fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers, Thursday

Entry tags:

Covent Garden Flowers, Thursday

The holiday from hell was officially over.

Oh, sure, there were still heart-shaped decorations around, but Octavia was spending some of her shift gathering those up and putting them away. And good riddance to them. The only other Valentine's Day related thing she'd had to deal with so far was when someone called and asked if they had post-holiday discounts on any flowers.

People were weird.

[ooc: Open!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes, people were weird.

And Magnus? Magnus totally had a Pal-entine's Day gift for her. "Hail and well met!" he announced cheerfully.

"Hail," Octavia replied, affording him only a slightly kinder tone than the person who'd called in earlier. It was that kind of day. "Do you want flowers?"

She was the greatest at customer service, truly.

"Nope, I got you a gift for the holiday," he replied proudly. Because carving things was his jam.

"Well, the holiday is over," Octavia pointed out. Using that to cover up for the random bout of uncertainty she felt all of a sudden.

She didn't get too many gifts. "You're late."

"...better late than never?" he ventured, fishing a carves, wooden flower from his inventory.

Sometimes never was better.

Octavia just wasn't sure whether it applied here. "What's that?"

Rude!

"It's a sunflower!" Because he was new to carving flowers and those were way easier than roses.

"And it's for me?"

She was just not used to these things. Forgive her.

"Yeeeep." He held it out for her, super proudly.

He done good on this one. He done real good.

Slowly, Octavia reached out to take it. She brought it closer to her face, her head tilting as she looked it over.

Then she looked back up at him. "Thank you, Magnus."

And you know what? It sounded sincere, and there was something a little more open about her expression - sure to be gone in a second.

"It's rosewood, which... in retrospect? I should have carved a rose out of, but this is nice too," he said cheerfully. "I made one for Taako and Cara too."

His buds. His pals. Compadres.

His taste in friends was pretty grumpy and deadly.

... And Taako.

Octavia snorted softly. "I've had enough of roses for a while, anyway."

Taako was the grumpiest one in the party as long as the subject wasn't Merle's arm!

"Yeah, it's a weird holiday they got goin' on here. But the chocolates are pretty good."

(no subject)

okteiviakom - 2018-02-15 22:59 (UTC) - Expand

So, Uma had learned yesterday that there was an entire store devoted to flowers. And part of her still couldn't believe that was true. Which was why she'd gone exploring through town to find this 'Covent Garden' place and see for herself.

"Neptune's beard," she muttered when she walked in. "Who needs this many flowers?"

"No one," Octavia drawled from the counter. Because of course she heard that. She might not have voiced her thoughts so openly if she hadn't recognized the girl from that time with the food, though. "Most of them aren't even useful."

Uma looked over to the counter and also recognized Octavia as that girl from the time with the food. She'd been so taken aback by all these flowers that she hadn't even noticed anyone else in the store.

"Wait, flowers can be useful?" Uma asked, looking skeptical. "Like...any of them?"

"Some," Octavia replied, with a vague shrug. "Because they can be used for medicine. I'm looking into having some more of those ordered for the shop."

She wanted people to focus more on the useful than the pretty.

Best of luck with that, Octavia.

"Did all the flowers from yesterday come from this store?" she asked, looking around. "Where do all these flowers come from?"

Even in winter, Fandom was greener than the Isle had ever been, but there still weren't giant fields of flowers that Uma had spotted.

"The mainland," Octavia replied. "More specifically than that, I don't know. There are probably greenhouses involved."

Her tone went a little more dry, at this point. "And yes, most of the flowers from yesterday came through here."

"Greenhouses?" Ugh. Uma hated admitting she didn't know things. But she hated not knowing them even more.

"Buildings made of glass, meant for growing plants indoors."

Octavia knew what it was like to not know things. She wrestled with it every damned day in this place.

So many concepts that other people took to as easy as breathing that just left Uma flummoxed. "The glass would focus and trap the heat," she murmured, thinking of the tables in her mother's shop directly below the windows. They didn't get much sun on the Isle, but even perpetual cloud cover couldn't block everything "Keeping it warmer than the outside. And snow could be kind of an insulator, if you got enough of it."

Finding ways to stay warm in the winter, yes, that was something she understood.

Octavia shrugged. "Up on the Ark, where I was born," she offered, "I think they were probably using some kind of machine to keep things habitable for the plants. But down here, it would make sense to use nature to an advantage."

"The Ark?" Uma asked. "Down here?"

She finally crossed into the store proper coming to lean on the counter near to where Octavia was, though leaving plenty of room between them. Just not the majority of the store. "What's an Ark? Was in up in the mountains you mentioned before?"

Octavia's tone was mild. She didn't exactly miss the Ark, but it was a complicated subject. In some ways, anyway.

"The Ark was a space station."

Well, several of them put together. But that wasn't really relevant right now.