The Universe's Mixer

Whatever the color, whatever the type, Beauty loved roses. In stories, blue roses stood for perfect or impossible love... And the author defined the impossibility. Sometimes it was distance, death or family. Sometimes it was religious obligations or a marriage that never should have been. But Beauty had never read about love turned impossible because of a city.

Wistfully staring into the bouquet of red roses (for Beauty preferred the message of red roses over that of the impossible blue) Beauty stood now in the last of three locations she visited on this night every year since... Well.

It was nothing more than a back street -- just a street. But it had also been a place where she'd seen dark things. Seen, but also had been protected from them. By the same person who led her to the library to find the end of her family. By the same person who had found her the job she so loved. The library steps and the stoop of Bookmark Books both had their own bouquets, tied by white ribbon.

She bent her knees and stooped to set the last bunch of roses at the street corner. Ah, she missed him, that strange and gentle soul that had been haunted too heavily for any single man. Wherever he was now, she dearly hoped he was happy.

"Happy Valentines Day," she said, before straightening again. Then, with hands tucked into her coat pockets, she headed back home.