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 Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 12:52 pm
She knew the twists and turns of track so well that they might as well have been the lines on her palms, or the crow's feet 'round her father's hazel eyes.
We are not, Flora's father told her, one evening over his dusty desk, movers and shakers of men.
It was true. The Gandy family was moved, it was shaken, the two units of it that remained since her mother blankity-blank-blanked (Flora was not too clear on the details of her mother's disappearance), were not agents of their own fate, but leaves caught in an eddying stream. It had taken them across a country, into the long hallways of history at the UMA, and finally, to the bullet train Flora now sat in, her small body being shoved not by fate but momentum as it hurtled her to her father's workplace. No, the Gandys were not movers and shakers of men, nor would they ever be, but they adapted to their situations just as Flora shifted her weight in her seat. They bent so as not to break, and thus survived their personal tragedies by simply dealing with them as minimally as possible. It was an existence, Flora thought curtly as she stepped off the train and walked the remainder of the way to the familiar facade of the UMA, but sometimes it did not seem to be much of one.
A gentle exhale as the girl entered the atrium of the grand museum, muchness aside, their lives were certainly safe. The building enveloped her like a quilt, all familiarity and warmth, the echoing voices of filtering tourists something she could take comfort in as she wandered through familiar halls to the half-hidden side room she so often sat in until Gandy Senior was let out of work. In several rooms, guards waved to Flora, familiar and frequent to the museum near closing time. One asked her questions, she smiled and stammered.
That was another thing about safe. She was rubbish at dangerous. She could barely speak to people, familiar or not, and her hands tightened perceptibly around the strap of her bag as she remembered what happened so often when she tried. Muttering to herself under her breath, the unclenching of those fists, of her teeth, of her mind was a slow and difficult process, but once she was done, she found she was where she wanted to be. The side room displayed only a few paintings, and had in the middle, a plush and comfortable couch, one of the few that visitors could avail themselves of. They rarely did on account of the room being so well hidden, but Flora frequently sat on it, too heavily, so it creaked. She sank into its cushions now, feet dangling off the ground as it ate her up. Leaning her head back against it, she stared at the dark wooden ceiling, itself as ornate as the works of art in the room that it capped. It was a mad affair, all the socializing that people expected her to do if she wanted to be popular. And it wasn't even like she didn't want to meet their expectations, either. Her head flopped to the side, and she stared at the portrait of the young Earl of Derby, who sneered at her like only a boy from the peerage knew how.
"It's easy enough for you," she stated in frustration. "No one expected you to like people, you just had to be fancy."
The Earl of Derby said nothing, but Flora had gotten started and the room was empty, so she was most unlikely to stop.
"You've never had to be like 'Oh, Nancy Pearson, would you like to come to my birthday party! No, that's okay, some other time!' It's miserable, working up the courage to ask people to birthday parties and having them not come, but the worst part is when they do come and it's just quiet and awkward and everyone's waiting for the next party game because you can't think of anything to say." She sat up suddenly, quite indignant at her own situation. "In fact, I'll bet everybody acted interested at your parties! That's what fancy people like you get, act fancy enough and you never have to worry about friends who like you because all your frills and such do all the talking for you." Bloated on the indignity of it all, Flora kicked her feet up on the couch and swung herself around so she was no longer facing him, crossing her thin arms over her tiny chest. But she could not stay mad for long, and, like all Gandys, bent. Not before it was too late to break, though, and she found herself choking back tears as she stared resolutely at the opposite wall.
"It's not even like Nan Pearson is really a friend of mine," she admitted quietly, biting her lip. "I just talk to her about how her day is and such, and she's never started a conversation with me." She swiped at her eyes, angry to be crying, but relieved, too, that the tears were coming out in relative private. Around her, the sounds of the UMA closing could be heard in the hallways, it was nearly 5:30. "It's a lot easier to talk to you and you're too fancy to even invite me to your parties." She sighed, and breathed deeply, the slow and ragged sort that came after a really decent weep. "I just feel like nobody cares."
She glanced back at the young Earl of Derby, whose sneering expression had not changed a whit. "Oh, be quiet," she huffed. "I know that this is what got me into trouble to begin with. Do you think I'd bother Nan Pearson about it? Well, I won't! She can go right on not remembering my name for all I care, I never really needed her anyway. I know what happens when I try to get people to notice me, okay? We've been there. I remember Molly, okay?"
Everyone she talked to at the UMA remembered Molly. Probably. Painted mouths did not relate.
"I'm used to it," she sulked to the Earl. "I know. I have you anyway, and the Mourners, and Saint Yriex, and all of them, and that's fine too. I won't forget any of you, you're my friends, too." She gestured in the air helplessly, looking for the right words. "I don't know," said Flora at last.
