Re: log: flower delivery - ella g/mason j
Ella wouldn't have an answer for that question. She'd had a bellyful for what felt like the first time in her life, and she'd made her deal for that fullness that rounded her bellybutton outward. Gnawing in the gut was a hard thing, and most people wouldn't understand what it had been like to be a child who never had sufficient. Even when she got older, and when she could smile and swish her hips, when she could get a nibble from a dapper bloke with dough coming out of his pockets in messy folds, even then there hadn't been a guarantee of another meal. Another drink, that was always available in a world built on boozy gutrot that killed people from inside, but food was a scarcity. Would she have wanted to leave with her musician? She would tell you that yes, she would have done. But she wasn't certain deep where her doubts lived, where her belly had ached all her life long.
But Ella had no desire for flames, either. She'd known some girls and boys that thought it would be better to become part of the tormented and mourning hoard. Silly creatures, and not a lick of sense between them. Not that Ella could boast wit or patience or sense. She was as wild as her blooms, and even a gilded cage couldn't make her temperate.
His thumb grazed her neck, and he spoke. He talked of possible reasons. He talked of flowers, and she turned on her stool and regarded him with a fearlessness that had grown from the awe she'd felt for him at the onset. "Boss, I'll give you blooms the likes this town has never seen before, nor will ever see again." She promised him that, and she meant it. It would please him, and that mattered, but she also longed for the challenge. Gilded cages, for all their beauty, were not terribly challenging for a bim like her.
She returned her thoughts to his reasons for being in Repose, and she fingered the black he wore, daring and over his chest. "You're sightseeing?" It seemed unlikely, but what was it to her? So long as he wasn't here to take her back, then she didn't mind his presence. Unlike the demons in town, she had nothing to hide, and she had no attachments here. "You make for a handsome preacher, bossman." Then, a smidge more seriously. "Do you want me to talk to Rory or Janus?" Rory she liked. Janus, well, Janus she didn't know well enough yet to have formed on opinion on. But Rory ate out of her hand if bid, and it might suit. "I'm buying a pianoforte from the jobbie with the thing inside him. I spoke to the newspaper editor, and isn't he just the pill?"