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CHAPTER EIGHT alley fights and bloody heads
THE STING OF sadness Florence felt when she realized she forgot to take the flower the lord gave her was something she truly regretted, because any boy, ever, gave her a flower before. Well, one did, and his name was Ronald, a lanky, red curly-haired boy, with a sharp face that could cut your finger if you grazed it against the soft skin, that passed now and then by Ferndell, enough to her curiosity take control and walk by at the same time she used to see him through the window, the same window she sat when she painted.
They became friends, fifteen-year-old Florence's heart felt light when the boy played an instrument or complimented her paintings, she felt home for once in her life. But one day Ronald didn't pass by Ferndell anymore, leaving a broken-hearted redhead with stained cheeks and nail marks on her palms. That's when Florence Shaw stopped receiving flowers and she didn't know what happened to the first boy she ever had a connection with, even if it wasn't romantic at all.
So the fact that this boy, who she met in the craziest circumstances gave her a flower and she lost it, made her feel very sad, and she didn't know why, because maybe that lord gifted tons of ladies flowers every day.
Or maybe she was that special to someone to give her a flower, it was something so banal but something she couldn't just not think about, and much less if that someone gave it to her with the kind of smile that could make you have that specific fervour feeling.
But she had to focus her mind in the fact she was on the streets again, where people would not even apologize if they made her trip or fall, they were minding their own lives and problems, just as she was.
Florence felt another person, with that tight corset that made her fit into the standards, yet she felt like herself, feeling some kind of empowering and striking beauty catching whoever's gaze that decided to take its time to give a millisecond of their time to notice her, with tinted lips and cheeks that would make you think of juicy cherries.
She considered herself pretty, obviously, she did, but she kinda didn't feel like Florence from Ferndell because it was the first time she felt so full of herself in a good way. She felt like Florence Shaw, a seventeen-year-old girl with some trust issues yet someone that could do anything.
In that very moment, as she was walking next to Enola and the woman owner of the shop they've been in, she wanted to look at one of her parent's photographs, and just wonder in her mind if she was what they expected her to be, she would even thank them if they told her she wasn't trying enough so she would try harder.
The redhead hated the feeling of crying, she hated it, as much as she despised Mycroft Holmes, as much as she despised how her old friend she met years ago didn't come back and as much as the lilac drops that made her shiver and bump her knee up and down in choking anxiety. She hated it so much because she felt weak, Florence didn't like to feel weak, but she has been weak the last days, she has cried so much and she had to stop for her own good and stability.