"It's just that my birthday party's in two days and I just wish I could be sure they remembered me at all, I mean, I know they know my name, but I don't ever, you know, talk to them."
"Not like I talk to you."
Flora sat silently in the comfortable chair as her father came to fetch her, and wished, above all else, that she did not have to know the UMA and the train route so well as she did. For once, it would be nice to be a mover and shaker of men.
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Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 1:32 pm
The buying of the birthday balloon was an important and prolonged task, considering that it was invariably a) green, and b) shamrock-y. There were not a great deal of balloon options at this time of year, and Flora had outgrown the kiddie character balloons now that she had reached the mature and womanly age of twelve. Plus she had never been very much interested in the characters featured on said balloons in the first place. Her father had fed her mostly cartoons aimed at boys as a kid, all superheroes and such, and she was not keen to be seen in public with them, nor had she ever seen enough princess movies to want a princess balloon any stronger than any girl might want any generic pink and pretty thing. No, the green balloons had always been neutral, and if there was any statement Flora aimed to make, it was no statement at all. Still, her father treated it like a grand affair, because when one's daughter was not even thirteen, it was worth it to fuss over every little aspect of her birthday party, balloons and all. So the Birthday Balloon was picked with panache, first led up to with a luncheon out, then a stroll through the toy stores, then a stop at the party store to pick out every favour, and then, at the very end, the choosing of the balloon, which was promptly purchased, named, and, in younger, more innocent years, subjected to having a face drawn onto its slippery, shiny surface. When she was younger, the whole thing was the highlight of Flora's birthday, but at the age of twelve, she had gone through the process at least nine times, and the novelty was beginning to wear thin. She thought perhaps she might be a bit old for it, that the whole affair was getting patronizing, and more importantly, that other girls her own age might find it silly. She sunk a little lower in her chair as she thought this, causing her father to look up from his french onion soup.
"Flora, how do we sit in our chairs?" he asked, and Flora straightened up like a ramrod had been shoved down her back. Soon, though, she was mid-flop again, leaning over her grilled cheese like a somewhat drooping dandelion.
"I wonder what balloon we'll find today?" asked her father to distract her, though they both had a vague idea already, and it was the same as every single balloon from every year hence. "I bet there'll be the perfect one waiting. What do you think you'll name it? I always thought Rocky was a rather dashing one."
"I used Rocky two years ago," Flora replied, sucking on her greasy fingers. "Remember?"
"Oh yes," her father replied absentmindedly. "At any rate, this year's a bit different, isn't it? You don't know where we're having the party!" Flora's face was not one that inspired confidence, but her father pressed on. "Come on, Daisybutton, I've listened to what you told me. We're going to have a more grown up party this year for your big day." This got a smile from his scrawny daughter and he nudged her shoulder encouragingly. "Atta girl. And your grandmother sent you spending money in the mail, so even if those guests of yours only bring clothes and rubbish, we'll be sure you get something nice."
"Dad, it's not like that," Flora insisted. "I didn't ask them to bring presents."
"Ah yes," her father replied, tapping his nose, "This is a grown up party."
Flora frowned. She loved her father very much, but sometimes he didn't seem to take her very seriously. Instead, she rocked back and forth on her heels as he finished paying for the meal and grabbed them a handful of after-dinner mints. She ate the pink and the green ones, he ate the yellow and the blue ones, and she clung quite tightly to his arm as they walked through the plaza. That was one thing she was not quite ready to grow up about- she always wanted to make sure her father stayed close to her when they went out. The UMA took up a great deal of his time, after all, and she was determined that the rest of it would be spent with her. It was why she was so afraid when her father had started dating- between his job and a girlfriend, where would that leave Flora??
The best birthday present, then, she reflected, was to have two whole days with him to herself. Even if they were doing the same things they did every year, her father was right up close to her and devoting all his attention to her being happy. Wasn't that what really counted? He did important work for important people, so putting it aside for Flora for two days was a sign that she was much more important than any display at the UMA was.
"Toy store first, or are we too grown up for that?" he asked, glancing down at his daughter. When a look of torn panic crossed her face, he offered, "Well, I would like to go into the toy store. For personal reasons. May I go into the toy store with you, Flora Gandy?"
Flora looked relieved. "Well, if you really want to, I suppose we can," she obliged, taking the out he had made for her. For some things, she didn't have to grow up quite yet, she supposed, nestling closer into Mr. Gandy's arm and nearly tripping the both of them. There were some things, like the buying of a birthday balloon, that, even if it was always the same, was for both her and her father, and if they wanted, they could be immature together. She would never have to worry too much about her father taking her seriously, because he stooped to save face for her, and tried to remember the balloon names.
