The Universe's Mixer

Keeping busy agreed with Dinah. So did... whatever it was that she had started with Dean. She still had her rough days where the loss of Jake would hit her all over again, but it was no longer every single day.

She had pretty much thrown herself into crime fighting and the shop and trying to make sure that her roommate didn't rip out his stitches. She was trying to take care of him as much as he'd let her at least.

Today, she was busy with the shop. There weren't many customers, which meant that she had time to catch up on the books. She sat behind the counter, poring over the daily numbers and the ledgers.

This might not be her favorite part of owning a flower shop, but it was a release in itself. It was hard to think about much else when one was engrossed in the math required in bookkeeping. All the same, she still had her ears open for the bell that might tinkle to let her know that a customer had entered the store.

It was her last day on this so-called 'vacation' -- and if she'd had any sense at all about how she'd asked for the time off, she'd have arranged for tomorrow to be counted within her allotment of vacation as well. It was her 20th birthday, though no one in the City knew it. Then again, Beauty could think of no other way she'd rather spend her birthday than at work, surrounded with the heady scent of old pages and book glue and brewed coffee.

But today -- today was her last free day, and she wanted to spend it in celebration. That's why she'd brought out a large, thick blanket into the City Commons, along with a basket full of fruit, cheese, croissant, and red wine, and finally a very large umbrella. (The umbrella hadn't been her idea, but it'd appeared for her at the door when she went back for her stack of books. With a word of thanks to the air above her, she'd snagged the whole entire thing and stuck the over-large umbrella into the ground right at the place where she was now sprawled, grapes in one hand, half-finished book in the other.

Lounging in the park, reading a book, munching leisurely on grapes -- Beauty was oblivious to everything around her.