Everything's Eventual

Blossoms and Bells

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Gotham harbors many secrets and urban legends. Robinson Park is home to one of them. 

***

The tulips are blooming in Gotham City, new life pushing its way up through the ground, fighting for every inch of sunlight. Varying tones of red, from ruby to scarlet, mingle with the occasional deep violet flower—so dark a shade it appears almost black.

No one notices.

Everyone is too busy with their meetings, and their deadlines, and their oh-so-very important urban lives. Only a few even bother to glance at the scattering of green, but most forget there's anything extraordinary by the time they've hailed a cab, or been distracted by a shop window. Maybe some will remember later, and recount to whoever they come home to that they saw something unusual today.

After all, tulips very rarely bloom in December.

In Robinson Park, where children play in the fresh powdery snow, the flowers are especially friendly. They move a little more than the breeze should sway them; their petals open a little wider than the blossoms that will be here come springtime; they turn towards the sun a little more fully than they should, reaching thirstily for its rays.

But the children don't notice, as surely as the adults don't. There are too many snow angels to make, and wars to be waged with icy ammunition, and igloos to be built, for them to care that there's something odd beneath the frost. There is just too much to do in Gotham to stop and smell the roses—much less the tulips—no matter how old you are.

At the center of Robinson Park, the Hedge Maze stands like a silent sentinel, lightly dusted with snow. It's been fifteen years since it spontaneously grew up out of the ground, an outcast's haven. At first it was feared, but it was feared for reasons that nobody remembers anymore. Now, everyone knows Robinson Park is a place for children to play and adults to wander freely, even in the hours past twilight. In those fifteen years, there has been not one rape, or murder, or child abduction within its gates. There may very well be no safer place in Gotham.

A pair of emerald green eyes follow the children from within the foliage, their owner well hidden from sight. If the watcher looks on longingly, she does not let on; if the children know they are being watched, they don't either.

She watches one in particular, too small to play in the others' games—the only one to see the flowers amidst the snow.

She's about three or four, Ivy guesses, her blue eyes bright with curiosity, and she takes a few steps towards the flowers, valiantly poking up through the white. Lazily, they nod their heads in the breeze as the child reaches out to touch one with a mitten covered hand.

Ivy whispers and the tulips open in one graceful motion, eliciting a cry of surprise and delight. An impish smile lights up the girl's face—achingly familiar for all that she is a stranger—and the pale ghost of it touches her own.

The little girl, with golden blond pigtails peeking out from under a red wool cap, swoops down and pulls one of the tulips from the ground in her excitement. For a moment, Ivy feels a rush of rage at this abuse of her gift, but it doesn't seem to matter so much when the girl waves it around proudly, looking around for someone, anyone to share it with.

"Look!" she says to nobody in particular. "Look!"

Consumed with a game of tag, the others pay her no attention. Her exclamation is lost in the laughter and shouts of the children in the park.

The girl's shoulders slump, her arms dropping by her sides.

Dejectedly, she looks at the tulip in her hand, and then back at the flowers still in the snow.