Loving Flowers
By: Restituror_Orbis
Based on: Violet Evergarden
Violet's fingers danced across her typewriter in elegant strokes.
It was late. The moon rose high above Leiden shining silver fingers across a trembling black-blue sea. Her colleagues have left after a day of writing and meetings with clients, and President Hodgins had departed to his own abode a few hours after. But Violet still stood awake, conjuring letters for her clients with a graceful taps of her metal fingers. It was a love letter from a farm boy to his little love, a girl named Natala. It bore all the resemblance of what Violet classified and knew what a love letter was: sweet words and gentle terms of endearment mixed with the shy embarrassment of such a proclamations. Yet, Violet was drawn to it for reasons that eluded her.
The boy was a thin, scrawny, lanky child. Long-limbed with a long face and freckles that dotted his skin like a thousand constellations. His brown hair was messy and curled around his chin, and he held his straw-knitted hat close to his chest, nibbling his lap with the sense of uncontrollable terror that Violet rarely saw in a man. His cheeks had been red, contrasting against his pale skin, and he shifted and stammered during her conversation with him, requiring certain details on specific phrase and questions bearing on the the level of readability that the farm boy desired. His name was Borian Aaron. His little love was named Natala.
Violet never knew this girl, nor have she ever heard of that name, but something tugged roughly at her heart when the boy confessed his affection toward this girl. It was a gentle tone and a soft smile that curled up at his lips when he uttered her name. A sweet adoration, Violet detected, unmarred by simple desires of passion and lust. Such innocence Violet was now familiar with. Princess Charlotte was the first to come to mind, and Violet partially felt that the man could have been able to write the letter himself had he had the ability; but she never shared that to the man. Her personal beliefs on the matters of a letter should had held no bearing to the client. Princess Charlotte was only the exception in her career.
The other was Aidan Field, the soldier that Violet had kissed in the cabin beneath the starry night sky as the fire turned to black ash and buried with only his rifle as the graver marker, a death in a war that had already consumed thousands. It had only been his forehead, but it had been the most physical and intimate contact that Violet ever shared with another person. She still felt the coldness against her lips when they met contact. It had sent a shiver up her spine that she barely registered.
When Violet delivered the letter to his family, she kept the kiss to herself, hiding it from the distraught Maria. She felt a strange feeling curl in her heart. It was a new sensation, one that Violet considered. She did not know the world, despite learning thousands since her employment at CH Postal Service. She even left out the kiss when she told the President on her reasoning of her sudden departure, but there had been something in the man's eyes that Violet did not understand. A knowing look, she believed, that was mixed with amusement and a gentleness that seemed similar to a father.
But the circumstances of Violet's letter was different than the one she was composing that night. For one, the war was over. There will not be another Aidan Field that Violet will ever meet, she hoped. Second, the boy was alive. That was a strange thought that Violet was confused upon. Aidan's last letter to his love was short and comprised of adorations already spoken of and reaffirmed. Borian's was a new love, untapped and untouched and uncertain. It could blossom into something that Aidan was forced to let go, to release to enter a world that the hymns had spoken of. Something that Violet herself could never hope to hold, even if she had the desire to chase it. Violet pushed the tiredness from her bones and relaxed her fingers. Her pale-blue eyes trained upon the paper and without a single fear, her fingers set off to complete the seal of love that the farm boy requested from her.
The sound of metal meeting metal and the ringing of the keys danced in Violet's ears like a grand ballad. It was so unlike the bloody symphony of bullets racing passed her ears and the sound of men's dying screams. She still recalled the mud in her boots, the dirt in her hair, beneath her helmet, and the shredding of her uniform as she meet her enemies in battle. At the camps, Violet had seen men write letters to family far away, but Violet only ever spared them a single glance. She was with the Major. All forms of connections with her fellow soldiers were driven off by her own accord. Violet only needed the Major.
She had seen some of her former brothers in Leiden, but most were wrapped with bandages, or were compelled to walking with wooden crunches, similar to Luculia's brother. A string with tugged when she saw her fellows. Some had even came to greet her, asking on how life has been after the war. Others did not see her. Their eyes had been glazed over, distant and lost in a endless gray flog that they seemingly could not escape. She wondered if they had the dreams she had. Blood staining her uniform, the sounds of men dying in her ears, the scent of rotting corpses filling her nostrils as bombs fell upon the earth like falling stars, ripping through mountains and earth, tearing cities apart with lurid flames.
Her heart was pounding in her ears. She felt her pulse quickening, and her hands were shaking. She saw her comrades bodies, tethered forms of humans that could not been called humans. Aidan Field had been lucky, as so far Violet was concern. Some men had been not men when they died, only pieces of meat and flesh that muddied in battlefield. She shook those thoughts out her head, ridding herself of the smoke and flames that filled her mind. For a moment, she thought of Maria, Aidan's lady love, and the smile that she gave Violet. That smile that tore any sense of resolved and motion of resilience that Violet had tried to grasped onto. The smile that so many of her clients had graced her after she compromised their letters for them. A sense of happiness that was indescribable in any word in any language of the worlds had always filled her when she saw their smile.
Violet's pace quicken. The sounds of her typewriter grew louder and heavier with each stroke, with each strike of precision that Violet conjured. She was going to write this letter, so Borian Aaron would be honored with that smile as well. That someone else could feel the happiness that Violet felt in her writings, the love that radiated off them. So Borian Aaron and Miss Natala would not lose the love and life that Aidan Field and Maria could never have, but wanted so.
The last words that Violet sees when she finishes are: I love you, Natala.