Alone together.

Chapter 5: Flowers or weeds?

Briella smiled softly, even though she felt exhaustion tug at her she stood with Amora, "first we have to find flowers... in this park there's only really weeds" she said, "but I don't really see them as weeds, I think that's a cruel word to use against these flowers, just because there's a lot of them, and they are hard to get rid of doesn't mean their terrible right?" Briella considered this, "they're annoying, some of them create stickers, and thorns" she said, "sure they have some beauty but they pop up where you don't want them, they serve no purpose to us" she said. Amora frowned, "isn't that what we're doing?" she asked, Briella gave her a confused look, "no?" she answered.

Amora began to walk, plucking up different types of weeds, "People don't immediately see the beauty in the homeless, like that woman who poured water over us, she though we were in the way, ugly, taking up space that would otherwise be used by wealthy people... or in this case roses... but in weeds you find dandelions, children blow on them in hopes of being granted a wish, clovers... finding one with four leaves is considered lucky... weeds like chickweed, white clovers, fleabane, and many others are beautiful" she said.

Amora bent down and picked up a yellow dandelion, it hadn't yet grown to its full cloud of white seeds, it was still bright yellow and flatish. Briella looked at it, Amora was right, in its own way it was beautiful. Amora smiled, "here" she whispered, tucking the flower behind Briella's ear. Briella blushed slightly, but not enough to be noticeable. Finally, she nodded, agreeing that not all weeds were useless.

Amora smiled, happy to have gotten her point across. Amora picked up the edge of her shirt and released her gathered flowers into the bowl it had created. Briella saw this and remembered doing this as a kid to pick up acorns and pinecones and flowers, she remembered constantly being yelled at for ruining her clothes.

The two began to gather flowers together, in silence both focused on the task at hand.

Once Briellas's feet began to ache and her hands were full of the weeds...or flowers they had picked they walked back over to where they had left their stuff. Amora plopped down, releasing her shirt's edges, color spilled from it. She had gathered dandelions both fully grown into its round white state and the bright yellow ones. She had also found clovers, asters of mostly yellow, and some chickweed.

"come here," Amora said, Briella scooted closer to her. She frowned, somehow her weeds were less colorful, more squished, far less lifelike. Amora didn't seem to notice though, she scooped their flowers together into one big pile, "okay so basically we're going to chain the stems together alright?" Briella nodded but had no idea how to do that. Amora picked up one, "make a slit in the middle of the stem with your thumbnail," She said and began to demonstrate, creating a slit in the stem with her fingernail, "Now you want to stick the stem of this one into the slit," she said, picking up another, "the stem has to be flexible so if it breaks don't worry you didn't do anything wrong just keep trying." She said.

Briella picked one up but upon pressing her thumb into the middle she only felt the stem against the tip of her thumb, "I uh... I guess I bite my nails" she said quietly. Amora pulled something out of her pocket a swiss knife, "be careful okay? We definitely don't want you hurting yourself" she said. She didn't mention that she was worried about how much an emergency room visit would cost. She pulled out a short thin bit of metal, a knife. The whole thing itself looked old, dirty but the knife apart from being dull was clean. Amora must have taken good care of it.

Briella began to cut a small slit into a flower then she stuck another one into it, being careful not to tear the stem. Briella held it up, "like this?" she asked, Amora nodded with a smile, "there you go!" she said. Briella relaxed a little, she hadn't noticed how tense she was, she really didn't want to mess things up with Amora, she didn't want to be abandoned by her as well as her parents and what about her friends, did they notice she was gone? Miss her maybe? She reminded herself that it had only been a day and that they would start looking for her eventually.