The Flower Box.

She watched the girl as she slept, thoughtful.

It wasn’t quite morning, yet. The sun was just beginning to filter though the girl’s wooden blinds, which were angled downward. This served the dual purpose of creating reassuring lines of patterns repeated upwards across the cool wood floor and allowing her to stare out at the sky from her vantage point in bed.

The early morning sun was pure, so it showed no mercy as it exposed the fine dust floating lazily through the air, and it took no prisoners as it proudly displayed the shadows of impurity on the girl’s own face, and as it glinted off of her tiara, it laughed.

She shifted slightly where she sat on a stool, and twisted her head slightly, to look around at the room.

It was mostly empty, fashionable. Entering from the door, one would look straight ahead and see the windows, which were not large. They were faintly reminiscent of something out of a fairy tale cottage– the faintest smear of color was visible along the lower line of the window, suggesting the existence of a flower box built in below the window.

Turning to the left one would then see a vanity, with a completely clean surface, and a mirror, tilted slightly downward. There was a white chair with thin, undulating lines of metal twisting in a dainty, feminine pattern– it was pulled away from the vanity a few inches, facing toward the window.

On the floor beside the vanity there was a small wicker basket, piled high with books. Intrigued, she pushed off the stool and moved closer– and then smiled as if to say, I should have guessed– guessed that the books were arranged messily to cover the larger pile of magazines. White fingers reached down, reached through the books, and hit the magazines. She lifted one out of the basket, moving back upward through the books easily. She sat herself down on the vanity chair, and thumbed curiously through the magazine.

It was tattered, implying that it had been of great use to the owner. The pages were dog-eared on the fitness pages, the pages advertising 10 Quick and Easy Steps to a Bikini Butt! A few more pages in– Eat Healthy, Not Less! And a few more pages– 5 Flirting Moves Guys Can’t Resist!

She said nothing, and just put the magazine back in its place under Waiting for Godot, next to Death of a Salesman.

There was an almost inaudible sigh, and she looked up with a gasp, too late, as the girl folded slowly into the chair and swallowed her up, without noticing.

Her fingers curled around the bottom of the chair, knuckles white. She waited, patiently, while she regulated her breathing. Once it had evened out, once she could breathe easily, she lifted her eyes, hesitantly, to meet her own gaze in the mirror. She saw scared, wide green eyes. She saw a small, pale face. She saw too-thin shoulders, and she saw her ribs, and she remembered that she hadn’t been drinking much milk lately, and she wondered if her ribs were still strong enough to protect her heart.

She hunched in on herself protectively, drawing her shoulders inward.

She didn’t feel any better. The only thing she could feel was the tiara on her head. And it was heavy. And– she looked up and leaned closer– a rhinestone had fallen off. She watched as it dulled, and it watched as she dulled.

Together they turned in the chair, and together they watched the window.

She had twisted the blinds open when she had gotten up from her twin bed, from her downy white comforter and cool white sheets– and so now they were able to watch, silently. Just like they did every morning. It never got old. The contrast.

The window was a large square, a glowing portal in the middle of her wall. Its brother was a clean imitation, with crisp straight lines on her floor, washing away the wood and warming away the coolness, breathing vitality into the bare room.

They watched the flowers, as they grew in strength and grew in color and grew in life–

And they wondered, again, at the contrast.