The Chronicle of the Last Bloom

Iris found her silhouette outside the crystal castle some time later — unannounced, uninvited, the way Iris tends to arrive at exactly the moment she's needed rather than the moment she's asked for. She watched Vesper for a while before approaching, the way she watches most things before deciding whether they need her attention or simply her presence. There was something in the particular way Vesper held herself, even at rest, even when she believed no one was watching — a stiffness in the shoulders that had nothing to do with posture and everything to do with a soul braced permanently against being caught wanting something. Then, while Vesper wasn't looking, she simply leaned into her, folding herself against the other woman's side the way you might lean against someone you already know isn't going to push you away, whatever they claim to feel.

Vesper looked at her, sighed, and let her stay.

"How many people have you troubled today," Iris asked, not unkindly, the particular older-sister lightness she carries into most things.

"No one," Vesper said. "I only came to buy something to eat."

"I know of one," Iris said, "who you troubled quite a lot today," and didn't need to say the name for Vesper to understand exactly who she meant.

Vesper's jaw tightened at that, the particular small, involuntary tell Iris had learned to read on her across whatever quiet stretches of time they'd already spent circling each other before this conversation. "I didn't go looking for him," she said, which was, this account suspects, at least partly true, and at least partly the kind of thing a person says when the whole truth is more than they're ready to hand over yet.

"I didn't say you did," Iris said. "I only said you troubled him. There's a difference, and I think you already know it, or you wouldn't still be standing out here instead of walking further away."

Iris let the silence sit a moment before she went on, gentler now, the teasing folded away for something more careful. "You've been standing outside this castle for longer than you'd probably admit to me if I asked. There's a girl inside who asks about you sometimes, you know. Wonders whether you'll ever come in. I think she'd like to meet you properly, rather than just hearing your name attached to a story she wasn't there for."

Stolen novel; please report.

"I don't need a home," Vesper said, the words arriving faster and sharper than she'd clearly intended them to, the particular defensiveness of someone protecting a wound by pretending it isn't there at all.

"No one said you needed one," Iris said. "I only said there's one here, whenever you decide you're tired of pretending otherwise."

It was around then that Flora came out to join them, drawn by whatever quiet instinct always seems to draw her toward a conversation that needs softening. She approached slowly, the particular unhurried care she brings to any stranger who looks like she might startle at sudden movement, and said nothing at first, simply standing near enough to be counted as present without crowding the space Vesper clearly still needed.

Iris looked at Vesper, and then at Flora, and made the introduction the way she makes most things — plainly, without dressing it up more than it needed.

"This," Iris said, gesturing between them, "is the local homeless girl of our home. She doesn't have anywhere else that's quite decided to call itself hers yet, so I've decided this can be it, whether she agrees to it today or not."

Vesper looked at Flora for a long moment — pale hair the color of new leaves, wide unguarded eyes that had clearly never once learned to perform composure the way Vesper herself had spent centuries learning to perform it — and something in that unguardedness seemed almost to offend her, the way easy things sometimes offend people who've had to work hard for everything they've ever kept. "Another foolish flower," she said, with all the flat, exhausted disdain she had left in her, before turning and walking away from the castle entirely, leaving Iris and Flora to follow the trail of her at a careful, patient distance.

Flora, for her part, did not seem hurt by the words the way a less steady soul might have been. She only watched Vesper go, her expression carrying something closer to recognition than offense, and said, quietly, mostly to herself, "She sounds sad." Iris, walking beside her, did not disagree.

I think, if I'm honest with you, that whatever Eremos once was to the philosopher who asked him a question no one else had ever thought to ask, Flora may yet turn out to be something similar to him — the plain, unguarded warmth of someone who has never once needed a riddle to know exactly what she wants, standing quietly nearby while someone harder, older, and far more guarded slowly decides whether warmth like that is worth trusting after everything else she's already lost.