Girls just wanna have fun Who: O & Cece What: First meeting When: November 2 midday (backdated) Where: Stormflowers Rating: Low Status: Complete
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun
O had never been to a flower shop a single day in her life. She had never received flowers herself from anyone, either, though it was something that she had read about and had ultimately daydreamed for. If you had asked of her favorite she would not have been able to give a good answer considering she didn’t know the names of the fragile, pretty things, only that they came in colors and perhaps the description of them.
A pale hand reached out, long fingers dancing gently across an outstretched auburn petal. The thing was tiny but she found it no less endearing though by the lack of expression on her face one could only guess as to what she might be thinking or feeling.
She was a sharp contrast to the plethora of vibrant colors - her wings were as black as the deepest part of space, brown hair, dark eyes, pale skin touched with scatters of freckles here and there, and muted tones of clothes. Her feet were bare as usual.
Those sharp eyes sought every crevasse of the delicate flora, each dip, curve, the hues of the colors. Even the scent of them was alluring. Why did people give other people flowers? Was it because they were so exquisite? Was it to compliment human fragility? Maybe she would never know for sure.
The irony of Cece setting foot in a flower shop was not lost on her. She was an earth witch, shouldn’t she be able to grow her own?
Yeah, yeah.
Flowers had never been her thing. Didn’t like to get them, didn’t like to give them, wasn’t great at growing them. Herbs, things that grow on vines, trees, bushes, vegetables--all were easy enough for her. But the minute a recipe required something as simple as a daisy, she was out of luck. Today she needed roses, of all things. Nothing was more sappy than roses, but they were a staple of many a love potion, and her stock was growing low.
Not for herself, mind. If you needed a potion to ignite romance, there was something wrong, if you asked her. But, they brought in the big bucks. The only thing that sold better were the werewolf transformation potions, which—though tricky to make—had ingredients that were easier for her to grow.
She burst into the shop without ceremony. It usually wasn’t busy, and she was in a bit of a rush to get home, slip into a pair of sweats and crank out a couple vials of love potion before inevitably ordering a pizza and slipping into a food coma for the rest of the evening. The fact that there was actually someone else in the shop was a bit unusual. And their wings—wings! What was next?—were sort of in the way of her reason for being there.
“Uh.” Huh. To be honest, the wings were kind of throwing her for a loop. What kind of thing had wings anyway? “You’re kind of in front of the roses.”
The depth of the mirror of her daydream cracked, shattering without purpose which roused her from her stoic state long enough to shift a wing and glance over a shoulder in search of the one who dared…
Roses. She was blocking the roses. “So what?” Came the reply. There was no playfulness in it, no anger, just emptiness. O spread her black wings out, all ten feet of muscle and feathers, blocking more of the flowers from view.
Usually she wasn’t so blunt and quick but she had been there first. She had no money for such things anyway, it was silly to dream.
After another moment those wings folded up and O shifted to the side with a measure of silent grace, padding away to look at something else on display.
Whoa. What? Did she just open the door to another dimension? She’s never been spoken to so emotionlessly in her entire life. It was…
Spooky. Deliciously spooky. Like some weird Stephen King shit. What a fun treat after a long day.
“So, I need the roses, obviously,” she replied flatly, using all of her energy to remain unimpressed by those wings, because wow. She tapped her foot impatiently, and soon her path to her needed potion ingredient was cleared, though now she was less interested in getting home. Figuring out what this chick’s deal was took precedence.
“Do they not have flowers wherever you’re from?” She couldn’t even fathom where that could possibly be. Obviously not some breed of fair folk. Their wings—if they were the winged type—were much more delicate. At least as far as she’d seen. To be fair she wasn’t really up on her mystical species. But, what she did know is fair folk would never have been so deadpan in their answer. If anything she’d probably be negotiating a bouquet for her first born by now if that were the case.
“No.” The answer was again, short and flat, O didn’t even look up at the woman allowing her wings to serve as a barrier. One of them, the right wing, hooked outward and smacked into a display of mums, upturning it ungracefully.
O peered down at the flowers scattered around her feet with mild interest, dark hair falling into her face. The wing folded back against her frame, twitched once, and settled again.
