log: flower delivery - ella g/mason j
Ella wasn't wearing her glad rags. She was dressed like someone meant to sit behind the church piano and play until her fingers ached, and with a smile in her heart all the while. In truth, she was feeling rather a lot like smiling. She'd been in town a little over a week, and she'd enjoyed every single moment. This town was ducky, small and filled with things that were normalcy and oddity commingled. It reminded her a little of those hungry days in Lodi, and the odd souls that collected in the homeless encampment to feast on cabbage water that was days old.
It wasn't that the people here weren't well fed or well dressed, but they had that same kind of hunger in their eyes. It was an odd little town, one that existed on the outskirts of normal, and Lodi had been the same kind of place to rest your head and listen to your belly rumble.
But Ella liked it here. You could even say she had a crush on the place. And, a few ciggies and glasses of giggle juice later, she liked it even better than she had at the beginning. She didn't mind the obsession with religion here, and even the pill that served as local newsie couldn't crush her optimism. There was sky, big and with craggy mountains and trees starting to sprout green and lovely on limbs of new brown. There was ground, real and beneath her dancing shoes. There were ciggies and libations and laughter. Her flowers could turn their faces toward the sun here, and her cello echoes without any damned souls serving as accompaniment.
In short, Ella was dizzy as a dumb Dora about it all, and there was a skip to her step as she walked into the Protestant church with the first of the flowers for the morning service. And whether it was lack of care or lack of fear, she didn't even look at the naked cross hanging on the altar as she entered.
The preacherman was sweeping, and she smiled at him as he turned toward her.
She almost dropped the flowers, but she must be seeing things wrong, and she put her smile back on her lips. Ella was good at finding smiles lost in her pockets and painting them believably on her lips. "Where's my sinker, preacherman?" she asked bright, her accent something lost between London and Georgia, with no notion of finding its way home. "Or," she added, her brown eyes lighting on the piano, "you could let me tickle the ivories instead."