The old house creaked as I took tentative steps down the hall to the kitchen. It was empty—had been for quite some time. No one had been cooking since Gran died, we'd all merely pick up a half-priced burger or milkshake at Merlotte's when we were hungry.

The window above the sink was open and a cool Louisiana draft floated in, surrounding me like an icy shawl. The light of dawn shed violet rays onto the vase on the window sill, full of wilting bishop's lace and pincushion flowers. I frowned at the sagging stems and dulling color of the plants. Gran always sat out that same combination of garden flowers—Sookie had been replenishing them, but it looked as though she'd forgotten.

I pulled the vase down from its place on the windowsill and pulled the flowers from the murky waters. A layer of slime from the old water coated the stems of the flowers, so I took a paper towel and wiped it all off before tying a white string tightly around the bunch of stems. I carefully dangled the dead flowers upside-down from an old, unoccupied nail between the window and the cabinets.

In only my nightgown and barefooted, I opened the screen door to the backyard and walked on the nimble tips of my toes into Gran's gardens. In this heat, I'd been making sure to water them every day and they'd been doing mighty fine. With a pair of garden scissors from the kitchen, I began to snip at the baby's breath that sprinkles like snow across Gran's moonlit garden and her closed blue gentians.

"Why would you want them if they're closed?" A deep voice erupts behind my crouched body. The scissors nearly go flying from hands as I gasp. After catching my surprise, I shake my head angrily and lay my hand over my beating heart, turning my head slowly to see the towering and dark—despite his fair, Norwegian features—Eric Northman.

"Don't you creep up on me like that! I could'a cut myself with these scissors!" I exclaimed, standing up warily and wrapping my arms over my chest, afraid he may see through the thin fabric which I wear nothing beneath.

"I asked you a question," he said, raising a blonde eyebrow carefully. I sighed, releasing the tight grip of the flowers in my right hand.

"Well," I began. "When they're closed, they wish sweet dreams on someone."

"And upon whom are you wishing sweet dreams?" He inquired.

I pursed my lips, looking at the closed, indigo flowers. "For Gran. May she have the sweetest dreams up in Heaven."

"And the little white flowers?"

"Baby's breath. Purity of heart, one of the things 'bout her I'll remember the most."

"I see," he nodded. I turned to begin inside again and I felt Eric's long shadow against my back. "But they'll die in a few days, weeks—more or less. What's the point?"

I sighed at his occasional lack of wisdom; how someone as old as him overlooked the beauty of ephemeral life was beyond me. I refilled the vase with water as Eric stood near, playing with the newly-dangling flowers beside the window.

"They remind me of her."

"But they'll wilt soon. Would that not just bring more grief?"

"They're still beautiful when they wilt. The lives that come and go are the most beautiful. Everything needs to wilt away at some point; you need an end to have a story, just like you need a beginning."

Eric was quiet and his fingers stopped tinkering with the flowers. "What a human way to look at death… And irrationally optimistic."

"Call it what you want, Eric, but it's the truth. You're just too afraid to admit it 'cause you don't have no end," I began outside again and I felt his stoic presence behind me still. However much he critiques my credences, he seemed plenty interested.

"So what should I do, meet the sun? Seems like a waste," he said sarcastically, a smirk biting the corner of his lips.

I rolled my eyes, taking careful steps along the ridge of the garden, studying its treasures and absentmindedly responding to his quip. "Make a greater story of your life so you walk the world knowing you lived for something. If you're going to live so long, at least you should be happy."

An expected sarcastic remark or indifferent response failed to arrive. There was a moment of silence as my eyes scanned the garden. I suddenly took careful steps in, placing my toes only on patches of dirt between beds of flowers.

"Happiness is for humans."

I bent down, cutting away a handful of stems.

"Maybe it is, but I sure as Hell wouldn't want to be a thousand years old and look back on my life and seeing nothin' but tedium I'd want'a see something big and beautiful and twisting and turning like a big, old river… Like the Nile or… Just something big and pretty and messy."

I made my way out of the gardens with my hands full of small, bell-shaped flowers as white as the moon that hung above me. It illuminated the violet circles around Eric's eyes and the red tint benath his lower lid. Despite the cadaverous colors of his face, his beauty was inexorable.

I held out my hands and took his—a bold move, perhaps, but he made no violent or uncomfortable response. His hands were as cold and heavy as marble in my own. The light painted shadows along his pronounced knuckles that danced back to his wrist. I placed the flowers in his hands.

