When she gets back to her chambers later that evening, Gwen arranges the white and purple flowers in a vase near her bed. The floral fragrance fills the room, reaches her nose, touches her lungs and spreads to every part of her.
And that night she dreams.
She dreams of pressing a purple flower into a boy’s hand amid colours of blue and red and watching him smile as he takes it; of presenting a woman adorned in indigo with a bunch of these flowers and observing her beam. She dreams of contentment and happiness, of innocence and bare beginnings.
But when she wakes up in the morning, she’ll remember only colours and fading faces.
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Part Two