A/N: Um. Somehow feeling stressed/overworked makes me write weird fic?


Freya did not like libraries. In fact, she avoided being indoors at all as much as she could—it felt so lonely when she couldn't feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, hear the voices of the living world around her. There never seemed to be enough windows, not enough light, too little air, too little life and the Academy library was one of the worst offenders in this sense. But she really had no other choice.

She had tried asking the flowerseller first, but he was as much at a loss as she was and since she could not bear that any plant be unhappy in her garden, she at last resigned herself to searching among books. But the poor wilting roses needed her, they were in such pain and she had to learn why so she could help them.

Freya sighed and stepped into the gloom of the Academy library. Hardly any windows at all. She had wandered uncertainly until a boy carrying far too many books to see where he was going had jostled her. Books and papers teetered precariously in the stack in his arms and she hastened to help him as he glared at her in irritation. Her eyes trailed over the titles he carried, and she was pleasantly surprised to see so many of her friends well represented here, daffodils, cornflowers, azaleas and on the very top, Roses: Naming and Varieties.

She asked, as she helped him straighten the pile of books into a more stable tower, "Do you know where I can find books on roses?"

He'd seemed to look at her without really seeing her, and gesturing her in the right direction, had murmured absently to himself, "Hmmm, 'A rose is a rose is a rose.' Yes, perhaps that's it..." And she had smiled gently at his departing back. Perhaps he understood too, that there are some things only roses could tell you.

As she emerged from the reference shelves with a much smaller stack of her own, she caught another glimpse of him, seated at one of the empty tables, his head bowed over the book before him. She considered him, his dark hair glinting almost violet and hesitated only a moment before finding a spot nearby. It was like discovering the first crocuses of February: an unexpected patch of color and familiarity that brought joy to her heart. He seemed to care about the flowers just as much as she did. He would be her breath of fresh air in this lifeless place. She couldn't be outside, but at least she could work beside a kindred spirit, someone so lost in his study of the colored plates of delicately sketched plants that he did not even notice her smiling at him.

Somehow, as he sat there so absorbed and so alone, he reminded her of a thistle, prickly and solitary and unexpectedly beautiful, a flash of purple that was all the more striking because it seemed out of place. She didn't find what she was looking for that day, but as Freya left the library, her head full of aphids and snails and not enough sun and half a dozen other culprits, a small part of her wondered what color his eyes were.

He was there every day, haunting the same bookshelves as she was. Unlike her answer for the roses, he was easy to find. "The exotic beauty of an orchid, or the delicacy of a wildflower?" she heard him muse once to himself as he considered two volumes before him and she wondered fascinated, if he had fallen in love with a blossom.

Without even knowing it, she found herself glancing around for him each time she came for her own search and when at last she found her answer—the soil it seemed was doing poorly and the books recommended adding ashes for nourishment—she was surprised to find herself thinking a little regretfully of the boy whose name she had never learned, the boy who seemed to know where to find any plant within the library.

As Freya shelved the last of the books she had removed, she felt a figure brush by her like a breeze. It was him, walking down the aisle behind her. He plucked a book from its shelf and began skimming through the closely printed words of the index. He did not even seem to see her, so desperate was he in his search although she only stood a few feet away, and she wished suddenly she could help him.

"Are you trying to find a flower?" she asked and he looked up, startled, shedding words from his eyes. "It must be very important to you for you to search so carefully."

He glanced at her face before returning to the book in his hands, speaking to its pages, "I'm trying to find a name for something I've seen but never understood."

"Oh, I know what you mean!" Her words had caught his attention again, and his eyes which had resumed scanned the index paused. "When I was a little girl I thought violets were irises and irises a mystery. I never could look at them quite the same way after I figured out which was which."

"And how did you find the answer?"

"When I went to buy them at the florist's and received something I hadn't expected."

"Well, that's useless to me," the boy declared, snapping shut the book he had held, and she stepped back startled. Abruptly, he turned his back to her, exchanging one fat volume of Wild Flowers for another.

For some reason she could not quite name, she felt a little disappointed. She had even found the answer she had been looking for, had found a way to help her roses, and wouldn't have to enter this dark, lifeless place again. But she still did not know the color of his eyes. There had only been glass.