"Lily of the valley," I smiled minutely, releasing his hands. He looked down at me with an unreadable expression. It was suddenly so odd looking at him—such a tall, brooding man with a handful of delicate white flowers.

"What do they mean?"

"Return of happiness."

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but I couldn't bother myself to listen. "Sookie's at Bill's—if you were lookin' for her."

I made my way back into the house and put the scissors back in their designated drawer. As I leant against the counter, tired but inexplicably wide awake, I looked around the kitchen for something to waste my early morning hours on. Eric was gone, as he was no longer to be seen in the garden and had presumably gone to Bill's, and the closet door to the cleaning supplies was ajar. I didn't know how or why—because, frankly, no one had bothered with such tasks since Gran died—the door was open, but the black oblivion between the door and its frame called my name.

When I pulled open the door and saw the old mop leant against one side of the closet and the empty bucket full of sponges, I bent down and took both items in my hands before immediately dropping them.

I could smell the blood, hear Sookie swiping and scraping her sponge across the stained-vermillion floor, see the smudges of blood on Sookie's garments on mine. The senses sent me crumbling to the floor, pulling my hair in an attempt to rip the sight and sound and scent from my skull. It would not leave.

"Georgina!" Gran called, her voice was primordial and as sweet as honey in my ears. It was like the sun calling the earth home. I pushed myself up on wobbling knees. The scent of blood died in the air and instead I felt the heat of Gran's freshly-baked pecan pie and the scent of honeysuckle she carried in from the backyard.

"Gran?" I asked the stagnant air. There was no response, as no Gran was to be seen before me. "Gran?!" I exclaimed, pushing myself up further with the edge of the counter and took quick steps towards the foyer. The farther from the kitchen my feet took me, the quicker the comforting scent of pecan pie sailed away. By the time I pulled open the front door and looked outside around desperately, searching for her, the scent was gone—lost in the breeze that combed through the weeping willow on the front lawn.

I sat down again, heart sunk, against the doorframe; I held the door open and admitted the wind into the house. As I gathered the dripping sorrow of my heart with trembling hands, I stood and grabbed my car keys from the small table beside the door on which they rested. Still barefoot and in only my nightdress, I walked out to my old, rusted Pontiac. I imagined a drive would perhaps settle my mind.

As I sat down swiftly, I immediately heard the telltale sighing and gasping of a couple in heat. I smelled Jason's shampoo and the unfamiliar scent of cheap, flowery perfume.

"For Christ's sake!" I cried, slamming my palms down on the steering wheel and accidentally honking the car. A nearly saw a flicker in the stars and I sighed, looking up culpably. "Forgive me Lord."

I rolled down the windows and aired out the car of the postcoital scents and cursed Jason in my head—whyin my car?! Turning on the engine, I cranked up the fan and began to make my way down the dirt path to the road. The tires screeched with the sharp turn of my steeling wheel onto the serene street.

I drove the car along down the sound and straight streets of Bon Temps, heading nowhere. Dawn had yet to rise and the people of town were still tucked tightly in bed. The last gasps of night whistled through the trees and tall grasses; they carried me along until I found the sand outside the pond near Merlotte's crunching beneath my tires. I turned off my car and walked across the powdery dirt that faded into wide planks of wood that made up a dock. Smudges of tawny dirt rode up my bare feet.

When I reached the end of the dock, I lifted my nightgown over my head and dropped it onto ground. It slithered down my body like a ghost; naked and standing on a public dock in the early, early hours of the morning, I slid into the water as swiftly as a fragile drop of rain. The water enveloped around me and I could feel the nude bodies of two lovers around me. When my eyes resurfaced and blinked open there was no one there, and no long legs swam around me in the mossy-green water like the facets of a diamond ignited with light. I was alone, and yet a man and a woman swam and smiled—but something was between them that flickered anxiously like a light bulb about to die.

I shook my head and dunked once more, buoying with a sigh.

When the sky ripened closer to lavender, I climbed out of the water and back onto the dock. With my hip to my car, I patted my dripping hair with my nightgown before sliding it back over my shoulders. The sound of a car engine loudened and I smoothed the skirt of my lightweight dress, making sure it was not caught up around my waist. The running engine slowed momentarily before speeding up again. As I walked towards my car bashfully, the flash of a red taillight and the shiver of a long, black Cadillac crept away.

Warily combing back soaking, stray strands of hair, I turned on the engine and pulled out of the dirt parking lot in front of the pond and made my way home.