DEDICATED TO MY GARNIE CHAN. :)
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They explore his gardens; flowers open up at the snap of his fingers exposing their many-lipped, multicolored throats. In the middle of this utopia, there is a rose tree that spreads its branches laden with blossoms over the blooms on the ground as if it was lovingly encasing its children in a protective embrace. Vines crackle under his feet as he tramples them underfoot, and she faintly remembers the smell of roses before he tipped a goblet of thick, sugary liquid down her throat, and she passes out on a bed of velvet petals.
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His name is Marluxia, and he has hair the color of dusty roses, eyes the color of impenetrable deep confines of a deep sapphire. The first thing she remembers about him is the sharp semi-circle of teeth widening in a smile emerging from the dark, before he reached out and grabbed her with gloved hands, pulling her into the swirling vortex of a portal as her friends Hayner and Pence yelled and fought to keep it from sucking her in. In the end, they were too late; the last she saw of them, a flurry of pink petals swept them into the pavement.
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Her name is Olette, and she is nothing but an ordinary girl with simple brown hair and green eyes that would never measure up to the exotic colors of Marluxia. Whenever she closes her eyes and thinks about the places she has been to, she can't think of anywhere other than Twilight Town. Summers blend into each other, memories of salt sea ice cream, laughs and postcards from her friends who would take the train to other towns and cities, sometimes even the beach. All of the summers seemed pretty eventless, until the summer when she is taken, the summer when everything changes.
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When she wakes up, he is pinning her hair, lovingly brushing the brown locks off her shoulders and into thick intricate braids with roses threaded in between. In the clear puddle of water created by a crevice in the ground, she sees her reflection looking back at her, stark and lovely like a woodland nymph. She is dressed in a garland of leaves and flowers, her articles of homely clothing discarded. Her cheekbones and eyelids are brushed with gold rouge. She thinks of Neverland, thinks of days of ageless beauty among roses, and she forgets about Twilight Town.
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He is a lowly gardener, always attending to her, trimming his plants in patterns that surround the place where she sits. Flowers find her, and curl themselves around her, filling her with their rich smell until she finds herself sinking into this lovely blanket, sleeping for longer hours in a day with the sunlight basking around her, turning her skin darker. She knows there must be some motive behind this; because town girls aren't kidnapped out of the blue just to be placed in some kind of bizarre paradise-garden, where they become nymphs and fairies among roses.
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Everyday, the flowers consume her; their roots grow on the moss of her skin and live off her blood and body. She constantly stares at the closed in ceiling of the garden, thinking disconnected thoughts. He is always there, pruning his flowers around her, humming under his breath. All the while, his garden is feeding off her body, throwing her into prolonged induced slumber from their fragrance and nectar. On the fifteenth day, her thoughts are like scattered pieces of a paper that refuses to become a whole. She thinks about
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Daphne, the beautiful woodland nymph of Greek mythology, who enchanted the god, Apollo so much, that he yearned for her, driving him to chase her until exhaustion. At wit's end, she falls to the ground and pleads to the gods to turn her into a tree to flee from danger. The end of the story is pretty sad, Apollo finds Daphne who has become part of nature, and is so wracked by anguish, that he adorns himself with her leaves, an eternal reminder of his love. All the while, Daphne becomes forgotten, her body stiffens into the wood of the tree, her lovely hair turns into the leaves, and her feet becomes rooted to the ground, forever unable to run freely across the forest as she used to, before she enraptured Apollo.
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It is the end of the month and she is dimly aware that summer is ending, and back home, Hayner and Pence are already getting ready to go to school, probably mourning her disappearance. All the while, she finds herself shackled by the vines of roses and unknown species of flowers that flourish from being nourished by her lifeforce. Their petals are the size of lily pads, and they extend to the ceiling, blocking sunlight from ever reaching her. In those last moments, she seeks closure, her limbs having stiffened into bark, her heartbeat being controlled by the plants that feed off her. Long time ago, she had finally realized what was Marluxia's motive all along, using her so that his garden would flourish, but she had realized it too late.
There is no escape.
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In those final moments, he parts past the curtain of flowers, dips his head towards her hardened skin, and whispers something that she is unable to comprehend from the humming of roses in her ears. He is intoxicatingly beautiful, pale pink hair and cobalt blue eyes. When he leaves, she closes her eyes and thinks of his hands parting past her hair, threading the petals of roses into the brown locks. . . She thinks of Daphne, and the flowers around her curl up as if they reacted to the withering thoughts running past her tired mind.
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He is humming under his breath; music is playing in the distance from an old gramophone. He prunes his flowers, a gardener tending his roses. And beneath the roots of all those many-hued blooms, she breathes.