“Is that what I think it is. Yes, yes. Oh yes, what a beautiful one it is. I remember the day I found that one in the far fields of the absorption emitting forest, it was a wonderful day. Careful not to tear the petals when pulling it out, a very delicate one, you must be exceedingly careful,” the elderly woman says in a youthful spirited heartwarming tone. Cider's face softens in seeing Anna's melt to elation, and the elderly florist smiles watching them both. Anna is Aglow in the flora's pungent scent, and the warmth flowing from the vermilion and yellow of the sun flowering rose's refulgent radial blooming bud. With sharp spiraling petals resembling licks of plasma frozen in place, blissfully pleasing to her sense of sight. As long as she look to the petals silky textured delicately decorated ink blot patterns, she is released from everything but it's own subconscious pleasing subliminal strumming sight.
He sees that it's some of its shades of orange bare resemblance to the color of her hair. Hiding his fluster in choosing the one that most closely resembles her, he gently hands the slender emerald stem of his slip up into her accepting hands. He's stands enamored in her admiring the unblemished light like rose of his choice for her.
“Oh yes. Yes a good choice is that one, though it doesn’t live very long once it's off its roots,” the florist says. The sun flowering rose lasts only a few seconds more, before it quickly dulls. The bud dims and flickers then fizzles out like a faulty light bulb, dropping its petals and wilting to ash falling past her open palms.
“Sorry,” he says apologetically, “for picking one that you could have for such short time.”
“It's okay, then it wouldn't be appreciated for what it is. it would be something different. Mean something different,” she says.
“Why? you don't like it?” he asks.
“No I do, but it's that you chose to do it for me that matters more. And your choice was...one you thought I would like because you like it,” she says smiling more brightly than before.
“Well done my boy, but why did you do it the hard way?” The blurry visioned florist asks with tilted head.
“Well then how do you do it?” he says, and the lilac robed woman shifts her hat about her head, then answers his question by conducting as though and orchestra, the stems of the flora to bend and bow to the wobbly waving of her cane.
“Why didn't you do that before?” he asks sourly.
“Why should've I or should I have?” the florist replies.
“What a charming old woman,” Anna laughs.
“A deliberate Sphinx I think,” he says, fruitlessly brushing the pollen powder from his sleeve.
“Besides, we really should be on our way,” she says, to politely ease their way out without hurting the florist’s feelings.
“Ach, oh ah, noo, it's no problem. I think the way you’re looking for is back this way, I'm sure of it,” she says waving her cane for them to follow.
“Got any bread crumbs?” Cider jokes to Anna while pulling her sleeve.
“Shh, she's nice.”
“Oh ah. It's back this way, through the back door of the backroom. I think. Either way, this way follow me,” the florist says turning swiftly on her heels then sauntering on her lacquered stick toward the growing flow of bee's.
“Watch it with those, that one is carnivorous,” the florist says.
“Which one?” she asks.
“I don't know, I don't see very well,” the florist says as a few fleshy frog like tongues snap taut just shy of Anna's flushed peach cheeks. Their feet kick up puffs of glittering pollen, to lazily float and veil the solid cedar floor thunking under their six sauntering steps and her stick. They come to the half opened door of a lightless room, with bee's streaming in an out and all around them. The florist fiddles with its polished brass doorknob before tapping it with her walking stick.
The door creaks open to show a thirty foot wide, forty eight foot high lustrously surfaced core of an asymmetrically sundered beehive. Exploded and frozen in place mid burst with tens of smaller thriving hive fragments suspended in orbit around it. All formed from a coral colored wax with the appearance of an aerogel laboriously crafted from the bee's warm viscous gold glittering wax by generations of buzzing drones. Each honeycomb is secreting sticky sweet liquid crystalline magenta dripping down to the tiled ground the hive is hovering over. The biggest hole in the hive is small enough to be plugged with Anna's open palm, but she's petrified by the humming buzz of bees buzzing all around her. Frightened by hundreds of erratically passing stingers, though entranced by the thick pollen streams they leave floating in the air behind them, that are encircling the hovering hunks of hive. The floor is missing every other tile with empty black rectangular holes in their place instead.
“Look at that color,” Cider says.
“Yeah like the sky when we were sitting in air waiting to fall,” Anna says.
“Yes yes. Very nice. Would you like some more honey, fresh, very fresh,” the florist asks, then shuffles quickly up to the hive and without a care in the world she starts repeatedly whacking a fragment almost twice her own height with her walking stick. Freezing a look of horror over Anna's face that makes Cider hold his stomach and chuckle.
“Oh no, no no, it's okay. I'm full, but thank you,” she says squeamishly.
“What?” the florist shouts, continuing her thwacking assault.
“We don’t want anymore, thank you,” Anna says a bit more forcefully.
“What? it's very good, yes very good, with Acumen, or cumin, or something,” the florist says, vigorously continuing her hive shaking.
“I said no thank you, but thank you,” Anna says.
“What? you'll have to speak a little louder, my ears are filled with wax dear,” the florist says fluently fencing the floating fragment of hive, and riling up the bee's to angrily amass in the air around the three.
