Dress:
- Green strapless bikini and sunglasses. A peony is in her hair.
Location:
- Sitting on a lounge chair by the pond, then standing next to the pond.
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Gabby was silent so long, Lupé was beginning to wonder if she should say something. She was also beginning to worry a little that someone might have been after Gabby’s “peonies”... and that that was something Gabby was upset about.
But Gabby seemed to snap out of it more or less of her own accord, so Lupé relaxed again. To her surprise, Gabby actually accepted the invitation. She honestly hadn’t expected her to, although she was certainly happy she did. Of course, that opened up an entirely new problem: Lupé thought nothing of crashing a party on her own – the worst that could happen would be that she would get thrown out, and she could live with that – but if the party-goers were less than welcoming to Gabby... Lu would feel partly responsible for that.
Well, there was no point in dwelling on it. If it happened, it happened, and Lu would deal with it then. Besides, now she had strawberries.
“I should really wait for Gabby to come back to have some,” she mused aloud, and then took a bite out of one.
“No, no, that’s enough. A good friend would wait for Gabby to come back,” she chided herself, and then took another bite.
“Okay, okay, obviously I had to finish off that one I bit, because waste is a crime, but I’d be a real lowlife if I actually went and took another,” she resolved, as she picked out another strawberry and took a bite.
“I’m such a terrible, terrible person,” Lu whined, offering herself another bite to console her hurt feelings.
Her attention fell on the peony Gabby had left, and Lu sat up in the deck chair, letting her legs dangle over either side with the peony between them. She stared down at it thoughtfully, then picked it up and examined it carefully. Lu was an engineer, not the least bit biologically inclined – and certainly not bent toward poetry and art – but she was nevertheless fascinated by natural things like flowers. Such exquisite machines, and amazingly, their function was to be beautiful, and they succeeded so ably at it.
She inspected the flower very carefully for a very long time, even gently stroking the petals to feel their texture, and spreading them apart to see the stamen inside. She smiled whimsically, and whispered, “Well, Anders... you always say I lack any shame.” She started trying to fix the peony in place in her hair, fiddling with using a hairpin to keep it in place. “This probably won’t make up for it, but... it’s a start, right, liefje?”
It took some fussing, but Lu finally managed to fix the peony in place in her hair. She smiled triumphantly and looked around for something reflective to use as a mirror. There was the water, but that was too far, and there was her sunglasses, but to use them would risk dislodging the flower. With a resigned sigh, Lu smiled, closed her eyes and whispered, “Well, liefje? Am I mooi now?”
Lupé chuckled at a private joke, then slowly and languidly got up, stepped clear of the deck chair and stretched luxuriously. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the surface of the pond – as smooth as a sheet of glass, which was by design; the shape of the pool and surrounding landscaping was specifically designed to protect the pond surface from wind, precisely in order to create the perfect reflecting effect. Lupé looked at it sideways for a long time, frowning, then finally with a noise of disapproval, “Fek,” she turned and walked over to the side of the pond. She stood on the side of the pond with her hands on hips and a blank expression, and stared at her reflection staring back at her. And after a long moment of staring, she said, softly and without emotion, “Anything too perfect in this world is doomed to ruin.” then dipped a toe in the pond and flicked it outward. The resulting churning and ripples obliterated her reflection.
Lupé stared at the destroyed surface of the pond for a long time, thoughtfully, watching the chaotic dance of colour that might be her broken reflection.
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Summary:
- Lupé eats a couple of strawberries and puts the flower in her hair, then gets introspective while waiting for Gabby.
