✓ 𝗦𝗘𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗟𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧, reddie

i. the flower

THE FLOWER!

　 ҉ LONG AGO, on a July fourth in the early eighties, a young woman found herself going into labor in her home next to her husband, the wooden floor soaked when her water broke. This mother's name was Harriet Kaspbrak; a beautiful woman with honey colored locks and umber freckles. On this fateful day, her first child was to be born. Her beautiful face was blanched in pain, though, the skin surrounding her eyes swollen and red as tears rolled down her cheeks from where she laid in her bed. Her husband, in a frenzy from the clear pain his wife was going to, panicked and ran to the phone to dial in the number of the one woman who would know how to assist.

Harriet's closest friend was a woman her own age named Margeret. The woman was a witch, and although it had received many curious and offput glances from passerbys who saw her as a phony, she'd owned her own little shop at the corner of town with her husband where she sold cursed and haunted items, as well as ones used to practice magic. One particular object upon first glance was seen to be a regular sundrop flower. However, when prompted with the right song found in ancient books that lined Margeret's shelves, the flower would begin to glow bright yellow. This wasn't all the flower had done, though, the woman discovered one day. She'd bruised her forehead when she hit it on a counter while standing, and after singing to the plant, her husband said he saw that the bruise on her forehead had faded away. She'd immediately docked up the price and put it behind the counter.

That day, Margaret pulled the item for her own personal use and set to work on a potion that could save young Harriet. As the woman cried out desperately in pain, Margeret focused on putting just the right amount of crushed flower petal paste and warm milk into a bowl for her closest friend to drink from. Trusting Harriet's husband to assist the woman in helping her sip the milk to help soothe the pain, she quickly used an empty glass necklace to pour in some of the flower's pollen and some of Harriet's blood. As Harriet cried, softer now, she clasped the necklace around the woman's neck and began to sing. "Flower, gleam and glow..."

Meanwhile, a woman by the name of Sonia had finally collected enough money from her job to purchase the flower that she so desperately wanted for months on end now, working extra shifts at her job to earn enough for it. Sonia was a wrinkled and thin woman, sickly so, with graying hair sprouting from her scalp. She'd seen the glowing flower and wanted it immediately, to restore her beautiful youth she'd once had so many years ago. She remembered how she looked in the forties, with her silky black hair and rosy lips, and wanted it so desperately to return. She'd went to the shop to purchase the flower when she saw that it was no longer on the shelf behind the counter where it used to sit. "Where is the sunflower?" Sonia asked the cashier sternly at the sight; he was a young adult man with the beginnings of facial hair and pointed cheekbones, Margeret's husband.

"Oh, the healing sundrop?" He asks, looking over his shoulder to the empty space, "My wife's good friend needed it to survive her first birth. I'm sure you understand." He speaks calmly, but Sonia does not understand. Instead of shouting and raving, throwing things from the shelves, she instead takes a different route. She leans forward a little bit, faking a smile.