HADES (Ruby Rose fanfic)

TWO (Iselen POV)

"Coffee, coffee..." I grumble to myself with a zombie like voice while I walk stumbling through the dark kitchen half asleep. "Ouch!" I bump along the last yard on one leg since I'm holding one foot with my hand, not a day goes by that I don't trip over the table and hit my little toe... it's pretty clear that I'm not a morning person... well, wee hours of the morning actually: it's 5:30 am. Normal lucky people are sleeping right now... I wish I were one of them. I turn on the light and the water too in order to fill the coffee maker tank, I can't help grimacing when I hear the noise echoing through the house, the light flickers above my head on the ceiling showing clearly the chipped paint on the walls, several scratches on the table surface, a little tear in one of the yellow curtains... "Damn old pipes, damn old kitchen, damn old house," I grumble while turning on the coffee maker. I need to buy some fabric in order to sew new curtains but my problem is finding time to go to the town and sewing them later. I never have time for anything but my work.

I look through the window while waiting for my coffee wrapping up with my old wool jacket that covers my worn out pyjamas... everything is old here. It's drizzling outside and I can't see through the mist but I don't need it really, I know the landscape by heart: beyond the little garden in front of the old Victorian house that's falling apart there's a road and then fields and fields with greenhouses and hoop houses. In a clear day, the tower of the town church can be seen in the distance. It's the typical small town in the south-east of the State of New York, with the main street fringed by the old shops and grocery stores, a white traditional building for the town hall, a small park where children play and elderly sit down on the benches and where everybody greets everybody because they have known each other their whole lives, and their parents, and their grandparents... If you follow the road, the highway is up ahead and beyond... freedom... I look sadly at my old burgundy pickup truck before pouring a mug of coffee. I can't hold back a moan of pleasure when I take the first sip.

'If I sell everything: the house, the fields, the greenhouses... I could drive my pickup to New York, it's only 5 hours driving, not that much. I could rent a little shop, get it painted in a beautiful white gardenia colour, the flower which symbolizes the refinement, I could buy buckets of bright colours and fill them with water in order to keep the flowers and plants fresh, a recycled wood counter, a wide window to display my arrangements, cast iron shelves for cacti pots, elegant wrapping paper and golden and silver ribbons in order to embellish the bouquets, a fridge with glass doors in the back room to keep the roses fresh...'

My dreamed flower shop is a very clear image inside mi mind, a place where I could sell my original and modern arrangements directly to the customers and where I could speak with different people every day, but without having to grow the damn flowers before. I love the scent of the damp earth, of the green leaves and jasmine flowers at dusk... but I hate waking up early in the morning, the scent of sweat in summer when the greenhouses become an oven, the pain on my back every night when I lie down on my bed... Everything would be easier for me if I had more help but the way things are now it's a miracle that I'm able to earn enough money to pay the salary of the 8 people working with me and the handful I hire when we have to harvest the roses for Saint Valentine's Day. Bills are piling up on the living room table and it seems to me that I never have enough money to pay for everything; I thank God for the commissions of that luxury hotel of New York because otherwise would have had to close the business. I can't remember last time I bought clothes, I can't afford going to the hairdresser and cut my hair like celebrities do, I can't afford a new car or new kitchen cabinets...

I look around depressed. My grandparent's house is the most beautiful one in the whole county, that's for sure, and it keeps lots of genuine architectural elements from the 19th century but I'd need thousands of dollars in order to restore it. I can picture it as it was in my great grandparent's time, he was a wealthy farmer who decided to grown cut flowers when hardly anyone did here: he was smart and realized that it could be a good business. In those days a young lady from the upper-middle-class went to the theatre or a social gathering, a ball or a dinner, and she got flowers from her admirers the next day, dozens of bouquets if she was beautiful enough. Most of those flowers were grown by my great grandfather, some of those woman saw orchids for the first time in their lives because he brought several species from South America and managed to adapt them to the life in his greenhouses... the personification of the beauty and sensuality on the updo of a pretty girl as a hair ornament.