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Out of Season (13) : One would think that winter would be dismal and gray, and after each snowfall there's a hefty dose of white covering up the world. Except, all winter bright patches of wildflowers begin sprouting straight through the frost--as if spring has decided to push its way into winter a few months early. Blues, pinks, yellows, and purples bloom in vivid clusters, warming the landscape with bursts of color that look impossibly alive against the cold. The flowers behave exactly like their normal spring counterparts--soft petals, gentle fragrance, and even suitable for tea or simple crafts. They’re simply appearing far too early. Whether it’s a harmless anomaly or a sign of something stirring beneath the seasons, the sudden blossoms bring an unexpected beauty to the winter chill.
Kua'kua knew exactly two things: fighting Chaos, and flowers. So far, she had proved exceptionally bad at fighting Chaos, or at least the strain of Chaos that had found her homeworld and subsequently killed it entirely.
So really she knew exactly one thing: flowers. So far, flowers hadn't failed her - or, rather, she hadn't failed them. Not yet, anyway.
She had spent some of her time learning about Earthling flowers. She had been pleased to discover that there were many different varietals, though they were spread out all over the planet, and most were not able to be found within the bounds of Destiny City (and Kua'kua was not confident enough in her limited knowledge of Earth to try anything like traveling yet, especially not just for the sake of flowers, pretty though they were). She was also pleased to find that the flowers worked in functionally the same manner they did on Kua'kua, in terms of they grew, how they lived and died. It was one tiny oasis of familiarity in a baffling, overwhelming, and vastly strange world.
So imagine Kua'kua's surprise when she spotted a small bunch of flowers, pushing their way through the layer of snow that had fallen and now refused to melt away. She frowned in consternation at the first little bunch, but did not stop her patrol; an odd thing was just that: an odd thing. It was possible the flowers weren't even real - the idea of plastic flowers had horrified her, but now that she was living through (surviving - barely) this thing called 'winter', she understood their purpose. It was nice to have color when the sky and the ground and the snow were all the exact same shade of white-gray and everything was frozen.
So it was a strange thing, to see flowers when she could barely feel her toes, but not that strange. What was more than strange? Seeing multiple bunches of flowers. Growing through the snow. After the third little sproutling, Kua'kua was successfully distracted from her patrol and lured over to investigate.
Kua'kua squatted near the flowers, careful to keep her puffy pants away from the snow as best she could. Cautiously, she reached a finger out and brushed, so gently, the petals of one of the flowers. It was soft, beautiful, and - definitely not plastic (which, she had decided, was a terrible invention and probably part of the reason Earth was so - dirty and terrible). More than anything, they were alive. In the freezing frozen snowy snow. These little flowers were not just alive, but thriving. Perhaps doing better than Kua'kua herself was, Kua'kua thought to herself but quickly pushed aside.
"How are you here?" Kua'kua asked, her voice a soft murmur. "How are you alive?" She waited a moment, mostly not expecting an answer, but - well, stranger things had happened. She gently tugged on one of the flowers, and found it was, definitely, growing out of the ground, same as any other flower in the world.
"What are you?"
lena roze
