The Park, Wednesday Evening

[fh_extras]

There's a tree in the park that wasn't there a year ago, though nobody was around to notice when it arrived. It's still blooming now, even in the middle of winter, soft pink blossoms covering its branches, the warmth of the trunk keeping the circle around it green and free of snow.

Today, as the light of the winter sun fades away into the evening, the blossoms on each branch open up, releasing tiny white puffballs into the wind. They float across the island, and the warmth and calm hope that are always to be found beneath that tree are carried with them tonight, wherever they pass.

[Establishy, though if you'd like your characters to notice the effects, that's absolutely fine. Many, many thanks to raspberryturk for the beautiful picture.]

Comments

[sorella-vecchia.livejournal.com]

After they left Groovy Tunes Dinah and Triela cut across the park. Along the way Triela stopped suddenly, a curious frown spreading across her face.

"What are those?" she asked pointing at one of the puffballs wafting through the air. As if Dinah might know.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah blinked, turning her face upward, and felt one brush over her eyebrow. "They're warm," she marveled, then smiled. "Soft too. A weed? Or a flower?" Another one floated by, and she reached out to touch it as it circled in the air.

[sorella-vecchia.livejournal.com]

Triela would normally caution anyone from touching anything weird around Fandom. You never knew what it might be, after all. But these didn't seem dangerous. And Dinah was right about the warm and soft part.

"Odd." Her voice was soft. "They're actually kind of... nice."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, they are," Dinah commented, mood lightening even further than good music had carried it. She turned to see where the breeze was carrying them from, and sighed. "Oh, wow. Look."

[sorella-vecchia.livejournal.com]

"That..." Triela frowned thoughtfully. "That wasn't there before."

She tried to sound sure, but there was something nagging in the back of her mind. Something that seemed to say that of course it had been there. The whole time.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"It's amazing," Dinah said, touching another puffball, and staring at the pink tree untouched by snow. "Wow."

And for everything Fandom had thrown at her, it was worth it to see something like that.

[sorella-vecchia.livejournal.com]

Triela took a deep breath, inhaling the oddly comforting scent that seemed to accompany the little puffballs. The corners of her mouth turned up. "I guess that goes to show that this place can't be bad all the time."

And maybe, in some sense, this made up for so much else.

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Katchoo was wandering through the park after work for no real reason other than to get some fresh air after spending all of yesterday cooped up in her paint-fume-saturated room.

"Snowing again?" she muttered to herself when she noticed the puffballs, but quickly dismissed the notion, choosing to follow them to their source instead when it set in that her mood had lightened.

The effect was . . . intoxicating, quite frankly, as she stood beneath the tree -- like a concentrated triple dose of spending time with Francine, and Katchoo hadn't felt this way in years. Standing here, she could almost forget the past two years had happened, forget about Darcy and L.A. and Ace and her mother.

She was silent, breathing evenly, her sketchbook in hand and her eyes closed, and if anyone happened to be passing by they'd see a rare and genuine smile on her face.

[wantstodirect]

On his way back to the dorms from J,GoB, a breeze lifted some of the white puffballs into Tony's path. He reached up and caught one. He rolled it in his fingers for a few moments, then let it go. He smiled to himself and continued back to the dorms, glad he'd decided to come to this school.

[raspberryturk]

Reno had found himself deeply bothered by the events and the conversations that had taken place over the course of the week. Fears of the future had been following him around, regrets from the past were never going to let him go. There was too much to do, and so little time to get it done, and sometimes it felt like no matter how many times he tried to finish something today, there were never enough tomorrows to make any of it count.

Which was why he'd stepped outside for air. The crisp coolness, he'd figured, ought to do him some good. A sky that went on forever, the twinkle of the stars reminding him vaguely of the liquid life he'd occasionally viewed from his own world.

But it was the dancing balls of fluff that ultimately helped ease the tension in his shoulders and the sickness in his gut. One bounced along through the air in front of his nose. Made him sneeze, and then made him smile.

Maybe there aren't enough tomorrows, he thought as he went along on his way, breathing the evening in more deeply and easily than he had in ages, but that just means today means that much more, yo.