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 Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:16 pm
On paper, this errand had sounded simple enough. Take the department pickup truck, go to the garden center, pick up six flats of pansies, come back. In practice, it was proving to be much more difficult, namely because when he arrived at the garden center, there were no pansies to be found. A few calls to his supervisor later, and he was waiting for the staff to get their business together and magically produce flowers that they did not appear to have. After about half an hour of standing around, his knee began to act up, and Carson sat down at a patio set (Clearance! 30% Off!) and stretched out his leg. He checked the time on his phone, snapped an exaggeratedly bored selfie to send to Elke, and looked around. The salesgirl had disappeared entirely. He sighed and wondered how essential the pansies were. Maybe he could get some marigolds instead and everything would work out okay. Or he could at least put this behind him and get back to work. God. He was impatient in such a bad way. Carson leaned forward and drummed his hands against the patio table, but it made an awful racket, so he stopped. He looked around again. Was he going to waste away here? He sent Elke another overdramatic selfie and sighed.
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Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 1:13 pm
Desma's life had changed so much the day her mother passed away, she'd been out of town and come home for the funeral. The last time they spoke wasn't pleasant, hell none of their interactions were pleasant. She vowed to get it all together, and that meant making the house look nice. Her mother used to have her plant pansies and impatiens every spring in the front beds to high light the perennial tulips and irises. Before she hated it, would moan and complain, now she felt as if the action would be almost cathartic.
It figures, Desma thought blowing a piece of hair out of her eyes, the one type of annual she'd come out looking for they couldn't find. She wanted one measly flat.
Huffing at the sales representative, she grumbled, "Look, can you call someone? Is this even your department?" The sales rep looked apologetic, promised he'd return with an answer.
"One flat!" she called after him, "Just one flat of pansies, doesn't matter the color!" Desma shook her shaggy hair and fumbled with the gardening equipment in her arms, carts were for suckers, jugging small spades and packages of seeds she stood one hip cocked glowering after the sales representative.
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Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2015 12:38 am
Carson looked up from his phone, his attention drawn by the commotion going on a few short yards away. "Join the club," he called to the young woman, watching the salesperson disappear. So that made two associates sent in search of pansies - maybe there was a gaping black hole back in the stockyard that made sure they would never reappear. "I had six flats of pansies on pre-order and they can't find a single one." Someone had, like, selectively bought out the entire stock of pansies or something. It was super weird, and it was very near to ruining his day. He was completely behind schedule, and he wasn't sure his supervisor would like this excuse. Carson pinched the bridge of his nose and wished he hadn't left his sunglasses in the truck. "We seem to have stumbled upon a flower shortage," he said, "Which is weird, but not the weirdest thing I've even seen this month, so normally I'd allow it, except I was supposed to have these things back by noon so we could get started planting them and, uh." He held up his wrist, indicating an expensive but sort of old sports watch. "It's twelve oh five, so I'm <********>."
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Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 1:23 pm
Des turned to the blue haired man and tried hard not to scowl. She hadn't thought to put anything on pre-order, and now he'd probably get all the flats before he would. What in the world does she need six flats for!She strolled over and unceremoniously dropped her items on the patio table and plopped down. "It's Destiny City," she stated matter of fact, "Nothing is ever weird here." Boy, you could say that again! Aliens and superheros, huzzah! "Light the Bat Signal, It's a crisis," she smiled and stuck her hand out, "I'm Desma. Why in the world do you need that many pansies on a schedule, no less?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 11:44 pm
Carson shot Desma a hesitant look, which turned bemused as soon as it became clearer that she was joking. It was Destiny City, so any protestations to the tune of things never being weird were, of course, jokes. He'd seen for himself just how weird things could get... but that didn't really seem like a conversation he ought to have here. Elke had been hesitant to share the full details of her world with him, and he couldn't just go and dump that on someone else unexpectedly, especially at noon in the garden center, seated around a discount patio table. It would just be rude. "Carson," he answered, shaking firmly. "I'm a groundskeeper at the university. We're doing our Spring landscaping, and I drew the short straw, so I've got to pick up the flowers." At least it probably wasn't going to snow again this late in the year - winter had run weirdly long. "But from the sounds of it," he said, gesturing to the saloon doors that all the sales associates had disappeared through, "I don't think I'm going to be getting them. So there goes my day. What about you?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 3:21 pm
Desma didn't notice his look and continued smiling. She'd been really trying at being a people person, getting out and trying to interact with others. She'd gone to an all girls school for troubled youth, and then spent a lot of time trying to be a 'bad girl' but in reality she was just a very scared and unhappy young woman. She was trying to get better, her mom would have wanted that.
"Oh! You don't look the Hagrid type," Crap she looked down. "Shouldn't have said that, sorry," she blushed. "I actually think being a groundskeeper would be a pretty neat job." she sounded genuine, she had found a real calling in agriculture and if she had had better grades in high school probably would have pursued a degree in it.
"Uh, when I was a kid my mom always wanted pansies and impatiens in the front yard, I guess it's just habit to pick them up every Spring."
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Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:39 pm
Carson paused. "No, I'm not the Hagrid type at all," he said after a moment's consideration. Groundskeeping wasn't his passion or his calling - it was just a work-study job so he could pay for his apartment and groceries. "It's just something to get me through school." Which was just the history of the world, right? The corporate buyer versus the little independent consumer? We had a gardener, he thought, biting his tongue - saying so would only make him sound like a rich kid slumming it, and he'd learned in the army to keep his family connections quiet. "My mother prefers lilies," he said, trying to sound less awkward. Jenn wasn't one for doing the gardening herself. "I ordered ahead," sighed Carson, setting his phone down on the table. Even solitaire was looking appealing at this point. "This is ridiculous. How do you run out of ******** pansies?"
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