Gawking like she was a child seeing a fairy for the first time, Rita was in adoration. The petals spread, the music played, and now there was a fully bloomed blue rose in her hands as the tune ended.
“If you crank it every day, it will always open with the sun and close with dusk,” murmured Aurora.
“It’s beautiful!” gushed Rita, lifting the rose to her nose so she could smell at it. There was a delicate flower’s scent, diffused up through the petals, that tickled Rita’s nose. As she smelt it, she noticed that there was the tiniest inscriptions on its petals. A love poem it was, inscribed in the round on the rose, only visible once it was bloomed.
Aurora smiled demurely, as a proper lady ought never to express too many or too intense a set of emotions at once. “There is a different poem inscribed on each rose. Which poets do you like?”
Rita’s jaw hung open and she lowered the rose from her nose. “I-” do not read, she almost said. It was not that she couldn’t, as the letters had proven. It was that she never had the time or money to buy the cheap paper backs from Farfadel, nor even the ones from local Neverfailian writers. She had always been too busy doing un-dainty things, like teaching or practicing fi-fo.
Aurora kept that strange smile on her lips. Her hand hovered over the selection of roses, then she plucked another one up. “Here. Take this one,” she said sweetly. “You shall think of me when you look at it.”
Rose’s mouth widened in a smiling gasp. Her eyes sparkled with pure joy – for this rose was ornately crafted. It was blue, but of such a deep and rich color. The tips of its petals were dipped in silver. The poem was inscribed on the petals so delicately, so finely, that it may have been done by mice. Rita was bedazzled, and altogether struck by its beauty. She wasn’t sure what to say, or how to touch it!
So she just stood there, agape, and feeling foolish.
Aurora sensed this. Or perhaps she merely noted the obvious. “Set that one down,” murmured the princess gently. “And take this one.”
“Oh! Yes.” Rita carefully put down the mechanical flower that she had been holding. Aurora set the other in her hands. It was a little heavier than the first had been, but it was a comforting weight. It felt solid, trustable. Somehow that made Rita blush.
“Now we go to the counter,” teased Aurora, turning Rita by the shoulders and navigating her around the rose stand and towards the counter top where a clerk stood.
The clerk was, for all sakes and purposes, peculiar looking. The madam had frizzy hair drawn back severely from her forehead, which only served to cause the frizz to poke out even more fiercely. Her eyes were shrunken down to beady nobs behind large spectacles. Her lips were thin and her nose was long. She smiled as if you were supper and her bony finger rap-tap-tappity-tapped on the counter top. She was wearing a boned corset that made her look far too thin, with an elaborately large bow at her neck. Her clothings were in hues of grays and blues, and none of those colors looked happy on her.
“Greetings,” she cooed, sending shivers of unpleasant feelings down Rita’s spine.
“Greetings,” said Aurora curtly. “We shall be shopping this,” and she took the flower from Rita and set it upon the counter with a small thump.
“Ahhh,” was the sound that hissed from the lady, like a snake happily observing a teapot.
Whatever a snake thinks of a teapot, I do not pretend to know! But that is the point, isn’t it?
Without looking at her cash, the strange lady’s knobby fingers began pushing at the buttons and punching keys all while she looked Aurora keenly over. “What a wise choice madam.” Her eyes, unblinking, turned to Rita. “A wise, wise, choice for – ah, what is your name, dear demoiselle?”
“Ri-”
“You don’t need to tell her,” snapped Aurora defensively. In the blink of an eye she had her coin purse lifted from her side and some coins snatched out. She slapped them onto the counter in a fit of unladylike unpleasantness. “This should cover it.”
“It definitely will, your majesty,” crooned the lady, her right hand sliding over the coins and caressing them. Her eyes, however, were still on Rita. “Have a good day,” she whispered. “See you soon.”
At that, Aurora’s eyes widened. She snatched the rose up in one hand and Rita in the other, and dragged both promptly out of the shop.
