New Flowers

White Gardenias

It was a cloudy Monday morning when Jon first found flowers on his desk.

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It was a cloudy Monday morning when Jon first found flowers on his desk.

Somebody had snuck into his office and left white gardenias in a foreign vase upon his desk, leaving the lights on and his chair out of place. The smooth texture of the petals resembled fancily folded napkins, or sheets stretched across a hotel mattress, even the thick lace of a bridal headdress.

But... why? And how? Every strange question sprinted through his mind, but he couldn't find an answer. Was it a message? A threat? An invitation?

The vase was circular and glass, pretty and also entirely unremarkable. It left a ring of water on the papers beneath it when Jon lifted it to examine. He turned it around, looked at it from each angle, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. The water was clear, the flowers pristine, and Jon felt frustrated. He delicately took one of the flowers out of the arrangement by the stem, running his fingers across the soft petals. Nothing. Jon wasn't sure what he expected, but it hadn't been nothing.

Right, then. He'd have to do some research.

When he searched up "white gardenia," he only saw shrubs, perfume, candles, and hand soaps. It had quite a nice smell, which he could sense now as well. Leaning in, he breathed in the scent of the gardenias, then momentarily panicked.

He'd just breathed in the scent of an unknown flower delivered to him out of work hours. He didn't know anything about the flower, who had sent it, he didn't know anything at all. Jon quickly searched "White gardenia toxic?" and sighed in relief as it appeared that they weren't dangerous to humans, according to the first few sentences of an article that was recommended.

Instead, he searched for white gardenia history and origin but didn't find anything at all that could be relevant. He briefly considered that they could've been misdelivered, but no. They were in his office, not on his doorstep. Whoever had left them had known who would find them.

Finally, he searched "white gardenia symbolism" and a whole mountain of information opened up to him.

They symbolized purity, love, peace, and harmony. They were often used in interior decoration and, oddly enough... wedding bouquets.

The symbolism was clearly nonsense since every flower he searched for afterward had similar poetry waxed about them. Purity, family, respect, first love. Every flower seemed to work for something. Clearly, the flower symbolism was just a large marketing ploy to boost sales for flower shops.

It was probably nothing, and there weren't any clues in the flowers or the vase as to their origin, so Jon decided he'd leave it alone for now. It was probably just a mistake, anyway. The monsters in the archive's statements weren't real, and beyond that, they didn't seem to make a habit of delivering flowers.

So it was a mistake, it must've been. After all, why else would there be flowers on his desktop? Who would even consider delivering flowers to Jonathan Sims?

So he let it be forgotten and the flowers lived on his desk, then died there as well after two long weeks of a strange brightness in his room. He finally threw them out when they started to go brown and wilted.

He didn't anticipate the assortment of peonies that would appear in the vase the very next day.

Note: this chapter has been edited. I didn't change too much, but I corrected a few things so the timeline would be more accurate. Jon doesn't know about monsters and entities yet, but I firmly believe that he would still think they were a message or a threat because he doesn't know how to respond to people being interested in him.

This work is also on Archive Of Our Own and fanfiction.net, under the username Fanaticit, that's me. 

Thank you dearly for every comment, and thank you to every person who reads this. Have a wonderful day! :)

--Fanaticit