Old Habits Die Hard

Chapter 1: Tulips

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining but not too brightly, birds were singing but not too loudly, and the dew decided to linger on the grass for a bit longer than usual, causing the lawn to sparkle in the sunlight. Finally, the humans had left home, and the garden came to life.

"Good morning, my dear Juliet," Gnomeo said with a smile as he offered his hand to help Juliet down from the wooden stool on which she stood.

Juliet joyfully took his hand. She could have technically gotten down just fine on her own, and she certainly would have had it been someone like her father or Paris, but Gnomeo- Gnomeo was different. She didn't feel the need to constantly prove herself to him. In fact, it'd probably take a whole lot of convincing to make him see her as anything less than the toughest gnome there ever was. "Good morning, my dear Gnomeo," she replied.

Gnomeo and Juliet had, much to their own excitement, been set right beside each other in their new garden. Saying good morning was one of the few interactions they could share in their new, busy lives.

Roughly six months had passed since the Terrafirmananator incident caused their families to unite. Since then, Miss Montague and Mr. Capulet had decided to get a fresh start, packed up, and moved to a brand new duplex only a few streets away from their old. Their new yard, much to the excitement of their garden gnomes, was bigger than the old red and blue gardens combined. It was, however, a complete dump. Nevertheless, thanks to the hard work of the gnomes, their yard was now an expanse of fresh green grass and empty flower beds, but work was still far from over, seeing as spring was fast approaching and a vast majority of their flowers still needed to be planted.

Still holding Juliet's hand and being the helpless romantic that he is, Gnomeo planted a gentle kiss on his beloved's knuckles. Every morning since he'd met her, Gnomeo seemed to feel just as excited to see Juliet again and again.

Juliet knew how Gnomeo felt just by seeing the way he looked at her. She wanted to tell him how she felt the same but before she could get the words out-

"This is why we're so behind schedule! You Reds are too hard-headed to get anything done!"

"Maybe we could get something done if you Blues weren't pasturing us all the time!

Turning around immediately, our protagonists (and Shroom of course) saw a fuming Lord Redbrick and Lady Blueberry exchanging verbal blows while a flustered Featherstone tried his best to calm them down.

As soon as they arrived at the scene of the crime, Lady Blueberry looked to her son for help.

"Gnomeo, tell Lord Redbrick that the hydrangeas would look so much better for the color scheme of the garden in this flowerbed here."

"Juliet," Lord Redbrick chimed in, "tell Lady Blueberry that I have always planted my tulips on the northernmost side of my garden and always will."

Featherstone, standing awkwardly to the side, appeared to be the only reliable witness, so Juliet asked the question, "Featherstone, can you tell us what happened here?"

"I definitely can- It was Terrible! Lord Redbrick came to me and said, "'Featherstone, can you plant these tulip pods in that flowerbed over there?'" I said, "'Okie dokie, Mr. Lord Redbrick, sir."' And then I got to work- digging holes is kinda hard when you don't have any hands, ju know? AND THE Lady blueberry came up to me and said, "'Featherstone, what are you doing?"' And I said '"Lord Redbrick told me to plant the tulip pods"' And then they started yelling and-"

"Thank you, Featherstone. That's all I need," Juliet said with a sigh.

An equally frustrated Gnomeo begged the question, "Why do you two always fight like this? This shouldn't even be a problem."