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Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2012 6:23 pm
Flora Gandy's twelfth birthday party dawned fair as could be hoped, and while others in the area were more concerned with drinking heavily in the name of the saint whose day she was born on, she herself was more preoccupied with the father who had abstained from such revelry since the day she was born. He was here now, with her new birthday outfit, not, she noticed, her heart sinking by inches, a dress like she had wanted. It was a very jolly sort of outfit, but definitely for a boy, or at least a very boyish girl. Flora had always worn the style uncomplainingly, but was now getting to the age where she noticed that girls, well, most girls, the sort of girl she rather fancied she'd like to be, wore dresses to their school pictures and birthday parties and, she blushed, looking at the ground, dates. She did not have a dress to speak of, having outgrown her last one when she was still very small. The closest she had was a pair of skorts, which she wore instead of her new trousers like a sad sweatervest over a mickey mouse t-shirt- a dismal echo of what she had imagined she would look like today, but good enough for what she had.
She was then duly blindfolded and shepherded into her father's car, asking all sorts of questions along the way and getting in return nothing but enigmatical riddles and laughs. She had never had a surprise birthday party before, and her father had been careful in planning it, so when they pulled up and her blindfold was removed, she stared in confusion at the UMA. Looking around for some hidden party venue, she was shepherded in by her father and brought to the trustee's dining room, where waited a large cake and several of her friends, who seemed wholly uncomfortable in the elegant surroundings. Flora did not notice at first, and was most definitely merry, but as the party progressed, it became clear that the UMA afforded few of her friends enjoyment. They had gone on a private tour- Jessica had yawned at a monolithic Aztec god. They had spoken even to the curator himself- no one had any questions but Flora. And by the end of the day, what had first been happiness was a great knot in Flora's stomach, the fear that she had shown these girls too much, too personal a thing and now it could not be taken back and she would be judged for that which she sought refuge in so frequently. By inches, she was driven quite into herself. Her questions came slower, her observations more hesitant, until again she was on the outskirts, listening to the three girls chatter, and none of it about the museum she loved. Her father, not used to the ways of women, and little inclined to intervene in matters beyond his expertise, strode along ahead, sometimes cracking a joke, other times stopping, little aware of his daughter's discomfort, and Flora found herself too self-conscious to even alert him by grabbing his warm, square hand. All she could do then, was focus her attentions on the tour that he had arranged, specially for her, she reminded herself like a mantra, something for her and nobody else. But the chattering whispers behind her were penetrating, and as the day drew on, Flora found herself pulled taut between two worlds.
When at last the moment of departure arrived, she made attempt to delay it despite her discomfort, teetering over the edge of that precipice, hoping yet to fall into the land of dresses and boys and makeup and matching phone-charms, letting the dam loose and flooding all sort of speeches at her friends, in hope that something might stick and persuade them to stay. But she found that the more she talked, the less she understood the great key to that lifestyle, that the only way she could try to entice them was with talk of the world she had come from, the UMA, the dry, and the scholarly.
"What was your favourite part? The last bit, oh- The Armenian mask... Do you mean the Aztec mask? Yes, Jessica, yes Elsie. Would you like to stay the night, maybe? Oh! Yes, there's schoolwork we have to do. But-! Oh yes, well, essays are hard, but maybe we could help each other out! Oh, yes. Well, if your dog needs walking, of course." Flora waved goodbye to them from the steps of the UMA as her father laughed with their parents, far more sociable than his daughter ever was. Eventually, he lifted the birthday girl up and said, "Ho there! What did you think of your big day, Miss Gandy?"
Despite herself, Flora had enjoyed it, and she smiled weakly and nodded with vigour as she found herself swung in the air.
"Well, it's not over yet, we still have to pick out your gift!" He set her down and puffed his cheeks with the effort, adding, "Christ almighty, you're getting heavy, girl. Soon you'll be a proper woman and I won't be able to lift you at all. Think of what you want- I need to pick up some things from the boss, shan't be long." With long, loping strides, he headed off within the UMA again, leaving Flora alone in the Atrium with flowers given her by the multilingual receptionists and the distinctly bitter feeling that her happiness today had come at the expense of the good opinion of others. She enjoyed the museum, this much was certain, and the tour she had been given today was a wonderful thing. But Jessica, she mulled it over incessantly, had yawned, Elsie rolled her eyes, Melissa had barely spoken at all. In fact, more often than not, the girls had whispered to each other, and Flora became more painfully aware that though she was friends with all three, she was barely so, and different in a way that was not becoming of a young lady who was in want of companionship. Nancy had said she would not come to the party, so this much she had already known. Now the other girls knew it too, and Flora felt that some secret part of her had been exposed, that she had revealed too much and not even got a chance to decide whether she wanted to reveal it in the first place. Some fundamental part of her panicked like a baby bird, and as the multilingual receptionists turned their minds to Gaelic matters and packed up to seek some Irish cheer, Flora's feet turned inwards to those galleries where she was able to speak freely. None noted her but the statues, who regarded Flora Gandy, newly twelve and already minting her own misery for the year.
