sunflower_of_moon
"I...I can't even buy you a flower, let alone a beautiful one." He murmured, looking away quickly as if shame had stolen his courage to hold her gaze any longer.
Her sharp eyes roamed quietly over his face, the stillness in them swallowing every flicker of emotion.
And yet, almost without her realising it, her eyes softened, never leaving his face.
At that very moment, the fused bulb in the dark room which everyone believed would never light up again, flickered softly.
Barely lightening the room and yet that was enough.
Then slowly, she brought both her hands
forward from behind her back, revealing a stack of white and pink papers.
"I will teach you how to make a flower from paper, just one, okay?...and in return, you'll have to give me many."
She let out the words with no ounce of hurry, a rare calmness running beneath them as if it was not the first time she had said something like that, something very childish and so unlike her.
Something even she had never expected from herself.
And the way she had said those words, the way her eyes held his exhausted face, made him slowly lift his eyes from the ground and look at her, finally.
"Deal?" She asked, raising one of her eyebrows.
He nodded slowly. Everything she had said to him was unpredictable, unexpected, almost childlike and so unlike her.
And yet the moment those words descended from her lips and scattered into the waiting winds, they softened and turned into something beautiful, very beautiful.
That his heart, deep as an endless ocean instinctively gathered, held and treasured them like lost pearls, waiting to be given by her and found by him.
And slowly, from the depth of his honey-kissed eyes, warmness emerged and quickly traced its path to his lips, molding them into a delicate curve, one the world would call a smile.
"The most beautiful sunflower, more beautiful than any rose, any lotus, beyond all that exists in this world." She whispered, her gaze following him as he left the room.