The bright color of the mum was tempting and O couldn’t help but kneel carefully down, bending at the knees as her wings lifted, upsetting another nearby display of flowers. She scooped a few petalled stems into her hands, stood up, and peered around at a bundle of Gerber daisies in wild colors scattered about.
That could mean a lot of things, Cece reasoned. The middle of a dessert, the ocean, a… Volcano? None of these seemed likely origin locations for someone with wings. Cece frowned at the upturned mums, but didn’t stoop to pick them up. She wouldn’t like to be the recipient of a smack to the face from one of those wings. Not if they were turning over displays.
“And where would that be?” She asked, head cocked to the side with curiosity as she watched the other woman inspect the flowers she’d knocked over.
“A white room,” she expressed absently, focus intent on the scatter of colored flowers. White coat two had an ugly potted thing on a desk in the main building she had been brought to for testing. It had been a twisted, stumpy, spiked abomination. She had met it personally twice.
O lifted her head up, catching the woman’s gaze. Her lips were pulled into a thin line, eyes blank until a touch of light from the flower shop bled into the darkest parts of them.
The flowers in her hands were extended outward, cautiously, toward the strange woman. O had never given someone flowers before, not that they were her flowers to give away, so the idea frightened her though she was currently moving through the motions of it.
Cece’s eyes lit up. “Whoa, no way.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, hand on her cocked hip. “So you’re like… Science experiment gone awry? Gifted Human?” Or something else she couldn’t even fathom, because if mermaids were real, then all bets were off. “Some kind of bird fairy?” Was that a thing?
She reached for the proffered flowers, unsure what to do with them. “Uh, thanks.”
“Bird fairy?” Surely such things didn’t exist and yet she felt in her core that maybe they actually did. How you mixed a bird with a fairy she wasn’t sure, what little she knew about fairies didn’t help piece the illustration in her mind together well.
When her hands were free of that delicate burden, O looked down at the floor again. She didn’t want to talk about the captivity and to keep her temper idle she let the predicament envelop her attention.
A wing twitched. She knew if she didn’t leave this small place soon more of the flowers would end up on the floor like the rest and trying to right the wrong caused more trouble than she wanted.
“Uh, I was mostly joking,” she clarified, inspecting the bouquet in her hand, “Unless you actually are a bird fairy, in which case, neat?” She shrugged. She was still pretty sure that was something she’d made up.
“I’m not really sure what I am.” The words were offered with no jest, the vowels and consonants resonated with all of the humble seriousness of her upbringing. That white room, those white coats, it was never dark and then suddenly it was too dark.
O did know she wasn’t human, she couldn’t possibly be associated with the kind of things that torture other things. That was something she was adamant about and something that would stir up her emotions.
“I can fly. I can see far away.” She could hurt someone, she had killed before, those taunting white coats had been dyed red once she realized she could overpower them easily.
She could fly, huh? Cece never would have guessed. “Really?” She drawled, and then realized she was probably going to have to dial back the sarcasm with this one, as painful as that was. It was definitely going to be lost on her.
“So are you like, a runaway then? Is that why you don’t have shoes, or is that a fashion choice?” It was kind of getting a bit chilly to run around shoeless. But that was just her opinion.
O nodded. She was very literal considering that was all she knew how to be. Sarcasm was lost on her. Wit, humor. If inquired of as to the last time she laughed O would simply reply that she didn’t remember. It would be the truth. Smiling was a rare event in itself.
“I don’t have shoes.” She knew what shoes were, what purpose they served. In the white room you didn’t need shoes. The floor was always cold, even in the summer. The hallways were concrete. The box they’d put her in to test her limits was see-through. She didn’t go outside, she didn’t go places that warranted footwear. It was a simple luxury she didn’t have.
Apparently this was one of those things where asking more than one question at a time meant that only one of them got answered. Cece frowned. “You know it gets cold around here, right?” If you asked her, it was already cold, honestly. She was usually cold to begin with, but she’d already pulled out her sweaters and scarves over a month ago. “You should probably invest in some shoes. Just saying.”
O peered at the woman as if the words she were speaking fell off of her lips as a different language. She understood the importance of shoes - they protected your feet - but not in the contrast of the context of the situation. She supposed that made some sense, cold feet would need warm shoes.