Outside, in the beating sun, it felt as if they could almost wash away the tingling strangeness of that woman. “Who was that?” Rita asked only once the door was shut behind them.
“Close your mouth and keep walking,” muttered Aurora. “She is certainly watching us through the windows.”
Rita snapped her mouth shut so fast her teeth jarred together. Looping her arm tighter around Aurora’s, she let the taller woman guide her forward through the crowd. Three houses down the road Aurora drew them to a stop.
“Here,” she said with a smile as she offered the rose to Rita. “Wipe that frown off your face and smile. There is nothing to worry about. Rosmerta has never hurt a soul in her life.”
“Rosmerta?” Rita asked, tucking the rose under her arm. It seemed even more beautiful in the sunlight, yet the sight of it brought back to mind the eeriness of that woman.
“Yes,” Aurora nodded and smoothed out her skirts even though they were already impeccably placed. “She is an apothecarian. She is a grand believer in magics and fairy tales, which is terribly silly,” Aurora drew in a short breath and lowered her voice. “But she sells snake oils, so I suppose she is of good merit,” and Aurora shrugged. “Ah, well. She is merely strange. There is nothing to fear.”
Rita’s fears were not soothed in the least, particularly because Aurora seemed to be trying to comfort herself more than Rita. “Then why did you run out of there?” asked Rita cautiously.
“When she said ‘see you soon’, I thought she might mean something terrible would happen to you- but now that I think on it, you could return for a cold medicine or something simple. There is nothing to worry about.” She paused and put on a brave smile. “She has the best cold medicines in town! Straight from a fairies’ cupboard, as the saying goes.”
Rita was wholly unconvinced. She had a sense of trouble brewing. Her senses, perhaps heightened through years of grueling focus and training of the body and mind, told her not to trust Rosmerta.
Perhaps, she thought, they ought to return the flower for fear of attracting bad luck. But when she looked at it she knew that would be rude to suggest. Worse – the metal rose was just too beautiful to part with!
Ah, how it twinkled in the sun – but not too much to hurt the eyes. How, now that it was out in the daylight, that blue was positively bewitching. How the base was soft as real grass and it wholly looked like a real bloom bursting up from a luscious field. A bloom inscribed with words of… Rita tilted her head to the side to read the poem aloud.
“Words are pale,” she murmured.
“Ah!” Aurora smiled with a hint of a blush and waved a hand between Rita and the rose. “Do not read it out loud! Such poems are to be read alone and wondered at. Here, come with me and we shall hail a cab. What parts of the city would you like to visit next, my friend?”
“Friend?” asked Rita, heart leaping into her throat. Friend? Weren’t they- weren’t they- more than that? Those letters had felt like so much more! When they had been clutched tight to her bosom they had filled her with such joy and warmth – a warmth that she now saw in the blush on Aurora’s cheeks.
“Perhaps,” said Aurora cheekily. She arched an eyebrow. “Perhaps you are my friend.”
“I would rather not be,” said Rita quite crossly, causing Aurora to lift her eyebrows in an un-ladylike display of emotion. Rita set her jaw and lifted her chin. “I want to be more.” Much more, she wished to say.
“Oh my,” murmured Aurora with a blush on her cheeks and amusement to her eye. “I have found a stubborn one.”
“Stubborn indeed,” said Rita proudly, holding Aurora’s gaze.
A mischievous glint sparkled in Aurora’s eyes. Her lips twitched upwards in the corners but she refused to let herself smile. Yet her hand reached for Rita’s. Delicately entwining their gloved fingers, she lifted Rita’s hands and kissed her on the knuckles. As she did so, she held Rita’s gaze unwaveringly.
“As you wish,” she whispered as she lowered Rita’s hand between them.
Rita shuddered, a delicious shudder. Their eyes held each other, passion strung tight between them.
And then it snapped as the crowd suddenly seemed to come alive around them, jostling and bumping willy nilly.
“Come!” Aurora tugged on Rita’s hand jovially. “Let us visit the gardens.”
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