetheart had written for her, she could feel the sun's warmth then, too."

"-- oh!"

Duck accepts the bouquet, starry-eyed, and clutches it towards her -- then suddenly remembers you're not supposed to hold flowers too tight, in case you crush them, and conscientiously relaxes her grip.

"That's beautiful!"

She sighs, half-happy, half-wistful. "It's gotta be really nice to have someone write something happy about you -- about the things they like, I mean . . . it's like you'd get to know stuff about yourself you didn't know before. I guess that's why people write love letters!"

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