Her eyes fell slowly to her own feet, chin tilting inward so that her view was solely on those pale extremities. If asked, she wouldn’t have been able to even begin to tell her own shoe size, what style best suited her, what color she liked.
Frowning deeply, as if troubled by the whole situation, O lifted her eyes and met the woman’s gaze. “Yes.” Shoes. She would ask Jayati about shoes. Shoes sounded important.
Goddess have mercy. Cece had to force herself to keep from rolling her eyes. It just didn’t seem fruitful. “The toes are the first to go, you know. Frostbite is pretty horrible, I hear. Painful. Unless you’re some kind of lizard person, they won’t grow back either.” She crossed her arms and met the other woman’s stare with one of her own. “I definitely recommend shoes. It’s the better option.”
“Anyway, you got a name?”
O could understand. It felt a bit like taking orders, something she at first was opposed to and then began to come around to with Jayati’s guidance. The nod she gave was one of understanding and commitment to the idea. She would find shoes, something was better than nothing. She was no lizard person that could grow appendages back (Could they grow them back?).
“I call myself O. What about you?” The stamp on her wrist, that brand of inked letters and numbers no longer defined her. She was no longer an item to the white coats.
“Cece,” she said, uncrossing her arms to hold out the hand not grasping the flowers (she still didn’t know what to do with them). “So how did you even end up here?” She asked, “Wait. Don’t tell me. You flew?” Was it even possible to fly through the barrier? She didn’t know. She supposed the only requirement to pass through it was that one needed to be sort of… Not normal. The wings definitely helped reach that requirement.
Cece. She didn’t know what sort of a name that was, but then again who was she to judge having only a single letter for a name?
The outstretched hand had become a gesture of greeting she finally understood and had learned to expect. In kind, O reached out for Cece’s hand, shook twice gently, and then let the woman go.
“Some of the way,” she admitted. A wing twitched as if to confirm. “I wasn’t sure I would be able to at first.” Those words were soft, almost like a confession to a sin, “but I managed. When I got it the bridge I walked. This place was not easy to find, I heard someone speaking of it.” The journey itself was lengthy, brutal, and for another time in less open area.
Apparently she’d finally asked the right question. Cece had expected another one word answer, but suddenly O was speaking full length sentences. It was some kind of miracle. “I mean, it’s hard to find on purpose. So kudos to you for finding it without help.”
“So, you’re here. Now what?” Cece was asking the hard questions.
She had seen the bustling island on the horizon, it was hard to miss. The barrier was translucent but you could feel it and she had no issues crossing the bridge and into the sanctuary.
“I do not know,” O began, her lips forming a single line as she processed the question. Jayati had asked her the same question in a completely different way when she had first arrived.
“For now protect the island. Keep the humans away.”
“Sounds like a wild and crazy lifestyle,” Cece drawled. Border patrol was her absolute least favorite. She only subbed in for her aunt when she absolutely had to, because there was literally nothing more boring to her. And she worked with numbers for a living.
“What do you do for fun?” She asked. “Or is that a foreign concept?” It seemed like it might be. Maybe this--staring at flowers and knocking things over--was it.
Fun was a foreign concept. O had ideas on things that might allocate as fun; Joy, happiness, merriment - emotions that had been stolen away from her. It wasn’t that she was unable to feel these things she had simply forgotten how.
Her eyes flickered from side to side as she processed the question. O struggled with the answer, wanting to give the right one though she wasn’t sure if it would be the honest one.
Protecting the borders was all she had. Fun didn’t seem as if it played into that role and she didn’t want to disappoint Jayati.
Finally her eyes settled back on Cece. “I don’t know.” It was honest, and she felt better about offering the reply.
Yikes. That was.
Wow. So sad.
Like seriously, Cece could almost work up some tears for that, it was so sad. “Are you kidding?”
She shook her head with obvious disappointment. “Damn girl, we gotta get you to the movies or something. Get a hobby.” What in the name of the goddess was O doing in her downtime? Was this literally it? Just… staring a flowers? How depressing.
O shook her head, the look on her face serious enough to warrant a heart attack. There was no kidding. With her you got exactly what you saw, no more and no less.
At mention of the movies O considered the offer. The look in her eyes was one of brightness and she nodded, cautiously at first and then a touch more adamant. She did want to go to the movies.
Until then she would find something else to occupy her time.