“We don't want any more honey,” Cider says.
“What? I can't hear you over the all the buzzing,” the florist says.
“You’re upsetting the bee's,” Anna says.
“Bee's? this batch, no, this one here, is of vermillion jackets. Very deadly, the defenders of the rest. Yes they are,” the florist shouts while beating the hive chunk like a child beats a pinata.
“Ahh,” Anna says utterly afraid. Cider turns to her whimper then breaks into laughter in seeing the backside of her fleeing the flower shop as fast as she can, with a few yellow jackets chasing after her carrot colored hair.
“Ahh! Cider!” She screams looking back to see the elderly, very nimble for her untold age, florist valiantly parrying and thrusting her stick through a blue hornet, easily swatting a yellow, then impaling vermilion out of the air.
“Don't forget the blossoming fruits of the beloved,” the elderly woman shouts as goodbye to the two in their flight as she fights on.
“Think she'll be okay?” she asks.
“Seemed like she was winning when I left,” he says.
“That was a second ago.”
“What? you wanna get stung by a bee the size of your open hand?” he asks.
“No!” she says. A loud yell, a battle cry comes from down the hall they've just left, stopping the two in their tracks. Then a crunch, of the florist biting off a bee's head, and the swift swiping of her walking stick whipping through the air returns.
“I think she's okay, I hear her stick cutting the air,” Anna says.
“Good let's go,” he says swinging the backdoor open.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Into the rain
The door swings opens to a long, lacquered marble walled hall with a brightly lit square standing a ways away as the other end. She slams the it closed quickly and strolls away from the humming of bee's behind them, toward the strumming of tens of drums rolling under an array of quivering strings. In passing through the next doorway they enter a big round ballroom without walls, whose floor is a crystal clear days shades of rich cyans and lighter blues cut from a single slab of metamorphic stone. Vertically striped polished o
nyx pillars are spaced in a circle around what is a ballroom floor, arching inward though suspending nothing but the open sky of a hundred stories up. The ambient of muted citrus colored cirrostratus particles is ceding to a blank white, while aligning into layers of electromagnetically drawn webs converging into a massive mesocyclone to the east. The remaining ambient orange is being slowly replaced by shades of deepening lapis and ultramarines.
To the right of the room’s round floor is a splotch of azurite spilling like a waterfall would over the edge, and down the face of the gothic gold trimmed chocolate brown skyscraper. To the left of the room is a couple of people fashioned from the finest woods. They have strings tightly strung and spread over the outside of their lavishly lacquered hollow bodies. They're moving in operatic musings with one another, filling the ballroom with smoothly flowing orchestral sounds emanating from the strums and strokes of strings strung from head to toe over every bend and joint of their bodies. They go about playfully acting out scenes of a play to the ears and eyes of all who can hear the undertones, of their to bone grabbing baritone ballet. Before them is a group of crystal clear glass looking people wearing a treasure chest of light pink and lemon yellow jewels. Appearing to be silhouettes of the sky swirling blues of the floor, risen and distorted into pairs of ballroom dancers stepping in sequences and circles. Dancing along with the other couples in a flawless display of fluidly moving choreography, as their feet sweep the ground into small waves and wakes, spiraling around their partners as they spin with their arms on each other’s shoulders and waist.
“Let’s pretend,” he says.
“Pretend what?” she asks.
“This will last forever,” he says, spreading a smile to her face.
“What else is there to do?” she replies though both knowing that it likely won't. He takes her hand in his and they step into the edge of the circle, she takes a second, only a second, to watch their movements while they wait for a chance to jump between the dancers swirling around the floor. She pulls him into a hop over a wake to wobble, trying not to fall into the sweeping swirls of fluidly moving sky blue people surrounding them. Smiling, at seeing her slight overbite while biting her blush pink bottom lip with her honey eyes are looking up to him, he pulls her closer, then further away.
“Come on you can do better than that,” he says.
“You’re doing just as bad,” she laughs.
“Maybe,” he says, and they banter and tease instead of caring to keep their balance, mostly just scuffing the floor while stumbling over each other’s feet. Taking her hand in his, and a sliding the other around her hips, as she pressing her chest to his.
“Stand on my feet,” he says.
“So we'll definitely fall?”
“Or you'll scream you mean?” he says. They drift in slow circles for several minutes unnoticed by anyone around them, and not noticing anything past each other’s faces. The particle sky deepens to midnight blues, masking the azures of the floor flowing over the edge the two have been drifting toward for minutes. Anna puts her arm around his neck, pulling his head closer to hers. He's lost in the feeling of having someone so precious to him, and holding her close enough to share the heat of his body, to share the same air and feel the others heart beating. Swaying back and forth embracing each other in the center of a carousel of fluid crystalline blue sky silhouettes dancing their lives away.
Oblivious to them spilling over the edge now nearly the same color as the sky, the two are afloat surrounded by glass people who are spreading and skating through the air, leaving light bending wakes distorting windows and facades of a hundred stories up. They're gliding, giddily dancing over the empty space between the skyscrapers, of seven streets meeting at the gravitational fringes of a small horizon park. A small square patch of fall colored field formed by the continuously melting leaves falling from the tops of trees contorted into waves cresting toward each other around its flat as a field center.
