response #1 to challenge "the language of flowers"
Sliiiiight season four spoilers.
Flora
Word count: 547
Sydney, when asked, will go into great detail about her favorite flower, the tulip. She considers them to be completely unassuming and cheery. She's not too particular about the colors, but she disdainfully acknowledges her favorites to be yellow and red.
(Tulips appear to be hardy but need a certain environment to flourish. They can, however, be manipulated into growing faster than they would normally.)
Her father doesn't know her favorite flower, so he orders her the same arrangement of flowers every year for her birthday from age twelve to eighteen (at nineteen she's moved out, and the bouquet he sends she doesn't acknowledge. After that he stuck to checks.) He sent roses- pale pink, the kind that show the slightest bruise and tear with sepia scars- without a note. Thornless roses, first a dozen, then thirteen, and so on. Sydney thinks bitterly later, at nineteen and twenty and twenty-one, when every thought of her father has the oleander sap laced through it, that he keeps track of her age by selecting the amount he sends. The flowers- robust and long-lasting, but inbred so thoroughly that they have little or no scent, just the sick and pathetic scent that hothouse flowers are doomed to have. Emily's roses are the ones Sydney likes best- roses with heads so heavy with fragrance they droop slightly, tended to lovingly by Emily's magic hands. She doesn't speak to her flowers when she cares for them, but Sydney's overheard the odd encouragements or chiding clucks, sounds that so remind her of her own mother that she would be blinded by a sudden welling of tears.
(Laura had loved lilies and gardenias, clean and white and pure, white flowers that matched the gleam of her smile and the pearls at her throat. Maybe, Sydney thinks at fifteen, that's why her father thinks she'd like light pink flowers- pale and sweet, practically something her mother would've chosen.)
Irina thinks that gifts of flowers and unpractical and unnecessary, but a memory from childhood of a cluster of white bellflowers reflected in a stream gives her the sentimentality needed to decide upon a flower she would need to admit to loving. Young girls, the flighty kind, all admitted to loving the same vapid flowers- roses and daisies and carnations- but all girls were expected to have a preference. Jack brought plain white daisies on their first date, to which her first reaction was concealed revulsion through the front door as Jack walked up the sidewalk. Irina thought of daisies as little more than weeds; she couldn't imagine what would compel someone to present them as a gift. After reflecting on Jack's hesitance and his shy, earnest presentation, she has realized the reason he had chosen such an ordinary, unassuming bouquet.
(It's later, when they're more comfortable, that Laura admits to loving lilies and gardenias, elegant and pure and nothing like herself.)
Nadia likes bright colored flowers like her sister, but likes them to have more show to them: orchids and snapdragons and ceibos and, above all, tiger lilies. Sydney believes they're too gaudy, but Nadia defends them, touching their waxy petals and feathered tips lovingly.
(When she's in the hospital, Sydney sometimes brings big bouquets, colorful and vibrant and prays for her sister to wake up.)
Flora
Word count: 547
Sydney, when asked, will go into great detail about her favorite flower, the tulip. She considers them to be completely unassuming and cheery. She's not too particular about the colors, but she disdainfully acknowledges her favorites to be yellow and red.
(Tulips appear to be hardy but need a certain environment to flourish. They can, however, be manipulated into growing faster than they would normally.)
Her father doesn't know her favorite flower, so he orders her the same arrangement of flowers every year for her birthday from age twelve to eighteen (at nineteen she's moved out, and the bouquet he sends she doesn't acknowledge. After that he stuck to checks.) He sent roses- pale pink, the kind that show the slightest bruise and tear with sepia scars- without a note. Thornless roses, first a dozen, then thirteen, and so on. Sydney thinks bitterly later, at nineteen and twenty and twenty-one, when every thought of her father has the oleander sap laced through it, that he keeps track of her age by selecting the amount he sends. The flowers- robust and long-lasting, but inbred so thoroughly that they have little or no scent, just the sick and pathetic scent that hothouse flowers are doomed to have. Emily's roses are the ones Sydney likes best- roses with heads so heavy with fragrance they droop slightly, tended to lovingly by Emily's magic hands. She doesn't speak to her flowers when she cares for them, but Sydney's overheard the odd encouragements or chiding clucks, sounds that so remind her of her own mother that she would be blinded by a sudden welling of tears.
(Laura had loved lilies and gardenias, clean and white and pure, white flowers that matched the gleam of her smile and the pearls at her throat. Maybe, Sydney thinks at fifteen, that's why her father thinks she'd like light pink flowers- pale and sweet, practically something her mother would've chosen.)
Irina thinks that gifts of flowers and unpractical and unnecessary, but a memory from childhood of a cluster of white bellflowers reflected in a stream gives her the sentimentality needed to decide upon a flower she would need to admit to loving. Young girls, the flighty kind, all admitted to loving the same vapid flowers- roses and daisies and carnations- but all girls were expected to have a preference. Jack brought plain white daisies on their first date, to which her first reaction was concealed revulsion through the front door as Jack walked up the sidewalk. Irina thought of daisies as little more than weeds; she couldn't imagine what would compel someone to present them as a gift. After reflecting on Jack's hesitance and his shy, earnest presentation, she has realized the reason he had chosen such an ordinary, unassuming bouquet.
(It's later, when they're more comfortable, that Laura admits to loving lilies and gardenias, elegant and pure and nothing like herself.)
Nadia likes bright colored flowers like her sister, but likes them to have more show to them: orchids and snapdragons and ceibos and, above all, tiger lilies. Sydney believes they're too gaudy, but Nadia defends them, touching their waxy petals and feathered tips lovingly.
(When she's in the hospital, Sydney sometimes brings big bouquets, colorful and vibrant and prays for her sister to wake up.)