Chapter 1 The Inheritance of Petals #2
Flora looked at the rose. Looked at the creature.
Looked at the shop with its dried flowers and its humming walls and its air that was warmer than the air outside.
She had been in odd situations before. She had once spent a week arranging flowers for a wedding where the bride was a professional magician and the centerpieces kept disappearing.
She had once worked in a greenhouse where the owner insisted on playing opera to the orchids. She had seen unusual things.
This was different.
"I am going to sit down now," she said. "I am going to sit down and think about what I have gotten myself into."
She sat on the floor because the cot in the back room was visible through an open doorway and it was covered in dust and she was not ready to commit to furniture.
The creature watched her from the workbench.
It did not move. It did not stop watching.
Its white petals caught the dim light and seemed to glow with their own soft luminescence.
She sat for a long time. The light through the grimy windows shifted from gray to darker gray.
The drizzle outside became proper rain, drumming on the roof, running down the windows in silver streaks that distorted the view of the darkening village.
The shop grew darker. Shadows pooled in the corners.
The dried flowers on the shelves became silhouettes, their shapes unfamiliar in the dimness.
And the single rose on the counter began to glow.
Faintly at first, a barely perceptible warmth at the heart of the bloom.
Then stronger, a soft golden light that spread through the petals until the entire rose was luminous.
It did not illuminate the whole room. But it was enough to see by.
Enough to keep the deepest darkness at bay.
Enough to make Flora feel, against every instinct she had, that the shop was not empty.
That something in it was alive and aware and had been waiting.
Flora should have been afraid. A sensible person would have been afraid.
A sensible person would have walked back to the ferry, caught the evening crossing, and let the solicitor handle whatever this was from a safe distance.
A sensible person would not sit on a dusty floor in a dead woman's shop watching a rose glow while a creature of petals and light watched from the workbench.
But Flora had not been a sensible person in a long time. She had been a surviving person. And surviving meant knowing when to be afraid and when to be too tired to care. Tonight, she was too tired. Tomorrow, she would figure out what to do.
She found the cot in the back room. It was narrow, thin-mattressed, and layered with dust that rose in a cloud when she touched the blanket.
She did not care. She pulled her coat over herself like a blanket and lay down.
The ceiling above her was stained with old water damage, brown rings that looked like tree cross sections.
The floorboards creaked. The hum was softer here but still present, a low thrum that vibrated through the floor and into her bones, settling somewhere deep.
She closed her eyes.
She dreamed of a woman she had never met.
The woman had her mother's face but older, lined with years and worry and something that looked like love.
Her hands were stained with flower petals, green and brown and the deep purple of crushed iris.
She was surrounded by flowers, waist deep in a sea of blooms, and she was reaching toward Flora with those stained hands.
"You are here," the woman said. "I knew you would come."
"I did not know you existed," Flora said in that way of dreams where you know things you do not know.
"That does not matter. You are here. The shop has been waiting."
"I am not staying."
The woman smiled. It was a sad smile, the kind that knew something the person receiving it did not.
"That is what I said," the woman said. "And then I stayed."
Flora woke to darkness and the smell of roses.
She lay still for a moment, orienting herself. The ferry. The rain. The shop. The rose. The creature. It had not been a dream. The shop hummed around her, quiet but persistent, like a secret being kept in a language she almost understood. The rain had softened to a whisper on the roof.
She sat up. Her neck ached. The cot was as uncomfortable as it had looked.
The creature was at the foot of the cot.
She had not heard it move. It sat there, a small constellation of petals and light, its golden eyes fixed on her.
It was still white. Still calm. Still watching.
But there was something different in its posture, a leaning forward that might have been curiosity.
"I do not stay," Flora said. To the creature. To the shop. To herself. To the grandmother she had never met who had apparently said the same thing and then stayed.
The creature rustled. Its color flickered. For just a moment, a whisper of blue passed through its petals, a color she had not seen before. Sadness. Or loneliness. Or something in between. Then it was white again.
Flora lay back down. She did not sleep again. But she did not leave.
Through the open doorway, the single rose in its bud vase glowed faintly in the dark, casting long shadows across the dusty floor. The shop hummed its quiet hum. The rain fell soft and steady. And Flora Mosswood, who had never stayed anywhere longer than a season, stayed.