“Don't look down,” he says.
“Why not? we're on solid grou..,” she trails off looks down, then jumps up squeezing his neck to a gargle.
“Oh, aah!” she screams. Two hundred feet above the rolling white spheres, space time fog and the visible currents of ambient particles sweeping around the crowds of phase shifting peoples superstructures. The two are now forty feet from the chocolate brick wall and gold trimmed windows of the hotel they've floated from. She looks down for longer than a glance, then relaxes her grip, she stands on her own two feet in the air. Smiling, laughing and hopping up and down, then pulling him back into their sloppy frolicking attempt at ballroom dancing. Spinning and jumping like she's walking on air, their bodies glow when face to face with the fluorescent mineral facades. Sailing high above the ground, staying gleefully suspended for almost an hour before they lazily descend while over an undulating street filled with Central’s ceaseless city traffic.
“Oh, go to the right?” he says, and they spin frantically in place out of sync scaring the hell out of both for several seconds.
“Anna!” he shouts.
“What? my right or your right?” she laughs.
“I dunno.”
“My left,” she says, and they sweep into a sauntering spin through a tightening spiral downward. Floating close to the pollen stippled crest of the parks tree's autumn leaves and waxy waves. Leaving the orchestral strums of the hollow string people as whispers high above and behind them. Passing under spotlights used to light a blank film screen for the purveyors of the park on weekends, casting their shadows onto it for a second before roughly landing. Tumbling onto the picnic patch of melting fall leaves filling the middle of this small park. Already knee deep in the melting wax that's thick as molasses, then struggling not to sink while wading slowly through it. The two break a sweat that cools and solidifies, then cracks off their skin in chips and flakes.
It starts drizzling large watery drops, causing the wax to cool into a sludge thinly glazed and lustrously reflecting the midnight blue ambient and florescent skyscrapers light above and around them. Out of breath from wading, descending a short set of granite slab stairs down to the fluidly fluctuating obsidian asphalt streets. They walk down the street, toe to heel along the curb,, again feeling the visible currents of particle winds sweep across their faces and fingertips.
“Wanna get out of the rain?” he asks.
“Not really,” she says, holding her hand out and waiting to catch the penny sized drizzle in her palm.
“Get a bite to eat. I think there's a diner down the street over there” he says.
“Let's hope it's actually a diner this time,” she says.
“Ladies first,” he says pulling the door open to a scene that's not the cozy looking diner of the front window, but a small wood furnished stone walled candle lit cafe resembling a catacomb of a cavern. Swaying gemstone pendulums hang from the ceiling, beaming diffracted reflections onto the faces of the phase shifting particle patrons sitting around pink and white tablecloths clothing the stone tables set with stained stoneware and wine glasses filled to the rim with a medicine cabinet of fluids.
“The food smells good enough to eat,” he says.
Snif sniff snifff “it's burning flesh, and they use too much garlic, way too much. But okay,” she shrugs. Thinking he's always hungry, it's a wonder he's not fat as Elvis by now. Probably from all that running, from the Ribbits, from death, from himself. The two wade through a waist high bog of coats hung on the backs of chairs, eyeing the plates in passing with their noses. They find an empty table in the middle of a tightly packed group of table clothes and take to scanning the menu before even taking to the worn cushioned seats.
“Ahh, much better,” he says as he sits.
“Does this place seem a little, odd?” she asks.
“Odd how?”
“I mean, like occultish?” she says scanning with startled eyes.
“I don't know what you mean.”
“The small skulls on the chairs, and furniture. Only c
andles for lighting, the swinging pendulums, the runic writing scribbled on everything, some I know are alchemic, and this menu is made of what I think is lambskin,” she says.
“Who knows probably for ambiance, a theme or something. Look, they have wraps, nothing to worry about,” he says. A gaunt looking tall blue haired girl tip toes across the skulls on the backs of the chairs to make her way to their table. Leaning over them with a fanged grimace to ask in a villainous, but submissive voice, “anything to drink?”
“An apple cider please” she says.
“Really?” he asks.
“Yeah why not.”
“And you” the undead looking waitress asks.
“A pink lemonade” he says.
“No liquor today? I'm astonished.”
“Not a drop.”
“Oh I'm so proud of you,” she feigns sarcasm.
“There are days I don’t drink.”
“Which day? where of what? I haven’t seen one.”
“Maybe I just think your sour,” he quips.
“Soon you won't have to deal with that anymore,” she says, not realizing what she said until after she said it. Intending a joke but causing a spell of silence between them lasting for a few thunderstruck seconds. Realizing what she said, she stammers, bites her lip as he looks away to avoid her honey eyes alit in panic. Then smiling to himself at the thought of her caring enough to fret over his feelings, and her silent admission that she feels the same way about them parting.
“And anything to eat while you’re here?” the undead looking girls voice interrupts their silent exchange.
“A duck soup for her, and I'll have a-”
“Pastrami sandwich” she finishes his thought with a smile.
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