When I wiped away the frost with shaking, gloved hands I saw beneath the bell jar a mass of tangled thorns. The thorns moved as though breathing, and after a few moments I could see, too, a flower.

A rose. A rose that shifted as I stared, turning towards me and fixing on me an eye.

The eye sat in the center of the vividly red rose petals, it's iris golden and it's pupil shaped like a diamond. It seemed as though it were sizing me up, shifting and tilting with curiosity and perhaps wonder. Its thorn-covered stems and branches scratched against the jar, leaving no mark on the glass.

It didn't smell like a rose. It smelled like... hot oil. Cooking meat. Wood smoke.

The rest of the table was still covered in frost, the white table cloth buried under a thick layer of it. The rest of the room, as well, the purple walls and faded tapestries and half-rotted crimson carpets. I shivered as a sudden chill passed over me.

The rose watched me as I took a step back from it and circled the table.

"What are you?" I said, and my voice echoed back at me despite my only speaking in a whisper.

"What are you?"

I whimpered, staring up into the dark recesses of the high cieling. It was then that I smelled roses. Real roses, only for a moment. And then back to the room's dust, and the flower's savory scent.

Something shook the rafters. More dust fell at the back of the room. Too dark to properly see what caused it.

The door I had entered the room through was now choked with the same thorns as hid the rose.