𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄, ( nihachu )

over the wide skies up above (and the earth below) - i

Most of the woman's face is obscured by her flowers (you can see them more clearly now that they've stilled: long-stemmed and white, with a cheery yellow center ringed in brilliant red), but strands of her long dark brown hair manage to peek outside of the boundaries of the mass of the dozens of stems, barely fitting in the two large buckets she holds in front of her chest. You find yourself briefly distracted again (distracted from a distraction), this time by her silky hair, the soft gold of bangs that merge and fade into a warm brown. They reflect the few golden streams of light that break through the clouds. But then the woman moves — an innefective attempt to see around the thick cluster of flowers — and with the movement, a new wave of the scent hits you and it's all you can think about again. 

"What is that?"

"What's what?" The woman laughs and finally pokes her head through the flowers, and the bright smile that appears is one that just as soft and brilliant as the first bloom of spring. "You mean the daffodils or — oh."

You can't pinpoint the reason for the change, but something makes the woman's eyes (the color of the sky during the blue hour, right before sunrise) widen when they first meet yours. The surprise steals her smile, but it returns almost immediately, stronger than before.

"Oh," she says again. "You're the Herald. What are you doing here?"

You still at the title - the one you've received in the countless battles you've been part of at a young age, growing in popularity with time and skill, only to be whispered among frightened villagers from your sudden exile many years ago (it doesn't make you fade from the world - rather, your title seems to grow and spread across the land, instilling fear in even the bravest of hearts) — and so you've heard the line before (or something like it, 'of all places' annexed at the end), but you've never heard anyone say it like this woman does, nor act the way she does before you. The emphasis is in the wrong spot, the tone out of place, the emotion behind it incomprehensible; and she smiles instead of shrinking further into herself, instead of turning around and running away. Yes, this land does seem to be the home of the most peculiar people.

Your instinctive reply — most bewildering of all of it — is 'looking for you'.

"I — what?" you say instead. The woman blinks, shakes her head with a timid smile.

"Sorry, you probably hear that a lot, don't you? That was a bit insensitive of me," she said, averting her gaze to the flowers before looking back at you. "You don't have to answer my question."

The girl shifts her cargo to the side — as though to give herself a better view — and the warm wool of her coat fits her frame as much as the dark blue fits snugly around her neck (a woven scarf, its color deeper than her eyes).

"It's quite alright. I'm not here to pick sides," you settle on. "Just to get a grasp of the issue."

"Yeah, I could have guessed that."

It comes with a laugh and you're not sure whether to be offended or not, but the woman quickly continues, long before you can settle on any one emotion.

"I'm the only one interested in plants around here, and it's harder than it seems to look after the flower shop."

"Flower shop?" It's not what you expect — not even a little, when you see a sliver of a scar near her cheek, or how her grip on the buckets remains strong despite their weight — but then you consider again and decide that maybe it had been. It feels right.

(You're not sure how you know what feels right, especially over a stranger. But you don't question it either.)

"Yeah. Tending to plants is one of my jobs here." The girl lifts one of the buckets as though to prove her point, and you are once again reminded.