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 5:46 pm
 march 17, 2012.kotaline The problem now was quite plain before her. Grimly, she stared at the saints and the sinners, all suffering serenely under the faux-medieval arches of the museum ceiling. She fancied herself in her furious shame to be rather a figure like Joan of Arc- cast somehow into the role of a man and forced thus to suffer and say she was sainted for it. In a room full of figures, she stared at the dresses and painted smiles of Catherine, of Mary, beautiful, feminine, and independent, and felt nothing like them at all. She looked down at her skorts, and shamefully pulled the hemline again, so that the cuffs of the pants underneath might not be seen, then eyed her reflection in the glass of the many display cases.
Staring back at her were a thousand Floras, newly twelve, blushing crimson, biting tears, a thousand Floras with short, choppy hair and her father's face and chapped lips and freckles, a thousand Floras who would never know how to apply makeup or lipstick or blush. A thousand who had received no dress again this year, and would not know how to button one anyway, a thousand with no idea what was fashionable or cool, but wanted to try, and wanted a boyfriend, maybe a little bit, and wanted to know how to braid hair properly.
She felt intrinsically that this all came at some great expense- that she could live and love within the UMA or the outside world, that there was no middle ground for her to straddle. The statues and portraits gazed at her for this, perhaps judging her as much as the girls who had left but minutes ago, and she writhed for it, knowing that they had been kinder to her than those whose favour she sought to curry, knowing that within these halls she had felt more easy spilling a whole slurry of secrets than she ever had to any human being. (Except, perhaps, for Molly. Molly was not to be spoken of.)
"You can't be one of them and a museum-goer too," she said to a sad martyr defensively. "You saw how they yawned! You can't teach me how to get them to like me. I need to know about makeup and boys and what kinds of dresses don't make me look fat, and it's just-"
She hesitated, feeling guilty and turncoat. "My dad is my dad!" she said agonizingly. "I can't be like him, I'm a girl! He's a boy! I don't want to grow up alone." She sat on a bench, and so entombed was she in her self-reflection, that she did not hear the clicking of paw pads on stone. "I love you, of course. You're really good to me," she said to the statues, "And makeup feels funny, and boys are still scary, and I really can't talk to them at all, but I want to because if I stay in this, this world forever, it'll be statues and paintings and silence and- and I'll be my dad!" She shook her her furiously, burying it in her hands so the sightless stones couldn't see her start to sob. "I really just want to be normal," she heaved. "I'm sick of feeling like people are laughing at me, or worse, like they don't even care enough to laugh!! I don't want to collect dust like you do, I just-- all I want is just friends who'll talk back."
There was a jingle and she looked up, finding herself face to face with an animal who could have stepped from a medieval bestiary. She screamed and the cry rang out through the museum, as, hiccuping with fright, she nearly backed into a stained glass panel. The creature made no move to follow, but leapt up onto the bench where she had been perched, waving its tail languorously.
I can grant your birthday wish! said a voice, and she squinted because for all the world she thought it had come from the creature, and yet, she had not seen its mouth move. Half petrified from fear, she shook her head, as the alarm sounded where her back pressed the old glass. There were voices now coming from farther away, but it seemed time stood still between the two and the window. The thing looked up presently, and moved to leave, but Flora's father called in the distance, and roused by the sound of his voice, she startled.
"Flora, come back!"
She always came back, she realized with a lurch. She loved him, he was her dad, but she always came back, and she let him define her, and got her just one pair of skorts when she wanted a dress, and she never got what she wanted, not really. And he would collect her and he would preserve her, and if he had his way, she'd be stuck between the worlds of museums and girls until she was old and dry. "Wait!" she hissed, and the beast turned around, red eyes staring at her quite impassively.
Make a contract with me! came the sourceless voice again, And then I will grant you a wish in return.
