A Garden of Flowers and Bones [Lloyd Garmadon x Reader]

Chapter 21: Flower Trail and Fairy Dance

TW: Public Humiliation, Sexual Harassment of a Minor

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Summer was nearing it's end, as it always tended to do when the final week of Nyalis rounded the corner. The telltale humidity of the oncoming rainy season seemed to build in the air. Blondie had found his way back to them on this particular sunny day.

There were plenty of clouds in the sky, to the point that the sun was occasionally quilted over for long drawn moments. Dwyn was in the field in front of the house sat on the chair that used to be left on the porch but had since been pulled and placed on the grass outside the barrier, along with the table that had been sat beside it, and a second chair from the dining table for Y/N to be seated. The young girl was enjoying a slice of Victoria Sponge Cake, tissue paper stuffed up her nostril from a sudden nosebleed she'd incurred a few moments earlier.

The sponge cake was, of course, provided from the bakery yesterday. Not a lot had happened that day. Laurence had tried to approach her on her break, but she had skillfully avoided him, only to overhear him being goaded on by his groupies as he jested about how 'shy' and 'flustered' she'd become around him... instead of acknowledging the obvious fact that she was avoiding him.

"How're you feelin, sweetheart?"

Dwyn finished chewing before speaking. It was a small difference, but something that made her think of Blondie, and so she smiled incredulously, shaking her head. That boy kept reappearing in her thoughts. It was almost as if every train of thought led back to him or something he'd done or something he'd said or some way he'd acted. 

It was as amusing as it was strange. This had never happened to her before. She'd never had someone constantly circulating her thoughts like this- or, someone who didn't depend on her to survive, she supposed.

"I'm good, thanks for the cake!"

"No worries, you're welcome," Y/N gently placed a hand on top of the youngster's head, much to her annoyance.

"You'll ruin the braids! Don't mess with it!"

"I'm not messin with it!"

"You always mess with it!" Dwyn chided, lightly batting the older girl's hand away and sending an indignant glare with her watery eyes.

"Not today! You're bein silly..." Y/N huffed.

"Yes today! Hands off!"

Just this morning, Y/N had finally accomplished a pair of french braids in the young girl's glimmering, golden hair. She'd been struggling with it before, but after some effort, she'd managed to braid from the scalp. Usually her braids came loose on the skull, and it was only possible to plait from lower down. The next step was to weave flowers in there. But that was too complicated for her for now, so it could wait until another day.

As one could easily guess, Y/N's mother never had the mental wherewithal to do domestic things like braid her hair or dress her up prettily, so Y/N was never taught these pleasures that some daughters got to experience. So Y/N was learning from scratch... and advice from Gayle (since Chamille had short hair and didn't really style it).

"Alright, alright. Hands are off," Y/N insisted, holding her hands up and showing her palms to demonstrate that she had, indeed, pulled them away.

Dwyn had always been protective of her honey-like curls. Trimming her hair used to be a big fuss- it was one of the only things that she threw tantrums over. At the time, Y/N was too immature to even try to understand where the wariness came from, and Dwyn had never tried to explain. But Y/N had since grown enough to understand that forcing Dwyn to have her hair cut or even pushing her to doing things that she had expressed she didn't like would get neither of them anywhere.