7 – Rarity
It had been a very long day, and she had been on her feet for all of it. Maddy and Zoe had grown tired of waiting and were putting themselves to bed, Josh was still out working at Boylan's, and Jim was filling in for one of the night watch. He'd probably be more exhausted than she was now by the time he got back sometime during the small hours of the morning. For some reason it reminded her of the years just before Terra Nova, the years they spent apart, the nights she always came home to an empty bed while he struggled for breath in Golad Prison. During that time she had almost forgotten what it was to have a husband, so much so that he felt like a stranger to her when they finally found each other on the other side of the portal. The first few weeks after that, she occasionally found herself looking up at him and startling because she had not recognized his face. Their initial struggles to fit in and protect their home, and children, from Sixers and Slashers had been the much-needed push to bring them back together as a family, but that lonely void between them had still taken some time to overcome.
She looked up at the open panty, full of handmade bread and handpicked fruit, but she wasn't hungry, really. She didn't know what had made her think about those times. Closing the doors and drawing herself away, she looked around the little home. Everything appeared clean and tidy, despite her hopes of some small task to occupy her hands a few moments before going to bed. She wandered slowing in that direction, giving everything one more visual check as she passed.
The light door to her bedroom slid open as if on a breeze, and with the same small whisper, closed. The room was dark and still, and the even form of the mattress and sheets let her know that she was on her own.
Leaving the lights off she crossed the room, retrieved her nightdress, and started pulling away the layers on the mattress. A dark shape, about the size of a fist, with jagged edges sat on her pillow, unseen until that moment on account of the covers. Not expecting anything to be there, she jumped slightly upon spotting it and took a step back from the bedside. In the dark its nature and origin were unknown, and she went over to the light switch to make sure it wouldn't squirm when she reached down to remove it. On at least one occasion before had she been surprised by the appearance and presence of a native insect invading the sanctity of her house, though not quite in her bed. It wasn't that she was squeamish – she didn't mind touching them or escorting them outside – she merely wanted to be aware of what she was dealing with so that she could employ the appropriate tactics to avoid getting pinched or stung.
Light burst out of the overhead lamb, falling evenly up the length of her bed to where the shape rested upon her pillow. She could immediately discern that it had not been a living creature after all, but only on closer inspection did she come to realize that it was part of a plant. Long, pointed ribbons with fine streaks of violet radiated outwards from a central point, where there appeared to be a sort of button-shaped stigma.
It was a flower.
She could think of no one other than Jim who would leave a flower on her pillow. When they were newly-married and Jim had to take a few night shifts, he would leave her flowers in bed if they were available. If they weren't, he would cut intricate flower shapes out of bits of paper and leave those instead. It had been years since he had left a flower for her to find, she recalled.
She looked again over the star-shaped flower in her hand. The outside edges of each flowing petal was a compact wavy line, a series of rising and falling crests as if the petal edges had been heated and shrank. Their golden-yellow borders turned into a deep forest green as one looked towards the center of the petal where a delicate, unbroken line of violet ran down its entire surface. The button in the center looked almost black, though it could have been a deeper shade of violet, and a light green stem supported the entire face.
To her recollection, she could not recall ever seeing this particular flower before. Though fieldwork was not a normal facet of a clinic doctor, Elisabeth had seen her share of flora and fauna through her exchanges with Malcolm and her own casual experiences. She wondered what it was and how Jim had managed to get his hands on it. Leaving her nightdress on the open sheets, she walked back into the main room to retrieve a tablet, taking with her the flower as she did. As the screen powered up, she went back into the bedroom and sat on her side of the bed. Placing the flower near the top edge of the screen, she conducted a search of the Terra Nova Guide to Vegetation. After a few minutes of flipping through dozens of native and exotic flowers, some prettier and more colorful than the one lying at the top of the device, she found it. Orchis patelolunborra, the "Midnight Orchid," named so for its strikingly dark colors. The plants only grow in the lowest levels of the canopy in the cradle of the tree branches. According to what is known of the plant, there may be less than ten specimens in an area with a five-mile radius – it was not a common flower.
The things she read made her appreciate the flower, and also her husband's gesture, more. She wondered how he managed to find one and then how he managed to get it, imagining her husband climbing a ten- or twenty- or even a thirty-foot tree to retrieve a single flower, almost invisible against the dark canopy or the dark branch upon which it grew, and no bigger than a milogum fruit. It made her fear for his safety, question his eyesight (and his sense of judgment), but yet fall deeply, hopelessly for this reappearance of the old Jim, all at the same time.
She let the tablet wind down and set it aside. Slowly she rolled the stem between her thumb and index finger. It was so much more beautiful in her hand than any of the pictures she had seen, and she wanted to enjoy every millimeter of it while it was hers.
Eventually she was able to pull herself away long enough to change into her night attire and slip into bed. Again in the darkness, she didn't feel quite alone as before, though the space beside her was still empty. In a glass on her nightstand, the Midnight Orchid kept watch over her as she slept.
A/N: A longer chapter- is that a good thing or a bad thing? Jim is, once again, conspicuously absent from the goings-on that are going on. That man needs to throw Taylor off his back and return to the important things in life, like his family. Of course, it's not all Taylor's fault. What sappy thing will Jim do next in this series?