Flora, who was an imaginative girl, gulped, because wishes were dangerous things, but in the distance there was her father, and in her heart there was the echoing chatter of Jessica and the like, excluding her on her very own birthday. She remembered the silences, remembered just listening, and wished without thinking, caught, as it were in a snap decision. Quickly and loudly, so she wouldn't lose her nerve, she shouted, "IwishIhadfriendswhotalkedtome!!" A glowing thing appeared before her eyes, and she, instructed, she thought, by that same disembodied voice, grabbed it in front of the expressionless beast. She awoke in her bed on March the 18th, slightly less newly twelve, and for all the world it seemed that nothing had changed, but for the green gem and the saints and sinners as witness.
Kyuubey's shadow spurred into motion from a hall a few steps away from her, and his shadow interrupted the burst of light like a great beast. The Incubator watched as a Soul Gem ripped itself away from Flora, floating near the centre of the antiquated room.
The Soul Gem staggered in motion, froze, then started to rescind its ascent and move back towards Flora. It dropped to her feet and clunked like fragile glass, but refused to break. The sweet scent of clovers drifted away from the room, and the light that once filled the room huddled itself within the Soul Gem in a mass of clover green.
Your wish has been granted, Flora Gandy! Happy Birthday.  Click the Soul Gem for her full artwork.
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 5:16 pm
Had she been the kind who could sleep on a train, Flora would fall down exhausted, but as it was, she rested her head on her father's shoulder and stared blearily at the Teufel Town skyline as it zipped by. Sundays they went to the Priories, even Sundays when she was twelve. It was disconcerting, the Priories, the train, and the Sunday, though she normally enjoyed being with her father on the weekends, even at work. He had noticed her discomfort, she fancied, because he bribed her with candy, and thus lime tictacs dangled limply from her hand, the only deviation from any standard weekend outing yet. So far, her birthday wish had changed nothing, except that in a satchel around her neck there rested a gem the size of a hen's egg. Were it not for the bauble, she'd have thought she had but dreamt it, but there it was, cold and hard and thumping against her chest every time the seat shook, the only thing keeping her from thinking she'd gone mad.
Despite the evidence, her stomach twisted itself into nervous pretzels. She didn't know much about her mother and her blankity-blanks, but she knew one thing, and that was that the few times she had thought to ask, her father had said that Melissa Gandy had left her family because she hadn't been well. The sickness had eaten the love out of her, or if not the love, the ability to bear it, and Flora had always half-wondered how it had begun while she waited in the pediatric office for checkups or lay home sick in bed. Sometimes she thought it must have been a kiss that had transferred a terrible virus, other times she thought it might have been bad food. Was it something else after all? A birthday disease, with symptoms of medieval monster who granted wishes? Had her mother wished to be brave enough to leave what she could no longer cope with? Flora stared down at her hands. The tictac container nested within them, and she remembered playing doctor, pretending the tiny capsule candies were medicine. Anxiously, she upended the box and stuffed them all into her mouth at once. The shock of lime was enough to make her sit up in her seat, covering her mouth and chewing frantically to get past the crunchy coating, and despite the emptiness of the gesture, she did feel a tiny bit better. Even sugar pills worked in a crisis, she supposed. Her father glanced over at her and sucked in his breath, saying, "Hey there, Miss Gandy! I wanted some of those," but he ruffled her hair to show her he wasn't upset, not really, and Flora felt herself relax. Another normal Sunday. She wasn't sick, she would know.
The train shuddered to a halt, and sick or no, she felt herself being ushered out by her father, who bought more tictacs at a newsstand using the hapless-single-father logic that if one box had made her awake, two boxes would make her happy. These ones were orange, and Flora grabbed them obediently with no real desire to eat them, instead stuffing them in her pocket where they made a soothing sort of clicking as they shifted against each other. The soft noise and the cool air of the Priories, located in its own park near the water, revived her spirits and her curiosity despite the sleepless, frantic night she had endured. She waved to her father as he left for the office, and sat herself in the silent stone chapel, drawing her knees to her chest on one of the wooden chairs they had in rows for visitors. No sermons were held here anymore, not for centuries. The room itself had been removed bodily from far away across the sea, somewhere in Europe, but Flora found she was too distracted to recall. France, perhaps. Much of the collection in this branch of the UMA was from France, so the bet was safe enough. She ran her hands through her hair, and bit her lip as she ran out of hair to run them through far too soon for her liking.
"Molly had long hair," she murmured to no one, and no one replied. Molly had always wanted to do their hair. Flora had never had enough of it to do anything with. She sighed a sigh that was too old even for someone who had just turned all of twelve, and pulled her hair again, turning her head to the ceiling. The chapel was romanesque, so the arches weren't half so extraordinary as the gothic ceilings downstairs, but it was small and safe and good for thinking. No one was in the Priories this early, it wasn't even due to open for a good half hour, and Flora usually enjoyed the privacy afforded to the only unemployed soul in the building before it opened, but today it just felt lonely. Under her shirt, she felt her soul gem, and she fumbled for it, fishing it out and tipping the satchel it was held in open with a gentle shake. She held it to the light from the arrow-window of the chapel, and it was dazzling, something that could rival any stained glass display in the building. It was difficult to believe it had come from her own chest, from her own selfish desires.
