Anthology

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

Lord Eliwood loved his wife deeply. And one night...before the two became engaged, Lord Eliwood suddenly disappeared from the castle. When he returned to his love three days later, he presented her with a beautiful white flower which only grows in the snowy highlands. It was the flower which she loved the most. (Marcus to Lilina, Sword of Seals)

An anthology means, literally, "collection of flowers." Here are three.

Corolla: Ninian

When Eliwood disappeared without warning, fear had gripped her heart. The fate of his father Lord Elbert, the guilt that haunted her in spite of Eliwood's assurances that she was not to blame, still pressed upon her. And for all that Sir Marcus and Lady Eleanora told her not to worry through their oddly secretive smiles, Ninian could not but worry for the safety of her love.

She could not but worry that Eliwood had changed his mind.

When he returned, to the castle and to her, Ninian's relief upon seeing him was so great that tears came to her eyes. When Eliwood held out to her a single blossom, its three petals the color of new-fallen snow, those tears flowed over. That Ilian wildflower spoke to her heart, spoke to her of love in a way that no rose or lily from a Lycian garden might convey. That one fragile blossom said that her Lord Eliwood did not merely love love, as she sometimes feared when he made glorious promises to her, promises that Ninian did not expect a man to keep; that flower from the snowy highlands said that no, Lord Eliwood loved her- no matter the trouble, no matter the cost.

Ninian wore that blossom in her hair at their engagement feast, and after the festivities, Eliwood had it preserved within an orb of clear glass. Ninian kept it ever at hand, first upon the desk where she carried out her duties as marchioness, then later upon a small table beside her bed. She would often contemplate the orb with its sealed flower, holding the weight carefully in both hands as she examined it. The blossom was such a fragile thing, and the curved surface of the glass magnified each tiny flaw- a slight fraying of the petals from when Ninian had worn it, a clipped anther, damaged in the course of Eliwood's travels. The petals themselves had gone slightly translucent, and their central ribs stood out like the veins on the backs of Ninian's own hands.

Far from its native soil, out of place and out of season, locked into existence by its bubble of glass, the wildflower came as a comfort to Ninian. It would bloom long after her own days were past.

In years to come, Roy would hold that globe of crystal containing a strange white flower, and would wonder about a mother whose face and voice he could never recall.

Calyx: Lyn

She'd thought of him as the cautious one, the one who thought things over once, twice, a dozen times before acting. Lyn had met a few men she could imagine haring off on a wildflower-picking expedition, but not Eliwood. But he'd surprised her before, and he surprised her again when he came home, covered in dust and grinning like a fool, holding out a flower for his lady.

And not any flower. She'd looked at it for a moment of stunned silence, for she'd seen that three-petaled flower before- in Florina's hands. Florina had brought one to her, dried and pressed and tucked into one of her saddlebags. A gift from one friend to another, a way of explaining to Lyn about the strange and beautiful things that lay beyond the plains of Sacae. And for Eliwood to repeat the gesture said to Lyn something that the courtly phrases of Lycia couldn't manage. My friend, my most dearly beloved.

Until that moment, Lyn hadn't been entirely sure that she'd made the right choice. By leaving her alone in Pherae for three long days, Eliwood had allowed Lyn some time to wonder if it just wouldn't be best to saddle up her horse and strike out for the plains. To wonder if she hadn't just accepted Eliwood's proposal because Florina had accepted Hector's, and staying in Lycia as Eliwood's marchioness was a way of not being alone in the world. But when Eliwood came back with that flower, carrying with it the meaning of a gift and a memory, Lyn knew she had a man... a friend... worth staying in Lycia for.

She had to wonder about her fiance, though, when he put that flower inside a ball of glass, "to keep." It seemed a little sad to her, as the years went by. The petals slowly turned a little brown, and inside that shell of glass no breath of wind would ever scatter them. The keepsake in truth seemed to Lyn just a little morbid, a little perverse, like the Lycian nobles who "slept" embalmed in marble tombs above the earth. Still, she kept it on display, so that all who came to Pherae might see how much Lord Eliwood did love his Lady Lyndis.

When Roy dropped that pretty sphere on accident one day, cracking open the glass and scattering the dust of the flower trapped within it, he wondered that his mother didn't seem at all upset by it.

Nectar: Fiora

He went to such lengths for her at times. Posing as a fine knight upon his horse, sweeping in with a flower cradled in his hand... for his lady. His lady.

She wasn't a lady, and when Eliwood disappeared on her, Fiora had been afraid that the young marquess of Pherae was taking a moment to reconsider what he was getting himself into by marrying her. When she saw that flower in his hand, though, she knew at once that Eliwood had done nothing of the sort. No man ashamed of an Ilian bride would come home bearing her the gift of an Ilian windflower.

So much was bound up in that small white flower- not just old memories of Ilia, but so many memories of family. The many times had she held up a windflower to Farina and Florina, telling her sisters that it was a reflection of them. "Three separate, yet joined at the center, just like us."

And then one time Farina had yanked it from her hand, ripping out the petals and telling Fiora to go to hell. Fiora wondered how her sister was getting on in the court of Ostia. She wondered if Lord Hector ever brought his wife flowers to make her feel like a lady.

Eliwood had that windflower saved for her, preserved beneath glass like a genuine treasure. Fiora kept it in their bedroom at first, then moved it into their son's room so that he might sleep next to a little patch of Ilia. She was only sorry that the glass couldn't preserve the most precious thing about the flower, its scent. No perfume available in Lycia came close to capturing the scent of a windflower, and after such a long time away from home, Fiora didn't know that she had the words to describe that scent to Roy. One day, she would simply have to take him there...

Many years thereafter, when Roy first set foot upon the inhospitable soils of Ilia, he saw there a patch of white flowers whose petals quivered in the breeze upon their slender stems. He breathed in their fragrance, light and sweet and somehow elusive, and in that moment felt the presence of his mother, welcoming her only son to her beloved homeland.

The End

PS: Not intending Lyn/Florina as a romantic pairing here, though I do like their ending and I do think that Lyn would likely not want to be alone in the world after the experience she had following the death of her parents. If Lyn were looking forward to an existence on the plains brightened by visits from her best friend, the marriage of Florina to Hector would come as a rude surprise.