She held up the tictacs for comparison. What if she wasn't sick? What if the wish actually worked on Monday when she went in to school? What if Jessica, Elsie and all actually talked to her, included her as much as they included each other?
What if Moll-
"No," she said aloud before she could catch herself, and tucked the soul gem away again. Murmuring more quietly, she added, "Don't think about that."
"That's what I told them," rasped a voice from the ceiling. Flora froze, her eyes dragging slowly upwards at the corbels. Nothing was there, and she stood up, backing out slowly.
"Paula?" she asked, calling out museum guards' names carefully. "Mark? Angelo?" It hadn't sounded like any of them.
"I like Angelo," the voice said again, and this time Flora was backed against the door, so she saw the movement out of the corner of her eye. "It sounds like angel," explained the man carved into the ceiling corbel, leering down at her with his chipped stone mouth.
Flora dropped her tictacs, her need for them and sleep quite vanished as terror filled her with a strange sort of dreamlike adrenaline. Had she been the type for screaming in museums, she would have done, but Flora was well-raised by a museum employee, and so she did the only thing she could do: she walked very stiffly away, the corbel musing to no one behind her back.
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Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 3:20 pm
She hadn't told her father.
She had walked very stiffly right into the office where he was working, watched him look up and ask her what was wrong, and then walked right back out, out of the office, out of the corridor, and into the gift shop, where she had adamantly refused to leave until his shift was done. It made her sick to keep secrets from him, because though Flora Gandy didn't have many people she could talk to, her father had always been one of them and this thing had happened in the museum, which was a place they had always shared. First a medieval beast and now a talking corbel. Perhaps she really was sick. Could she even have dreamed up the gem?
At school the next day, she held it to the light. There was only one thing to do to find out, she supposed, and that was to see if it worked. Wondering if perhaps she had to do something to activate it, she pressed the clover in the middle and gingerly tried to turn the top. Did it open? How would she know if it was working? It seemed to her now that the only way she was not sick like her mother would be if somehow she could prove to herself that this thing had done what it signified and her friends would speak to her.
Elsie sat down next to her for a moment, and Flora's heart jumped. Her friend took the little trinket, and Flora felt the sudden, vicious urge to snatch it back, but stifled it. Holding it up to the light, Elsie noted, "That's pretty, Flora. What is it?"
"Um, a birthday gift," Flora stammered quietly, and held her hand out for it again, looking somewhat hopefully at the other girl as if expecting her to say something more.
Elsie didn't give it back, but looked back at Flora for once, asking, "Was it expensive, do you think? I want one!"
"I don't know how expensive it was," replied Flora quite honestly, because she knew well enough that wishes could be quite expensive indeed. "Um, may I have it back?"
"Does it do anything?" asked Elsie, handing it over less than willingly.
"It's supposed to..." Flora bit her lip, drumming her fingers on the desk, "Um, you know..."
"Grant wishes." There. She had said it, and that was more truth than she had told even her father. She felt a sharp pang of guilt all of a sudden, and when Elsie asked what she had wished for, all she could do was stammer "A boyfriend!!" and smile wanly as Elsie laughed, then left. And that was it. A brief, polite conversation with someone who still seemed as distant as ever she was. Flora felt like she'd been punched. Was she really crazy? She at least knew now that the gem was real, Elsie had seen it and held it in her hands, but what did it matter when nothing had happened? Without friends, the trinket was just a trinket, useless and expensive looking like the Faberge eggs on display at the UMA, except there was not even anything inside it.
The longer the school day dragged on, and people passed by without seeing her, the more desperate Flora became. Thinking of the Faberge eggs, she became sure that there must be some way to open her own egg, and unleash something that might make her wish come true. She couldn't be sick, she thought, not like her mother. The egg was real. The corbel, the grotesque, all those could be fake, but here was the egg in her hands, as if waiting, and all day she fiddled with it, trying to unlock it in any way she could without resorting to breaking it. Her father had taught her that beautiful things should be handled with care, but as the hours dragged on and classes slipped past, Flora began to feel the desperation that seized her when she made the wish resurface. Biting it down, she swallowed some tictacs, because they were there from the day before, and because once upon a time, she had thought they were medicine.
She invited Jessica to the UMA when the final bell rang. Her friend excused herself, and Flora was alone.
Alone on the train, alone in the atrium, alone in the side room where she had last cried, the day before the birthday fiasco began. She stared at the soul gem, and at the ceiling, and realized her situation was worse than before. She was not just alone, she had lied to her father, and even if he didn't know it, there was now a rift between them that she could not bridge. The UMA couldn't be their place together while she kept the secret about the corbel. Even if she was sick, it was better than loneliness, and the wish, she thought with a pang, hadn't worked. She would tell him, she resolved. It was the only thing left. Wishes were silly and immature things, and making one meant she would just have to pay the full consequences.
Still, she was only twelve, and the thought made her hiccup with fear and self-pity, and so she buried her head in her knees, pulling her skinny legs up onto the couch.
"Oh, you aren't going to cry again, now are you?"
This time, Flora could not maintain her museum composure, and failed the voice's expectations when she screamed instead.
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Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 6:37 pm
Flora Gandy could remember the day she met Molly Peterson, because she had dropped her books and Molly had run over to help her pick them up. They had started to talk, and for once it had been easy for Flora to do so, and they didn't stop talking, not for a long, long time. It had been a pure kindness, and she had cherished it so dearly that even today, were she not so busy sitting on the floor of a prestigious art museum screaming, she could recall to mind the precise way Molly had introduced herself, how her arm moved as she stuck out her hand, the angle of her crooked smile. Kindness had that effect on Flora. She never forgot an instance of it.
What she remembered now was not a kindness. "Hush your interminable wailing, please!" hissed the voice in the room with her.
She stopped immediately, more out of shock than anything else, but if there was anything that made Flora Gandy herself, it was an ingratiating urge to please others, even strange disembodied voices. Hiccuping some more despite herself, she asked the only thing she could. "Is it the monster again?" She looked around with some barely-concealed hope, because after the day she had, she thought explanations were well nigh in order. In fact, they could very well forestall the need for her to tell her father about the whole dreadful affair the past two days had been for her, and if she could just go back to the way things had been before she started hearing things, that would be worth all the trouble and disappointment. But the voice did not reply, not for long moments, and when it did, it sounded just as apprehensive as she felt.
"...Flora?"
Her eyes darted around the room, but to no avail. "Stop hiding!" she begged. "Just t-tell me what you've done! None of my friends will talk to me still, and that stupid egg doesn't work at all!"
There was no monster slinking out to reveal itself, but another voice butted in, then another, then another.
"Don't you think she heard him!"
"Aye, so she did!"
"Nay, she doth not say anything that maketh good sense. She but rambles."
"You hardly make sense yourself half the time, buster."
"Arretez vous, c'est impossible!"
"Oh, arretez yourself, she heard him!"
"Quiet!" ordered the first voice, which only caused the others to burst into flurries of protests, and Flora to cover her head in complete overwhelmed bafflement. But as she slowly steeled herself to look up, the multitude of voices finally became obvious. Every single portrait and statue in the room, even the figures carved in the fireplace grate were moving their mouths rapidly, their faces twisted into various expressions, all of them bickering back and forth with each other over whether or not she could hear them. Heart beating like a frantic butterfly, Flora backed spiderlike against the wall in desperate fear. All the exhibits stopped simultaneously as she moved, those that could do so turned to scrutinize her.
"I'm not sick!" she insisted, more to herself than them. Some of their faces changed- the aquamanile on the end table looked puzzled. "L-leave me alone!" she reiterated desperately, and the portrait of the Earl of Derby shook his head, speaking in the first voice that Flora had heard when she came in the room.
"But we're your friends."
A cold realization flooded her head and went straight to her stomach, where it curdled and sickened her. I wish I had friends who talked to me.
Flora Gandy never forgot meeting friends, but as she looked into the young Earl of Derby's eyes, she knew that this was something she'd rather run away from and never remember. The Earl of Derby was giving her a crooked, Mollylike smile, but she shook her head, murmuring "No, no, no," and then louder, "No. No, no no, no!" Then, because she was her father's daughter, she walked, not ran, out of the room, and did not even stop in the gift shop on the way out.
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Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:51 pm
"Elsie?"
Flora cleared her throat nervously and whispered again.
"Elsie?"
"Yeah?" asked Elsie, who was her desk partner for Mrs. Arthur's mathematics class, and currently deeply engrossed in drawing cats all over her notes.
"I was just wondering, I know I've asked you before, but, um, would you like to maybe, um," Flora stabbed at her own notes with her ballpoint pen, biting her lower lip and staring at the blackboard as she spoke. "WouldyouliketogototheUMAwithmetoday?"
"I'm really busy," Elsie replied quickly. "But maybe we can hang out and study before the test?"
"O-of course!" Flora exclaimed, but at that moment the bell rang. Elsie swung her long, gangly legs out of her seat, and neatly stepped over Flora's backpack, making a beeline for the door with the rest of the students looking to escape into the rainy Teufel Town afternoon. Flora was quick to follow, but her eyes were scanning the hallways for someone else. Spotting them, she opened her mouth to call "Jessica--" but stopped herself when she saw Elsie meet up with Jessica and walk away. She glanced around for a few moments more, then clenched her hands more tightly on her backpack straps and fast walked to the train.
She had forgotten her umbrella at home that morning, but she barely noticed the rain, except for the wetness soaking her socks. More pressing was her failure to get any of her friends to come with her to the UMA, today of all days.
Friends. The young Earl of Derby's voice rang out in her mind.
"We're your friends."
"No!" she muttered under her breath, and quavered a full body shake, which came from her chest and took over her limbs. The man sitting next to her on the train looked over, and she scooted closer to the window, her cheek almost pressed against the glass. When the train stopped next, she got off and walked to the UMA, stopping herself just before she climbed the very first step to its grand doors. Above the entrance, marble women leaned stone-still over the precipice of the roof, watching the milling crowd below. Flora had always found them to be reassuring, like welcome ladies. Until last Friday. Now she found herself squinting to try to see if they really were scanning the crowd after all.
She thought she saw a subtle tilt of a stony head, and it proved to be too much for her. Bustling across the street, she wedged herself into a back table in a café, and pulled out her phone, texting her father as quickly as she could before using some of her pocket money to order a big hot chocolate. Replying no, thank you, when the waiter asked if she had misplaced her parents (only one of them, and not the one that counted), she pulled her homework from her backpack and started doing it, chewing on her pen when she got especially frustrated. Every so often she'd look out the window at the UMA nearby, then look down again very quickly.
The pictures on the walls of the café remained obligingly silent. Flora realized she had been drawing the Earl of Derby on her math sheet from the past ten minutes, and let out a small noise of frustration. Eventually, the waiter brought her a cocoa refill, but she was long done with both the math sheet and the cocoa when her father finally finished with work and came to meet her.
"Why didn't you come inside, Daisybutton?" he asked, shaking out his umbrella before he came all the way through the door. "I could have rummaged up a hot drink for you if you were cold."
Flora shook her head mutely, and ran up to him, hugging his legs very tightly for a few moments, then clenching his hand in hers like a vise.
"Flora, what's wrong?"
"My friends." Flora whispered, and pulled him back out into the evening rain.
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Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:10 pm
Flora's hands were trembling as she held onto her father's jacket, jostling with him for space on the crowded train which would take them to the Priories, since it was Saturday, and Saturday meant Priories, and she knew that, but she also knew that something terrible and frightening had happened, and she wasn't ready to face it.
She should have never wanted things to change. Change happened all the time, and like everything that happened to the Gandy family, it was met with an yielding acceptance, better to bend than break. Flora had always just let things happen to her, mutely, desperately accepting of them in hopes that they might unhappen as easily as they occurred. Her mother, Molly, these new candlelight vigils and searches that intruded upon her time with her father now that the other girl at the UMA, (What was her name?), had gone missing. She had let these changes all wash over her, and her mother not being there did not even bother her so much now, if it ever had, and Moly was, ouch, just a dull thud in her heart that only visited every so often. Why had she wished to change anything? Why had she needed her friends to talk to her so badly? To prove they were real? Flora pressed her head to her father's reassuring back as people bumped past her, unseeing on the train.
To prove she was real?
She felt the sharp sting of tears-waiting-to-happen prickling behind her eyelids. She wasn't sad, she realized, but tired, tired and frightened of her life being so blatantly changed that there was no way to back out of it. She did not want to face the changes. She did not know how she was going to adapt to them.
But when the train shuddered to a halt, and the Priories melted into view, and the stone steps were ascended, bliss! Reprieve! For nothing spoke to her, and she could almost forget that the whole thing happened, that anything changed, that she does not suddenly have all these new people to let down, to disappoint with her frail, thin, boyish frame, and her hunched posture, and her lack of knowledge about One Direction, and for one blissful afternoon, she was just Flora in the Priories, though admittedly, at first she was jumpy, and that was different. But, after the hours were chased away, down into the sea with the setting of the sun, there was a reminder, on top of the door, just as her father was guiding her home.
"Tomorrow in the UMA," a corbel grotesque murmured, "The Earl wishes most urgently to speak with you."
Flora just nodded, mutely, imperceptibly, and her father looked concerned as she stopped replying to him, some silly little conversation they'd been having about cats, which died on her lips and no longer mattered. She knew what she had to do.
She had to bend before this broke her.
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